Profile | Uglies’ Brianne Tju on not fitting the ‘American ideal’ and feeling like an outsider
US actress Brianne Tju reflects on identifying with her Uglies character and struggling with an eating disorder ‘in silence and in shame’
When Brianne Tju read Uglies as a child, she did not imagine that one day she would play her favourite character in a screen adaptation of Scott Westerfeld’s 2005 novel. Almost two decades on, the actress finds her new Netflix project resonates with her in more ways than one.
Set in a dystopian future where teenagers undergo mandatory operations to make them “pretty”, Uglies follows Tally, an “ugly” who defies an image-obsessed society’s immense pressure to conform under a government that is hiding sinister motives.
Tju plays the adventurous Shay, a fellow “ugly” who befriends Tally (played by Joey King) and inspires her to question authority and rebel against having the operation. In the process, Shay teaches her new skills and leads her to uncover the grotesque truths involved in becoming a “pretty”.
“As a kid, you have a tendency to picture yourself as the lead character; but I never saw myself as Tally. I always felt closer to Shay,” the 28-year-old recalls.
Perhaps she saw more of herself in Shay because of her upbringing. Born in southern California to ethnically Chinese parents from Indonesia, Tju is the second of five children and the eldest of four daughters.
