Jani Zhao is a 26-year-old actress who has dedicated the last ten years of her life to an intense career in television, theatre and film. She was recently in Macau, en route to Shanghai, where she originally hails from. Born in Leiria in 1992, the daughter of Chinese parents from Shanghai, she is a familiar face for theatre and cinema lovers, and fans of soap operas on Portuguese television.
Over the course of her career so far, the actress has given life to the Chinese character Meng, the “hypothetical passion” of Fernão Mendes Pinto, in the movie “Peregrinação” by João Botelho which premiered in 2017, and was inspired by the travelogue of the famous Portuguese adventurer and explorer of the 16th century.
She also played the Chinese courtesan whom Luís Vaz de Camões falls in love with while writing his epic “Os Lusíadas” in the short film by Gabriel Abrantes, “Taprobana”, which was in competition at the Berlin Film Festival in 2014.
The young actress gained special visibility in TVI’s series “Jogo Duplo”, which debuted in 2017, when she played the role of villain Susana Wang, who is involved in an onscreen homosexual relationship with actress Anna Eremin, in the role of Cátia Sobral.
Recently, Zhao played the role of Alice, a Judicial Police inspector, in “Sul”, the Portuguese series by Edgar Medina and Guilherme Mendonça, and directed by Macau-based Portuguese director Ivo M. Ferreira.
Zhao, who made her television debut at age 14, was still a child when she first went to Shanghai, returning to Portugal at the age of six. She attended Escola Profissional de Teatro de Cascais, where she was trained by Carlos Avillez. Before that, she was a student of Salesianos do Estoril, a Catholic private school, which her Buddhist parents saw as a way to ensure their children were integrated into Portuguese society.
Do you have any planned projects that involve Macau?
Jani Zhao: In principle yes, I am looking, but there is no plan. There is availability, interest and desire, above all to go back to my roots and see what it means for me. It is a journey that has been spiritual, to return to the place where my family is from, and from where I am, not specifically Macau, but China.
In Macau, there is an interesting curiosity here: my brother and I were born in Portugal, because of Macau. My aunt was in Macau where she met a Portuguese man. That’s why I went to Portugal on holidays and my aunt told my parents to go there after the Mao Tse Tung regime. So being in Macau means all that, looking around and feeling at home, and at the same time, not being at home. Feeling like I know it, but don’t know it, feels very strange, but it has been wonderful.
Do you have ambitions to enter the world of Chinese cinema?
I think so, now it’s getting closer and closer.
It’s difficult, it’s a very big and competitive industry. Do you have a strategy?
I have an international manager, who asks me the same question. This idea is ever closer. In Portugal, I worked 10 years without stopping and I was putting off dreams, projects and ideas, because I was in Portugal and I felt I had to be there. Just as well, because those 10 years were a journey to get to where I am, but at the time my parents, realizing that this was what I was going to do, began to ask if I had an interest in going to China. They wanted us to go back, me and my brother. He has been living in Shanghai for six years, now I’m missing. I used to think of it as a very distant and abstract idea. Nowadays, as I am here, I am no longer on the other side of the world; I am no longer focused on being there and building something there, now I think I am more open.
Was it the will to change that made you accept the role in TVI’s “Jogo Duplo”, where you get involved with another woman?
In Portugal and everywhere, I realized the importance that this role had, has and will have. (…) I realized the impact and it was extraordinary, something that surpasses me and has nothing to do with my work anymore. It has to do with, through my work, getting to other people, changing their lives, helping and giving something to others.
Will this attitude influence your choices in future roles?
I think it will. Mediocrity frightens me, and in my life, I have realized that I do not want to be mediocre. It has nothing to do with others, it has to do with me. If something has changed … “Jogo Duplo” and the series “Sul” by Ivo M. Ferreira and Edgar Medina. Yes, it has changed. They were two very important projects, one after another, because I only had a week’s rest, between playing a ‘femme fatale’, ‘bad girl’, mafiosa, to the very peculiar universe of a police inspector – the other side. But it went very well, and after these projects I felt that Portugal, at present, has nothing left to give me. I will always go back. But for now I have decided to come to this side of the world, to be in Shanghai with my family, and here in Macau.
Have you ever felt, as a child of Chinese parents, any stigma or ostracization?
Yeah, but it’s okay. Fortunately it is a subject that is very much in focus, equality between women and men, gender issues, thank goodness because it makes people think, talk and share ideas. I did not have a difficult life, I’m not a victim, what I experienced has been experienced by many. The point is that, for me, difference is what draws us together, it is what is interesting in us. If we were all the same, how monotonous and boring.
What would you like to achieve in the future?
That’s a question … I hate plans, I’ve never liked them. I will always want to go back to Portugal, even just for the food. I feel that I have a mission, a purpose, to be part of the change, to work with people who allow me to do that, to stimulate it in myself and in others. I have a restoration project, a very special thing, in Lisbon, because it is my place and I want to continue being there. What I don’t want is to just pass time. I do not want to continue in the same pace, I want to change that.
