by FilmInk Staff
The Matrix veteran and celebrated Australian screen and stage actor joins the cast of Lonely Hill Films’ Kennedy as journalist Liu Dihuan, and will also serve the production as Drama Coach.
Lonely Hill Films is proud to announce that acclaimed actor Anthony Brandon Wong has joined the cast of Kennedy as Liu Dihuan, the journalist whose pursuit of the truth behind the Kelly Gang’s victims drives one of the film’s central investigations. Wong joins the production in a dual capacity, also taking on the role of Drama Coach across the cast.
It is a casting that speaks directly to the spirit of the film. Liu is written as an outsider to the accepted version of events, a reporter unwilling to let a comfortable myth stand in place of the truth, and Wong’s own career has been defined by that same instinct: a body of work, both in front of camera and in the acting studio, built on pushing past the easy read of a character to find what is actually true underneath.
Wong brings to Kennedy a screen career spanning more than three decades and an international profile few Australian character actors can match. He is best known to global audiences as Ghost, the Zen Buddhist assassin of the Nebuchadnezzar crew in The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions, a role he expanded as the lead opposite Jada Pinkett Smith in the Wachowski-directed video game Enter the Matrix. The production placed him alongside Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss, Monica Bellucci and Hugo Weaving across fifteen months of production in Sydney and the San Francisco Bay Area.
On television, Wong played the principal role of Danny Law across three seasons of SBS/Matchbox Pictures’ The Family Law, a series that broke ground as Australian television’s first comedy-drama built around an Asian-Australian family. His other credits span more than forty television productions across the US, Canada, Asia, Europe, Australia, New Zealand and Africa, including Home and Away, The Twelve, Queen of Oz, NCIS, Glee, Hawaii Five-0, The PM’s Daughter and The Killings at Parrish Station. His feature credits include Steven Soderbergh’s Haywire, Guns, Girls & Gambling opposite Gary Oldman and Christian Slater, Hemingway & Gellhorn opposite Nicole Kidman and Clive Owen, Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, Little Fish opposite Cate Blanchett and Flight of the Phoenix opposite Dennis Quaid and Hugh Laurie.
On stage, Wong has played lead and major roles for Sydney Theatre Company, Melbourne Theatre Company, The Malthouse and State Theatre Company of South Australia across more than thirty productions, and won the Victorian Green Room Award for Best Actor for his performance in Sex Diary of an Infidel.
“Kennedy revisits the Ned Kelly narrative – but this time from the perspectives of Michael Kennedy, one of the three policemen murdered by the Kelly Gang, and Bridget Tobin, his fiercely loyal, loving and outspoken wife. For me, I’m all about questioning long-held narratives because I believe perception doesn’t always equal reality. This was also a powerful message imparted in Matrix 2 & 3 and the video game Enter the Matrix that I was involved in. And that’s what I love about the movie Kennedy – it asks the question “Was Ned Kelly the hero so many Australians believe him to be?”. And my character in the movie who bravely launches that investigation is Liu, a journalist eager to go beyond the established narrative and find out another side of the story. After I read the script, I couldn’t resist being part of this deeply moving, important and necessary retelling of Australian history, beautifully written, with real-life lead characters and a love story that will delight and move audiences and bring to light the human cost to those who were slain by the Kelly gang, and the families who loved and grieved the fallen.” ANTHONY BRANDON WONG, LIU, KENNEDY
Director and writer Darren K. Hawkins said of the casting: “I’ve admired Anthony’s work for years, on screen, on stage, and in the way he develops the next generation of actors. As Liu, he brings the truth and depth this story needs to guide audiences through a new lens on the Kelly story. Having him join the team as Drama Coach as well is just as exciting: it’s a privilege to have his experience shaping the whole cast. I can’t wait to begin this collaboration.”
Beyond his performance credits, for more than 30 years, Wong has been one of Australia’s most respected acting teachers and coaches, whose roster of well-known students and clients include Magda Szubanski, Delta Goodrem, Natalie Mendoza, James Stewart, Angus McLaren, Stef Dawson and Shareena Clanton. A certified instructor of the Ivana Chubbuck Technique who has also trained with master teachers Larry Moss, Eric Morris and Elizabeth Kemp, he has taught thousands of Australian artists at such esteemed schools as National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA), WAAPA, Actors Centre Australia, Melbourne’s 16th Street Actors Studio, and QUT.
Kennedy is an original screenplay by Darren K. Hawkins and Lauren Hamilton Neill, based on documented historical events spanning 1868–1906. The film centres on Bridget Kennedy, widow of Sergeant Michael Kennedy, killed by the Kelly Gang at Stringybark Creek, and her extraordinary years-long campaign to seek justice and dismantle the mythology that erased her husband’s life and legacy from the national story. Wong’s casting as Liu deepens the film’s second narrative strand: a journalist’s own reckoning with the cost of the stories a nation chooses to tell.
Kennedy is produced by Darren K. Hawkins, Thea McLeod and Kieren Devisser.
