Aussie actor Remy Hii to star Sydney Theatre Company’s The Tenant Of Wildfell Hall

He has starred in some of the biggest films of the last decade but Remy Hii fled Hollywood once the pandemic started. Now he is back in his happy place in a new role with the Sydney Theatre Company.

He has starred in Hollywood blockbusters and lived the actor’s expat life for a decade but for Remy Hii, taking the stage for the Sydney Theatre Company is coming home.

From Neighbours to Marco Polo on Netflix, Spider-Man: Far From Home and Crazy Rich Asians, the 35-year-old has had a varied career but live theatre is his happy place, so opening the contemporary adaptation of Anne Bronte’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall this week has been a dream.

“It’s been seven years since I’ve been on stage, and it’s something I’ve been trying to get back to,” he tells Insider between rehearsals.

“I started off in the theatre. I went to drama school and was very theatrically based. I always thought that’s where I was going to have my career and then ended up going down the film and TV route which kept me really busy.”

Remi Hii is starring in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall at the Sydney Theatre Company. Picture: Tim Hunter.

Busy meant starring alongside Jake Gyllenhaal and Tom Holland in Spider-Man: Far From Home, as well as in the 2018 breakout romcom, Crazy Rich Asians, both pinch-me experiences for Hii, who moved to Australia from Malaysia when he was eight.

With a role in the ABC’s upcoming comedy drama Aftertaste also under his belt, the pandemic has seen Hii settled back in Sydney for the first time in a decade.

“I was in LA when the pandemic started and was starting to see the border closures and I thought, yes, this is happening,” he says.

“There was the panic buying that Australia was having, but the big difference in America was I remember seeing the big lines outside gun shops and that was this moment where I went, ‘I need to get a flight back home’.

“You can’t shoot a virus.

Remy Hii also starred alongside Tom Holland in Spider-Man: Far From Home.

“My parents were in South-East Asia and also moved back to Sydney at the beginning of the pandemic and both my sisters have moved to Sydney too, so it’s really special to be together.”

The Tenant Of Wildfell Hall follows the mysterious arrival of Helen Graham in the town of Lindenhope.

She has a young son in tow but no husband in sight — a concept which so shocked English society in 1848 that Bronte’s sister — Jane Eyre’s Charlotte Bronte — tried to stop the book’s republication.

Hii plays Gilbert Markham, the protagonist and narrator in the novel who falls in love with Graham, played by fellow NIDA graduate Tuuli Narkle.

Remy Hii in the smash hit Crazy Rich Asians.

“With theatre, the wonderful thing is that every night, you get a chance to revisit this story so another challenge is keeping it fresh and challenging yourself every day,” he says.

Hii was in 50 episodes of Neighbours between 2013-14 and says one of the saddest parts of the show ending is that it deprives emerging actors such as he was of the perfect opportunity to cut their teeth.

“In shows like Neighbours and Home And Away, you’re never not working,” he says.

“You are constantly on and you get so few takes. There’s so little time that you have to arrive prepared.

“It’s no surprise to me that so many alumni from those kinds of shows have gone on to be extremely successful overseas because you cannot let a moment slip. You have to be disciplined. And I feel like taking that rigor over to a place like Hollywood really sets Australians apart.”

Roslyn Packer Theatre until July 16