How Matthew Ho Prepared for His Role in “Narcotic Heroes”

One of TVB’s more thrilling dramas released this year, Narcotic Heroes <破毒強人> stars Moses Chan (陳豪), Nancy Wu (胡定欣), Edwin Siu (蕭正楠), Kelly Cheung (張曦雯), and Matthew Ho (何廣沛). Portraying his role as a mute deliveryman, Matthew’s earnest performance and emotional voiceover win rave reviews.

Trapped in poverty, Matthew’s character hopes to give his younger sister and better life and is tempted by the fast cash dealing drugs offers. However, he later becomes entangled with the underworld and crosses paths with drug lord Man Wa (Moses Chan) and successful career woman Cheung Lam (Nancy Wu).

With Matthew’s detailed performance, buzz is drumming up the actor may win an award this year. Thanking producer Marco Law (羅永賢) for his support, Matthew said, “I really want to thank Marco for being there every time I recorded my voiceover. Even if you can hear that it is my voice, it is very different from the usual Matthew which I feel is a good match for the character.”

Marco had told Matthew about the role half a year ahead of filming, giving the actor ample time to prepare. Matthew learned how to ride a motorcycle and took sign language  lessons twice per week.

Despite his advance preparation, Matthew still found filming Narcotics Heroes to be a big challenge as he had to make sure his facial expressions matched up with his signing gestures.  “Sometimes, I got caught up thinking about the dialogue and made mistakes in signing. So I really needed to memorize everything very well. My brain was always on the verge of shutting down!”

Matthew is very thankful for his sign language teacher constantly being on standby during filming, so Matthew could call him if there were any changes to the dialogue.