How Did *Go Princess Go* Get So Addictive? We Asked Its Producer

"It's like eating fried stinky tofu or Musang King durian: you just can't stop."

The Chinese web drama Go Princess Go (《太子妃升职记》) is a hit. Since it began streaming on LeTV on December 13, it has drawn 870 million views.

Douban users, usually a hard crowd to please, rate it 8.2. Some 500,000 people bought LeTV memberships just to watch it. Most viewers reach the same verdict: it is weirdly, inexplicably addictive.

A modern man wakes up as a crown princess in ancient times. From that fresh premise the show piles on girl-on-girl romance, gay romance and Mary Sue fantasy, along with a flood of jokes and things to mock. Even the bizarre costumes and threadbare props turn out to be funny. As one viewer put it: "This show is poison. Watch one episode and you want two. It's like eating fried stinky tofu or Musang King durian: you just can't stop."

We interviewed the show's producer, Gan Wei. She chose to adapt the novel, made the call to hire the director Lü Haojiji (now shut away editing the finale), and came up with the "flirting with girls" gags. She answered many of the questions viewers have been asking.

Go Princess Go succeeded because it caught "what the kids want," meaning young viewers. If 2011's Scarlet Heart was the first wave to carry the time-travel craze onto the screen, Go Princess Go is the upgrade that catches up with the tastes of anime-and-comics fans.

Much of it, though, was unplanned, and some effects can only be put down to happy accidents. For one, both the director and the producer thought the costumes were rather beautiful.

On the "man becomes woman" premise: nobody had done this kind of time travel

Why did you choose to make a "man becomes woman" story?

We just felt a man turning into a woman was very appealing, and because it was unusual, we decided to start adapting it. It's a time-travel drama, and audiences have seen those before: Scarlet Heart and Palace are both conventional time-travel dramas. But nobody had done a man becoming a woman. Why not try it?

One viewer wrote, "This show seriously reflects how starved audiences are for BL (boys' love) material." Is that part of it?

That's something the market needs right now, and the show happens to match what the kids want deep down. But it isn't purely BL. We put in a lot aimed at girls born from the 1990s to the 2000s. The wall slam, for example, the things a domineering CEO does: every girl fantasizes about those. Every girl also fantasizes about a painful love triangle, two men loving her to death, the way three men love the heroine in The Journey of Flower, or three men love Mi Yue in The Legend of Mi Yue.

Zhang Pengpeng has lots of scenes flirting with young women: touching their chests, tilting up their chins. How did you come up with those?

Because she's a man in a woman's body. In the modern world he was a playboy, and a playboy likes to take liberties. Meet a pretty woman, pinch a cheek, pat a bottom, stroke a chin: perfectly normal. Then she lands in ancient times and, oh my God, now she's a woman too, so she grabs every chance to cop a feel. And it's "baby" and "darling" wherever she goes. We designed that too.

It's a hard part to play. How do you show the audience that this is a man in a woman's body, and a man who used to sleep around? So the character has to come through in the lines, the manner and the movements. She isn't just a woman: inside she's still a man who likes to take small liberties. When she sees women, she summons the four consorts to a "meeting." She's really quite lecherous, and she indulges it.

Whenever Zhang Pengpeng faces the camera, she switches to a man's voice and mocks herself.

It's a device, like a split personality. She's an ancient woman, Crown Princess Zhang Pengpeng, but inside she's a modern man. When she talks to the camera, she's saying what she most wants to say, and it comes out in a man's voice.

People say the show is hilarious and the jokes are very well built.

The comedy came naturally. There's the gap between modern and ancient, and on top of that she was a man to begin with. That sets up lots of contradictions, and they react with each other.

On adapting web fiction

When did you buy the rights to the novel?

In 2012 a friend recommended it to me and said it was good. I read it, found it fun, and bought it. Then it sat for a few years while I made other dramas. In the end I pulled it out from among many novels I held rights to and decided to make it.

The drama keeps the novel's characters and story outline, but changes a lot of the details.

We didn't change the basic structure much. The screenwriters added details, jokes and dialogue. We started writing the script in October 2014 and spent six months on it. Certain elements had to go in: the domineering CEO, right, the muscle guy, right, a painful romance, and just a faint touch of BL. All of that had to be there.

Did you consider other titles?

