A Foggy Tale

“Fog in Front, Drama Behind”: The Real-Life Tea Behind A Foggy Tale (2025)

When the credits rolled on A Foggy Tale and the Golden Horse trophies started piling up, you probably thought, “What a serious, classy historical drama.” Adorable. Behind that misty White Terror melancholy is a surprisingly spicy trail of favoritism jokes, on-set roast sessions, political landmines, and one very real cancer battle that turned the film into something way more personal than anyone signed up for.

On-Set Drama: “Why Is She the Teacher’s Pet?!”

Will Or vs. The Director (Friendly Fire Edition)

Hong Kong actor Will Or (柯煒林), who plays rickshaw driver Zhao Gongdao, has been loudly—though playfully—calling out director Chen Yu-hsun for “blatant favoritism” toward co-star Caitlin Fang (方郁婷).

• At Golden Horse–adjacent press events, he joked that during the entire shoot Chen never once scolded Fang, while he himself got chewed out on the daily: “I was getting yelled at every day and she’s over there getting praised. My heart is so unbalanced.”
• Chen later admitted he only truly “lost it” once during production, blaming it on his own health and stress, but Will’s running bit about being the designated scolding target has become part of the film’s lore .

The English-Speaking Peasants of 1953

Director Chen revealed that Will and Caitlin had a habit of slipping into relaxed, fluent English between takes—even though they’re playing 1950s rural Taiwanese characters.

• Chen roasted them in interviews, saying it was like “two country bumpkins from the 40s secretly speaking English behind my back,” while he’s trying to keep the period illusion intact .
• The pair insist it was just a way to decompress from the intense material—but the mental image of soot-covered, half-starved peasants suddenly going “Bro, that take was rough” in English is priceless.

Learning to Swear for Cinema

In TV interviews, Will has laughed about how fast he picked up local swear words while shooting in Taiwan, because the role demanded a rough, foul-mouthed veteran. Director Chen, he joked, “knows quite a lot of curse words too,” and was not shy about deploying them when pushing for authenticity .

Pain, Pills & Premieres: The Cancer Battle Behind Zhao Gongdao

Stage 4 Lung Cancer, 30+ Q&As Anyway

The film finished shooting long before anyone knew, but in July 2025 Will Or was diagnosed with stage 4 lung adenocarcinoma . By the time A Foggy Tale hit festivals and cinemas, he was in active treatment—yet he still ran himself ragged doing post-screening talks.

• Taiwanese outlets report he attended over 30 post-screening Q&As and fan meetings while undergoing targeted therapy, often rushing from the hospital to the cinema ^[8].
• Asked why he kept doing it, he said the film meant too much to him, and that the audience’s response gave him strength to keep going ^[7][10].

Role First, Diagnosis Later – But They Ended Up Talking to Each Other

In a Tatler Asia interview, Will said that while they filmed in 2023 he didn’t fully understand the film’s metaphor about people trapped in history’s fog. Only when the world premiere rolled around two years later—post-diagnosis—did it hit him:

• “My life had changed completely,” he said. He started seeing Zhao Gongdao’s dogged survival and small acts of kindness as a mirror of his own need to keep going through treatment .
• He visited the Jing-Mei White Terror Memorial Park to prepare for the role, learning about prisoners who clung to dignity under impossible circumstances—research that, in hindsight, felt like emotional training for his cancer fight ^[9].

Golden Horse Night: No Trophy, All Heart

Will was nominated for Best Actor at the 62nd Golden Horse Awards but didn’t win. Witnesses and commentators say he showed zero disappointment; instead, when A Foggy Tale took Best Feature Film, he was one of the most visibly ecstatic people in the room, cheering harder than some producers .

• One commentator on Threads noted that despite his stage-4 diagnosis, “when A Foggy Tale won, he looked happier than anyone. It’s like the film winning was more important than his own award” ^[11].

Hair, Glamour & Hurt Feelings: The Leading Ladies’ Side of the Story

Caitlin Fang’s Devastating Haircut

To become 15-year-old country girl Yue, Caitlin Fang had to ditch her usual modern, soft look and chop her hair into a very short, boyish cut.

• She admitted the transformation hit her hard: throughout filming, whenever she wasn’t on camera, she’d look in the mirror and feel “really shaken” by how unlike herself she looked . It wasn’t just vanity—going from elegant to grimy, cropped, and exhausted helped her get into character, but messed with her self-image.

9m88: From “Fake News” Romance to Open Boyfriend Casting Call

Singer-turned-actress 9m88 (Joanne Tang), who plays glamorous nightclub singer Hsia, got pulled into a gossip storm of her own—though not directly tied to the Foggy Tale set.

• Taiwanese/Chinese outlets had been pushing rumors she was secretly dating her good friend, actor Zhang Guangchen. In 2024–2025 coverage she very bluntly called those reports “fake news” and clarified she’d actually been single for four years .
• She even “opened casting” for a boyfriend in a cheeky way during a brand event, asking the media where all the good men were, firmly repositioning herself as happily unattached ^[21].
• During Foggy Tale promotion, she and co-star Caitlin were often described as having “sisterly” chemistry, on and off screen—no scandals, just a lot of mutual fangirling over how pretty and talented the other one is .

