3 Body Problem stars on the show’s big question: would you push the button?

Image: Ed Miller / Netflix

One happening that confounds maine aft reading Cixin Liu’s The Three-Body Problem and watching its Netflix adaptation is simply a elemental button.

Spoilers for 3 Body Problem to follow.

I inactive haven’t been capable to wrapper my caput astir wherefore Ye Wenjie, erstwhile faced with the prime to respond to oregon disregard transmissions from the San-Ti, an alien race, chose to respond. Throughout quality history, archetypal interaction events seldom spell good and spell adjacent worse erstwhile the 2 sides are technologically imbalanced. So, wherefore would an ostensibly hyperintelligent pistillate pin her hopes connected a contention of beings that person already made their hostile designs connected Earth clear?

In an interrogation with Ye’s actresses Rosalind Chao and Zine Tseng, who play the quality passim the antithetic stages of her beingness successful the Netflix series, I decided to inquire what they thought of Ye’s actions and what they would bash if faced with her prime to propulsion the button.

“Naivety is what leads to her fateful act,” Chao said. Before her choice, Ye faced unthinkable trauma. She watched arsenic her father, a salient physicist and assemblage professor, was beaten to decease successful 1 of the infamous conflict sessions of Mao’s Cultural Revolution. That aforesaid gyration near Ye, herself a physicist, without a aboriginal arsenic China transforms into a state wherever her acquisition successful the sciences is seen arsenic subversive — a menace to Mao’s repressive, anti-intellectual regime. She becomes trapped, bound successful work arsenic a probe idiosyncratic to the authorities that killed her father. “She thinks that the full satellite is experiencing what she’s experiencing, and she has an accidental to marque it better,” Chao said.

What, though, does “better” mean successful this context?

Image: Ed Miller / Netflix Zine Tseng arsenic Ye Wenjie successful her caller beingness astatine Red Coast Base.

Ye was warned by a sympathetic San-Ti idiosyncratic that continued connection would punctual the full contention to invade. Knowing this, she inactive pushes the button. I asked Chao and Tseng if Ye’s tendency to marque the satellite “better” was calved of the anticipation for salvation oregon the spite of wanting to spot the satellite that wounded her destroyed.

“There is spite, and determination is hope,” Tseng answered. Though Ye inevitably presses the button, she does intermission earlier doing so. “I felt anticipation was [contained in] the hesitation.” Chao sees The Great Button Press arsenic a much neutral action. “[Pushing the button] has the seasoning of spite,” she said. “But it impels her forward.”

Understanding Ye’s actions means knowing idiosyncratic who has been indelibly shaped by the events of China’s Cultural Revolution. According to Tseng, Ye’s endurance of that play is owed to her strength. “She’s 1 of the strongest radical successful that play of time,” Tseng said. “She’s been done truthful galore life-threatening events, but she’s alive.”

Tseng said Ye’s capableness for endurance is what attracts her the astir to that character. For Chao, it is Ye’s adaptability. “She adapts to the condition according to what serves her and what she perceives arsenic serving humanity,” Chao said.

Ye’s prime has dire consequences for some humanity and herself. She loses everything and everyone she hoped to save, including her ain life, down her transmission to the San-Ti. It’s hard to consciousness sympathy for idiosyncratic suffering the consequences of a prime erstwhile those consequences were astatine slightest hinted at, if not stated clearly, upfront. But Chao feels that’s wherever her top acquisition from 3 Body Problem lies. “What I’ve truly learned from the 3 Body Problem is simply a definite benignant of empathy,” Chao said. “There’s truthful galore shades of gray, and 1 ne'er knows what makes idiosyncratic bash an enactment that tin beryllium perceived arsenic incorrect oregon a mistake.”

Image: Netflix Rosalind Chao arsenic an older Ye Wenjie.

Chao said that erstwhile she work The Three-Body Problem, she came distant with an knowing of Ye arsenic a character. But it was lone done portraying her that she was capable to make empathy for this doomed woman. “It opened up my mode of thinking,” Chao said.

Her reply was striking to me. I can’t look to muster the aforesaid feelings for Ye, but I wondered if empathy for her would pb her actresses to marque her aforesaid decision.

Tseng was applicable successful her answer, refusing to property the button. “I instrumentality advice,” she said. “Because they said, ‘Do not reply.’” Chao, however, disagreed. “If I had gone done everything that Ye had gone through,” Chao said, “how could I not propulsion the button?”

While I inactive can’t fathom Ye Wenjie and her prime and the choices of a batch of different characters successful 3 Body Problem, I americium near with a amended knowing of why.

“If idiosyncratic tells maine don’t,” Chao said with a laugh, “I privation to bash it adjacent more.”