“And I asked them if they could add a little Mandarin collar as a little shout out to my roots and they were happy to oblige,” she explained. “So it just feels like a really modern dress. I feel beautiful in it. But I also feel like I can move and I’m nimble so it feels very me.”
Chau’s stylists, Zadrian Smith and Sarah Edmiston, told E! News correspondent Zanna Roberts Rassi that Prada sent several sketches for the custom gown, which also featured a contrasting black feathered train.
“And Hong herself was like, ‘Yeah, it’s great but I think we need to add the collar,’” Rassi said, adding that the actor had also sent back her own sketch of the look and drew her inspiration from a 1997 Prada show
“She went deep in it,” Rassi said.
Chau’s parents — while her mother was pregnant with her — and older siblings left Vietnam after the Vietnam war. Chau was born in a refugee camp in Thailand in 1979 and her family eventually relocated to the New Orleans, Louisiana, area.
In an interview with ABC on the red carpet, Chau opened up about becoming a mother in 2020 and how it helped her get in touch with her character in “The Whale.” Chau plays Liz, a caretaker and friend to a man with obesity.
“I had just become a mother and my daughter was eight weeks old when we started this and I just have empathized with the character,” she told the outlet. “He’s trying to reconnect with his daughter and it’s just so heartbreaking.”
She added that she felt the need to protect star Brendan Fraser on-set.
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