A new generation
Chen and Liu made an unusual choice for their show’s production team: instead of building a typical team filled with industry veterans, they assembled a group that averages less than 30 years of age in hopes of showcasing the strength and youthful creativity of Taiwan’s TV and film industries to the international community.
Chen says that in the years between the 2013 premiere of The Busy Young Psychic and the 2016 launch of The Teenage Psychic, supernatural topics involving temples and psychics, subject-matter that Taiwanese find both familiar and uncanny, have become a hot new trend. But Chen believes that the innumerable film and TV depictions of ghosts, ranging from the cartoony to the anthropomorphic, have all lacked something. With that in mind, he refocused his attention on the part of his story that moved him, the idea that psychics are doing their best to live their own lives, and then spent a great deal of time rethinking his characters’ personalities and the plot. He explains that has tried to present the audience with a teenage protagonist torn between love, schoolwork, and the desire to be faithful to her religious beliefs, living in the moment amid her ever-changing circumstances.
Guo Shuyao, who plays the protagonist on the show, began working in the entertainment industry at the age of 16 to help shoulder her family’s financial burdens, and retains a surprisingly innocent air in spite of her decade in acting. Chen cast her as lead character Xie Yazhen because he felt Guo’s background and personality were similar to that of the character.
When Guo first learned that she’d been chosen to play the role, she began studying the protagonist from The Busy Young Psychic. She later realized that Chen wanted the lead in The Teenage Psychic to be her own person, neither the Xie Junya of The Busy Young Psychic nor the Sophia reported on in the news. To play the psychic, Guo had to overcome her fear of fire and learn to pick up burning paper charms with her fingers. She also had to trade her graceful, clean-cut look for boyish short hair and swagger, and learn to yawn and drool on camera.