At first we didn't want to call it Go Princess Go (literally "The Crown Princess's Promotion"). We came up with 20 names, including Bending Him, Meeting You on the Other Side of Time, and Crown Princess 1/2. We went through several rounds of posters and kept agonizing. Each name had its strengths and flaws. "Bending" was too blunt and too tacky, like a beautiful woman standing there naked. In the end we felt Go Princess Go was subtler and better. The others were too arty or too old-fashioned.

The novel's cover

On the leads: Zhang Tianai struggled at first, and the prince had to be cold outside and burning inside

Is it true the first choice for the female lead was Cherrie Ying?

Yes. Cherrie Ying is a friend of mine, and when I read the novel I thought the part was perfect for her. She wouldn't even need to act; she's so like the character. But considering her age and schedule, she felt she couldn't compete with the post-90s generation and advised me to cast newcomers. In the end every lead we cast was a newcomer.

How did you choose Zhang Tianai? Fans now call her the new "national husband."

The director recommended her; they had worked together before. Zhang Pengpeng was a crucial role, since she carries the whole show, and we had many options at the time.

She isn't a tomboy herself. Before shooting we put the cast through training. It was a real headache. The part demands a lot of acting skill, and at first Zhang Tianai couldn't get into it. The early episodes especially, where she has to play a man's mind in a woman's body, are hard to pitch right. We rehearsed with her and talked through the idea. But she worked extremely hard, and in the end she didn't let us down.

How did you settle on Sheng Yilun to play the prince?

They were all newcomers, so first they needed some experience. Not acting training as such, just some experience, plus good looks. Beyond that, they had to fit the character. That was essential, the most important thing. However handsome you are, if you don't suit the prince, it won't work. The prince has a very cool face. Sheng Yilun happened to fit, and he's fairly introverted in real life.

Zhang Pengpeng is lively, but the prince is icy, and some say he acts with a "paralyzed face." What was the thinking behind that character?

The prince looks cold and aloof, but inside he's full of love for Zhang Pengpeng. If a smooth-talking man followed you around every day saying "I love you," it would feel like a routine, and you might not care. The colder the outside and the more passionate the inside, the more it gets to you. You know, people have a masochistic streak, and you have to feed it.

The Ninth Prince always wears white and looks otherworldly. How did you pick Yu Menglong?

The first time I met him was here, in the office, and he was wearing a white shirt. It stuck with me. I said he could absolutely play the Ninth Prince. I decided the moment I met him.

The Ninth Prince had to be a Prince Charming: handsome, and effortlessly refined.

The crown princess's maid, Lüli, is another popular character, very endearing.

The director and assistant director chose Lüli too. There were several candidates, and we settled on her. She had to be clearly different from the crown princess. In Chinese opera terms, the crown princess is a stately qingyi, the dignified heroine, while Lüli had to be a playful xiaohuadan, the lively young girl.

Guo Junchen, who plays Yang Yan, was born in 1997. How did you find him?

The assistant director found him through his Weibo. He suited the character well.

On costumes, props, the wind machine, product placement, the bed scene and other targets of mockery: many effects were happy accidents

Let's talk about the "fashion." What exactly were you thinking?

Our screenwriter recommended the director, saying he was good and full of ideas. We were looking everywhere for young directors to work with. After talking with Lü Haojiji, we found our ideas matched perfectly. We wanted to make a fashionable costume drama, not a conventional period piece, and to turn the genre on its head a bit.

(Q: Does "turn on its head" refer to taste?)

It refers to the costumes and styling. What people are mocking now is exactly what we set out to do.

Where did the idea for this subversive design come from?

The director worked it out early on. He gathered lots of runway photos and said, let's make a fashionable costume drama based on these. We clicked right away. It was great.

Why did the director design the costumes himself? I heard he once designed 50 outfits in one night.

Blame our inexperience. It was my first costume drama, and it was expensive. Everything had to be designed from scratch, the clothes included. We first planned to borrow costumes, but borrowing would have defeated the purpose: we wanted a fashionable period drama that looked good. The budget wasn't big either, so we just made our own. We worked from the color palette of the Japanese designer who did the costumes for Zhang Yimou's Hero to get what we wanted.

Why aren't the eunuchs and imperial physicians wearing trousers?

They're not without trousers... they're wearing shorts. The director actually based them on designs from big fashion labels.

They also wear silly things on their heads, like sunflowers and the Chanel logo.

That's another target for mockery. When we were planning, we figured that if everyone joined in mocking it, the show would get attention, and the mockery would have done its job.

What's the story with the prince's armor that bares his belly button?

