Meet The Crow’s Isabella Wei, Hong Kong actress who plays Zadie and starred in 1899

Just 20 years old, Isabella Wei talks about going from dancing to acting and what drew her to her character in The Crow

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Isabella Wei attends the world premiere of The Crow at Village East by Angelika in New York on August 20, 2024. The actress talks about going from dancing to acting, auditioning for the Netflix series 1899, playing Zadie in The Crow, and why she loves telling people about Hong Kong. Photo: AFP

Mabel Lui

Published: 6:15pm, 28 Aug 2024

Over the past four years, Isabella Wei’s world has turned upside down.

In 2020, she was a high school student in Hong Kong who, by her own admission, auditioned for a role in an upcoming television series “as a joke”. Months later, she was in Berlin, Germany, spending her days filming what became 1899, the Netflix transnational mystery thriller that garnered over 160 million viewing hours in just two weeks.

Now, the 20-year-old actress is following up her first television role by making her big-screen debut in The Crow. Adapted from the comic book series of the same name by James O’Barr, the gothic superhero film directed by Rupert Sanders is a reboot of the 1994 version that starred the late Brandon Lee.

This 2024 iteration of The Crow, Wei says, “definitely takes a modern spin”, even if the premise is the same.

The Crow (2024) Official Trailer - Bill Skarsgård, FKA twigs, Danny Huston

Bill Skarsgard plays the title character Eric, whose life is upended after he meets and falls in love with Shelly (FKA Twigs). When the two are killed, Eric is given the opportunity to exact revenge on their murderers, taking on his crow identity. Wei appears as Zadie, a new character who is friends with Shelly.

For Wei, becoming an actress – one in a Hollywood film, at that – was certainly not a reality she had ever pictured.