Callina Liang Finds Herself

It wasn’t difficult for the 24-year-old actor Callina Liang to connect to her character, teenager Chloe Payne, in the new film Presence. Directed by Steven Soderbergh, the thriller is a psychological drama that centers around the troubled teenager as she processes the tragic loss of a close friend amidst a dysfunctional home life, all while closely watched by a lingering supernatural presence. “I remember feeling this overwhelming love for this girl my first time reading the script. We’ve all been that age where we’re expected to know the answers, but we don’t, but we have to navigate society in a way that seems like we do,” says Liang. “And on top of that, she was going through so much trauma and not having the love and the support from her family. I related it to her a lot, and I think a lot of other girls can relate to it, too.”

Filmed in just eleven days, Presence is unique in that it’s shot entirely from the ghost’s perspective. Soderbergh doubles as the cinematographer, and it feels like he dances with the characters as the camera moves about the rooms, capturing moody moments of the crumbling familial dynamics. No one in Presence seems to be able to connect to Chloe’s emotional distress—her Mother (Lucy Liu) is distant and unsympathetic, her jock brother (Eddy Maday) even more so, and her father (Chris Sullivan), although well-intentioned, struggles to always be there for her while going through his own troubles. Instead of confronting Chloe’s grief, the family decides to deal with it by moving into a new house in a new town in an attempt to move on.

For Liang, this was another familiar connection—born in Vancouver and raised in Beijing, Sydney, and Singapore, she never stayed in the same place longer than two-and-a-half years. “Chloe had to rebuild that life for herself. That was something that I had to do so many times over and over. So I brought that into the character,” she says. “There was also the feeling of...I wouldn’t say isolation in the family, but I grew up with a really small family. I have no siblings; it’s just me and my dad. In the script, it’s just Chloe and her dad because her mom and her don’t get on and her brother is just a little bit awful. I can relate to that part as well.”

Moving around so much led to Liang’s serendipitous discovery of her love of acting. At age twelve, she had recently relocated to Sydney, where her father enrolled her in an English-speaking school despite her barely knowing the language. “He just hard transitioned me from a Chinese-speaking school into an English one. I was just so confused and I couldn’t communicate with anyone,” recalls Liang. “The school I went to had drama as one of the subjects you had to take. I remember doing improv for the first time. English was still hard for me and it felt like a safe space while doing the improv exercises. I was finally able to let go of the language barrier for once. I just remember having so much fun. I didn’t think too much of it then, but it soon became my safe haven. That’s where I went to escape and feel free. For the first time, language wasn’t a barrier anymore.”

By the time she was seventeen, Liang had dropped out of high school to attend the prestigious LASALLE College of the Arts in Singapore. There, she earned a diploma in performance while attending summer courses in New York. “One summer intensive I did at Stella Adler shaped me as an actor the most out of all the programs I’ve done,” reflects Liang. “I remember Patrick, the Adler technique teacher at the time. He taught his class in such a specific way and it really resonated with me. He broke through a wall for me in that creative process because he focused on finding the truth of being an actor. That started with being truthful with yourself. He stripped away all the layers, and in every single class unless he thought you were telling the ultimate truth, he would just keep pushing you and pushing you. That shaped me forever.”

Liang found working with Soderbergh to be another learning opportunity—having just come off her first film, Bad Genius, she was struck by his distinct directing style. “Steven doesn’t say much at all when he works. If he’s happy, he just says, ‘Okay, let’s move on,’” she explains, recounting how this initially left her overthinking and unsure about whether or not he was satisfied with her performance. Luckily, thanks to rigorous rehearsals, Liang was close with the rest of the cast and leaned on their support. “I think a couple of days later, I asked Lucy and Chris, ‘Hey, have you guys been getting notes?’ and they were like, ‘No, have you?’” she says, laughing. “I was like, ‘Okay, if Lucy Liu and Chris Sullivan are both not getting notes, I think I’m good.’”

In reflecting on the film, Liang hopes audiences understand several key lessons from Chloe’s journey. “I hope people take away what support could mean and how much support could change the trajectory of someone’s life. Also, the movie is like a cautionary tale. There are dangerous people in the world and people who don’t mean well, so look out for those around you who are emotionally vulnerable because you just never know,” she says. “Chloe goes on such a hard journey, but she finds her own strength. I think, if anything, I also want people and girls who are at that age, who are confused, or who are going through any sort of trauma, [to] know that it will be okay. Seeing her find her strength is really empowering.”

As for herself, Liang continues to be shaped by her experiences on the set of Presence. “I’ve learned to trust my instincts and to never doubt myself,” she says. “And I’ll carry that lesson with me for the rest of my career thanks to Steven.”

Presence is now playing in theaters.