It came from the runway, imitating big labels. Everyone has seen that navel. I kept asking the director whether he could change that stick. He asked, what stick? I said, the frame on your back. It's actually a runway piece. The director said it's a symbol of the royal family.

So the director was completely serious about the costumes?

The director is very serious. A piece of wood strapped to your back looks funny, but we were serious about it. You find the show funny, but you can tell these people are filming it in earnest. Still, it's one more thing to mock.

All right, the director was serious. But when you saw the costume designs, didn't you want to mock them yourself?

I thought they were pretty, the carp leaping over the dragon gate that people make fun of and all. My taste is a lot like the director's. Every time he sees what I'm wearing, he says, "Boss Wei, that looks great." He's a fashion director; he has that kind of taste. If we were going to turn things on their head anyway, why not go all the way? Doing it halfway makes noise and means nothing.

The S&M gear was actually modeled on looks from John Galliano's runway shows

The look with wooden poles propping up a mosquito net was actually inspired by British label Craig Green's Spring/Summer 2015 collection

The prince's armor was modeled on the Spring/Summer 2015 theme of British label Kokon To Zai (design)

The consorts' costumes were actually modeled on Victorian oil paintings

Viewers noticed the show was shot at the same location as Nirvana in Fire.

It's in Xiangshan. The director wanted a Japanese feel, with low buildings, and Xiangshan has a Three Kingdoms-era look that suited our style. We used the same outdoor location as Nirvana in Fire and The Legend of Mi Yue.

Did you build the sets yourselves? The colors are unusually bright.

The buildings were already there in Xiangshan, and many of the sets appeared in Nirvana in Fire and The Legend of Mi Yue. But those shows kept the original colors, which are fairly dark. We wanted something young, with bright colors. The floors and pillars you see, we painted them all ourselves, in blue, rose red and green. Very vivid.

Then there are the white pebbles covering the ground. The day before shooting began, the director went to see the set and still wasn't happy; the colors didn't look good. The production manager told me the director wanted to spread lots of white pebbles over it, and I said fine.

Almost every shot goes for hair streaming in the wind. Why the love of wind machines?

That bothered me at the time too. I kept telling the director, aren't you shooting too much flowing, floaty stuff? I said we're not making a music video, and I was really afraid it would turn into one. But the result proved him right: the director wanted to create a mood, to make it beautiful.

But there was only one wind machine. The director has complained that the production manager approved just one, for 1,000 yuan, and wouldn't let him buy another.

Because the director, the production manager and the producers are always at odds. A director naturally wants everything perfect, with more time and more money, because that gives him more room to work. The producers have to answer to the investors: there's only so much money, so how do you make the best thing on a tight budget? That tension never goes away.

Why are there so few props in the first ten episodes? Was the crew really that poor?

That was inexperience again. Our main crew went to Xiangshan, but we hadn't done much homework and didn't know we had to book props in advance. We assumed the studio's prop warehouse would have plenty, but a big TV drama was shooting there at the time and had borrowed nearly everything, leaving us only a handful. So the early episodes feel empty, with very few props, and people decided we were a poor crew.

But that's funny too. When the prince chases the Ninth Prince, he says, "There's a sedan chair ahead, after it!" and it's just an ordinary chair being carried. It becomes a joke.

That really was a happy accident, and it became one of the show's running jokes.

What was the budget?

Pre-production and post-production together came to nearly 20 million yuan.

How long was the shoot?

Eighty days in all, which is very long for a web drama.

The director has said he actually wanted the look of American Horror Story: eerie and stylish.

The director suggested a lot, and he had reference images for many scenes. We often messaged each other on WeChat in the middle of the night about what effect to go for. When I didn't quite understand the image he wanted, he'd send it to me. In one scene, for example, everyone is chasing Zhang Pengpeng, and she turns back with a smile in a pale pink dress. It's very beautiful. The director sent me a still from Spartacus of a woman in a gauze dress looking back over her shoulder. Shoot that in slow motion and it looks lovely. We went back and forth round after round beforehand on how to do each one.

The cinematography is one of the things viewers praise most.

The director is a very successful photographer, signed with Leica. Before I knew him, I had seen many of his photos and admired them without knowing they were his.

Did the idea for the opening titles come from Fruit Ninja?

No, really not. We had no budget left for the opening titles. Last October, over the National Day holiday, the director told me he wanted to shoot something new like this, and I paid for it out of my own pocket.

In the edit it does look like Fruit Ninja. The cast was really on wires in a studio, striking cool poses and spinning.

