Actor Mei Mac was born in Birmingham in 1992, the daughter of Hong Kong immigrant parents. She recently finished a run in Kimber Lee’s untitled f*ck m*ss s**gon play, a blistering comic attack on prejudice and casual stereotyping, and is now returning to the role of Mei, the four-year-old heroine of My Neighbour Totoro, in the stage adaptation of the beloved Studio Ghibli film, a performance for which she became the first east Asian woman to be nominated for the best actress Olivier award. An activist as well as a performer, Mac is the co-founder of Rising Waves, a mentoring organisation to support British east- and south-east Asian (BESEA) actors.
How does it feel to be playing a four-year-old again?
Coming back to Totoro feels like coming home. I feel like I gave a piece of my soul to the show. The beauty of Phelim McDermott’s direction is that every member of the team has been invited to pour themselves into the work and feel like they have artistic influence.
You were first involved in workshops in 2020 – that’s a long time to devote to a project…
A lot of my career has been doing puppetry and we were working with some prototypes. They wanted to check whether one puppet could support the weight of a human being. Because I’d worked in circus, I offered to climb up and find out. That was the moment everyone went: Oh, Mei’s going to play Mei! I’ve been heavily involved since that point.
When you climb on Totoro’s belly, the audience gasps with pleasure. Is that your favourite puppet?
I’ve done a lot of shows with puppets and I have never seen puppets like ours. They are jaw-droppingly majestic and they take the audience back to that really wonderful sense of childhood wonder. I become very at one with that particular puppet – I end up eating quite a lot of hair.
What’s the most surprising audience reaction you’ve had?
Most of our audiences are adults because the film came out in 1988. But on matinees and over the holidays we have a lot more children in. When I come out of the stage door, they can’t believe that I’m not a child. That tells me I have managed to capture the essence of a four-year-old truthfully.
How do you feel about the Studio Ghibli films?
The beauty of Ghibli storytelling is that morality is not binary. It’s quite different from Disney, which has a very traditional sense of good versus evil. That binary sense of storytelling for me can feel quite restrictive. From the point of view of young people, it changes the way that you view the world.
Did you have any hesitation about putting what is already a masterpiece on stage?
We had to be very clear with ourselves why we were doing it. Our play feels like a homage to theatre itself; we show our workings and the puppeteers are part of the world. I hope it makes people feel that anyone can make theatre because it’s just play, not an elite form of art. Everything in Totoro is analogue. Anything we do, you can do. It’s about engaging with your imagination, creativity and joy.
You gave up the idea of studying medicine to become an actor. Why?
Music, drama and dance had always been part of my life, something I did on the side. I grew up in an underprivileged area where some really gorgeous organisations like the Birmingham Royal Ballet and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra Chorus did loads of outreach programmes. I’m so grateful to have grown up in that era, where all those things were present, because they are under threat now. But you cannot be what you cannot see, and I didn’t understand that the thing I loved could be a career until I met working actors from New Earth Theatre [then Yellow Earth] who looked like me. Suddenly something just clicked.
You’ve talked about a bamboo ceiling stopping British east Asian and south-east Asian actors breaking through…
The bamboo ceiling is the layer before the glass ceiling – all the barriers, financial and cultural, that prevent us from just being able to thrive. My family were concerned that I had thrown away a secure pay cheque for something that they had never seen someone who looked like us doing. There was Katie Leung in the Harry Potter films and that was it!
Was it hard to find roles?
I was put up for very stereotypical roles – a lot of strippers, sex workers and girlfriends who had no character arc at all. I was asked to play Foreigner No 2 a lot. It was very dehumanising, I felt objectified and really othered. That was distressing because I grew up in Birmingham. It felt strange that people could not see me as part of the fabric of British society. That’s one reason why there is so much hate crime towards people who look like me.
Such stereotyping is exactly what untitled f*ck m*ss s**gon play takes on. Did it feel like a way of fighting back?
When I read the script, it was as if someone poured fuel into my belly and the flame that is in it blew up. It feels like I waited for this play the way that Michelle Yeoh waited for [the multi-Oscar winning film] Everything Everywhere All at Once. What’s so clever about it is that it gave me a choice. To take something that has previously been traumatic and reclaim that for myself. The process of laughing at something that hurts is empowering, and making a choice to respond is healing.
Do you think things are getting better?
I think that they are. I remember what it was like 12 years ago, when it was a desert and the only way I could work was to make my own work. I’m very glad things are changing, but that has been due to huge amounts of community activism. There are so many shoulders that I stand on in order to be here. One of my mantras in life is to make my shoulders broad enough for others to stand on too.
What do you do when you’re not acting?
I’m quite into my sports. I like to swim. One of my very many jobs as a teenager was a junior lifeguard. I try to get into the sea as much as I can.
What are your plans for the future?
I’d like to do more screen work. One of my dreams is to work with A24, the company that made Everything Everywhere All at Once. I’ll just slip that in... then maybe it will happen!
The Royal Shakespeare Company and Joe Hisaishi present Studio Ghibli’s My Neighbour Totoro at the Barbican theatre, London, from 21 November until 23 March 2024