Politics, Bans & Backlash: When Your Film Is Too Real for Beijing

Too Hot for China

A Foggy Tale dives straight into Taiwan’s White Terror period—state executions, political prisoners, and decades of martial law. Multiple analyses point out that a film this blunt about KMT-era repression would be politically impossible inside the PRC market.

• A long-form piece on Taiwan’s information warfare notes that A Foggy Tale is exactly the sort of film that runs counter to Beijing’s preferred narratives—and that its success strengthens Taiwan’s democratic memory against Chinese cognitive warfare .
• Insiders and commentators alike treat it as a given that the movie will not be submitted to or approved by mainland Chinese censors. It’s effectively a Taiwan + international festival/Netflix-only title by design ^[15].

Hong Kong Travel Agency Bails Over Screening

The politics turned very literal when a Hong Kong travel agency planning a group trip to Taiwan quietly backed out of a program that included a screening of A Foggy Tale.

• According to a Reddit discussion of the incident, the agency cited concerns over the “controversial film” as the excuse to cancel—prompting users to mock the move as classic self-censorship and political overreaction .
• The cancellation was discussed in the same breath as other art-house titles deemed “too sensitive,” underlining how even a Taiwanese historical drama can spook cross-border businesses in 2026’s climate ^[17].

Meanwhile in Taipei: Presidential Tears

On the flip side, Taiwan’s own president Lai Ching-te attended a screening and was reported as being “deeply moved” by the film’s portrayal of the White Terror era, praising its role in helping the public process historical trauma ^[18].

Casting Choices & “Accidental” Controversy

The Hong Kong Import as an Old Mainland Soldier

Some fans initially raised an eyebrow at the fact that a central “waishengren” (mainland-born veteran) character is played by a Hong Kong actor rather than a Taiwanese performer.

• Director Chen addressed this in interviews: they spent a long time searching for someone who could convincingly embody a Guangdong-born soldier dragged to Taiwan in the 1950s, complete with the right accent and physicality.
• Chen confessed he “wrestled” with casting Will Or, describing him as a “fashionable Hong Kong youth who didn’t really know what happened in Taiwan 70 years ago” but insisting that something about his energy and look felt right for the part .
• The final verdict? The risk paid off—critics singled out Or’s accent and physical transformation as among the film’s standout elements, and Golden Horse voters rewarded him with a Best Actor nomination ^[14][22].

Wild Trivia & Deep-Cut Fan Nuggets

200 Extras, One Immersive Taipei

Coverage of the production notes that the team used around 200 actors and extras to recreate Taipei’s Rongding (榮町) district, stuffing the frame with vendors, soldiers, mourners, and street kids to make 1950s Taipei feel suffocating and alive at the same time ^[5].

Director, Guided by Ghosts (His Words, Kinda)

Chen Yu-hsun has said in multiple interviews that he didn’t over-research; instead he felt “pulled” by the story, almost as if the era itself was guiding the film. He calls A Foggy Tale a movie about “disappearing people and remaining landscapes” and implies there was something fated in how it came together ^[16].

• Combined with his jokes about “seeing things” on set and the film’s funeral-home settings, fans have leaned into a low-key “this film is haunted” mythos—even if that’s more vibe than verified haunting.

Will Or: No Audition, Just Vibes

In his Tatler interview, Will casually dropped that he didn’t have to audition at all: the team just sent him the script and offered him the role outright, which shocked him enough that he asked them to double-confirm they really didn’t want a screen test ^[9]. A level of “we already decided you’re him” that most actors can only dream of.

Awards Sweep That Turned a Heavy Film into a Pop-Culture Moment

A Foggy Tale led the 2025 Golden Horse nominations with 11 nods and walked away with at least four major wins, including Best Narrative Feature and Best Original Screenplay, instantly making it the Taiwanese film conversation of the year ^[22][14].

• International outlets from Hong Kong to Ireland and Berlin highlighted the film as “must-see Taiwanese cinema,” giving it the kind of cross-border buzz that serious political dramas almost never get ^[5][7][9].

**Romance Rumors & Cut-Scene Scandals: What’s Not There**

Despite hunting through Taiwanese and Hong Kong entertainment coverage, social chatter, and festival Q&As, there are no credible reports of:

• Cast feuds beyond Will Or’s jokey “I get scolded, she doesn’t” bit.
• On-set dating or breakups among the main cast.
• Lawsuits, production shutdowns, or extreme on-set accidents.
• Major leaked or banned scenes from A Foggy Tale itself (if anything got cut, it’s been kept behind the fog).

If fans ship anyone, it’s mostly in a wholesome way: Caitlin Fang and Will Or for their protector–kid dynamic, or 9m88 and Caitlin as sisters with contrasting glam vs. grit energy. But those pairings live firmly in fanart and headcanon for now—no DeuxMoi-level scandal to see here.