As the director put it, it's like The Matrix, where people fly up, bang bang bang, and hit a few marks. But could our equipment manage that? It was limited. We were almost done filming; the studio footage was shot on the last day.

Baiyunshan Pharmaceutical placed a product in the show. How did that deal come about?

We were about to start shooting when our ad sales team suddenly told us a company wanted to place a product in the show. I thought, a costume drama with product placement? Nice, let's talk. The terms were fine, so we put it in. They were also quite taken with the show. The director took it very seriously and shot a bonus scene, since one was needed. We reworked the script once, just for the ad.

Weren't you worried it would get in the way of the story?

That's why in the end we cut a lot of it, within the terms of the contract, of course.

Episode 24 has a bed scene, and the clip has been all over WeChat Moments lately.

With the bed scene, we weren't going to make porn. We wanted a little sensuality, just something beautiful. We shot the leads together beautifully, with no nudity, to show their love, and that was enough. The point wasn't to show skin. It was to build the emotion naturally.

After the bed scene aired, people said Brother Peng had finally turned completely gay.

Bent like a twisted dough stick, bent like a mosquito coil. She's slowly won over and accepts the prince.

Later on the romance takes over and it starts to feel like a straight drama, which is one reason for the 8.2 on Douban.

At the start, after all, he's a man who has landed in a woman's body, and it's a time-travel show. Later, as she slowly falls for the prince, it turns into an ordinary love story, and emotionally it leans more and more toward straight drama. The early part was the hardest to play, because she's constantly torn and struggling.

Many comments call it "a show with a smell," because of all the poop, pee and fart jokes.

The jokes grow out of the plot. Lots of people ask how a show this pretty can have so much farting. The plot calls for it, add a few sound effects, and there you are. Say she has an upset stomach and is sharing a room with the prince. He watches her from behind, her graceful figure, gazing at her tenderly while tender music plays, and suddenly she farts, and the prince just falls apart. It shows her character, moves the feelings forward, and shows how free-spirited Zhang Pengpeng is. Like a cake that's sweet but not cloying.

On the ending, the release schedule and what comes next: the director is editing two endings

I suspect older viewers will find this show hard to take.

It's very clearly made for people born in the 1990s and 2000s. We made it to measure for them; people born in the 1980s are a small slice of the audience. Our company is called Leyang Film & TV, after the English word "young," so it's about youthful things. Web drama and TV audiences are completely different: different viewers, different tastes.

People say this is the perfect show to watch on a danmaku site, where viewers' comments scroll across the screen. Did you approach Bilibili about putting it up?

At first Bilibili refused to work with us. There were copyright issues and worries about losing traffic, and they weren't sure how the show would turn out. The 14 episodes they later posted came about because we went to them specifically to work it out. Bilibili is very important; its audience is people born in the 1990s and 2000s.

A LeTV membership should let you watch the whole series at once. But the show is still being released in installments, a few episodes every few days. Is that hunger marketing, holding back supply to drive demand?

Actually, we originally planned for it to be free. It just got hugely popular after four episodes aired. Members should be able to watch the whole series, but we were editing as we released, and we could never catch up. It really isn't hunger marketing. We truly had no choice.

Why edit and air at the same time?

LeTV had nothing else ready and couldn't fill the next slot in time. On top of that, our schedule was extremely tight, and the director edits the footage himself, which is slower. He does everything personally and wants it perfect, so it takes longer.

Is the director still editing?

He's still cutting the last few episodes, and they're harder, because the ending matters as much as the opening.

How will it end? Will Brother Peng end up with the prince, travel back to the present, or will it all turn out to be Zhang Peng's dream?

There will be two different versions of the ending. The director is working on them. You'll see when they air.

Since you're editing as you air, now that it's a hit, have you thought about adding episodes?

The director is doing the editing himself. I told him to get a good editor to help with the rough cut, but in the end he insisted on doing all of it, and his health can't take it. I'm now talking with him about cutting an uncut version, if he's OK with it.

We cut a lot from this show. How she traveled back in time, how many people she rescued: he asked for all of that to go, because the pacing had to hook you immediately and grab the audience.

Does your company have anything similar coming up?

This year Leyang Film & TV will make four web dramas and one film. There's Can't Stop the Medicine (《药不能停》), and Queen Bitch (《碧池女王》), adapted from a novel by Rao Xueman, which is waiting on progress at her end. We can't announce the content yet, but it will still be young, fun stuff.