Gemma Chan makes composure interesting, suggesting thought without advertising it. We rate her restraint, but too often her films mistake it for a reason to leave her at the edge of the story.
Fi1m perspective
In Let Them All Talk (2020), Gemma Chan’s Karen asks Lucas Hedges’s Tyler to discover what his aunt is writing, and he falls for her. Chan is crisp, giving their scenes a welcome directness while Steven Soderbergh keeps turning elsewhere. We were frustrated by how little she gets to do, because her dealings with Tyler are worth following and the film repeatedly sets them aside. The talk elsewhere is often good, but this is one of several threads left insufficiently developed.
That restraint had a more explicit use in Humans (2015–2018), where her lead role as Anita/Mia called for stylised movement and minimal expression. The interest lies in how much feeling she can suggest within that physical discipline. Crazy Rich Asians (2018), in which she played Astrid Young Teo, brought wider film recognition; Captain Marvel (2019) and Eternals (2021) took her into further fantasy casting. The repeated demand for elegance and poise makes sense, though we would like more opportunities to see her characters lose their composure.
Gareth Edwards’s The Creator (2023) makes a different demand on her. As Maya, she appears mostly in flashback, while Madeleine Yuna Voyles’s Alphie is the real lead. Edwards makes the future look worn and inhabited, but the story is familiar and gives those images too little to carry. It is worth seeing for that convincing setting, with modest expectations of the writing. Chan’s presence should not be mistaken for a promise that the film will give her the sustained attention her admirers might want.
Josephine (2026), with Chan as Claire, marks a move towards independent drama, producing and more personal projects. That change interests us, though a larger part still needs a script that gives her something to do. Neither of the films we have reviewed would be repaired simply by giving Chan more scenes. For a fuller introduction to her work, start with Humans.
Biography
Gemma Chan is an English actress. Born on 29 November 1982 in London, she graduated with a law degree from Worcester College, Oxford, before training at the Drama Centre London and beginning to act in the late 2000s.
She rose to attention with her leading role in the Channel 4 science fiction series Humans (2015–2018). Her film roles include Crazy Rich Asians (2018), Captain Marvel (2019), Eternals (2021), Don't Worry Darling (2022), The Creator (2023) as Maya, and Let Them All Talk (2020) as Karen. She also provided a voice in Raya and the Last Dragon (2021).
