Highdee Kuan has said that portraying Olive, Woody Harrelson’s eldest daughter in Apple TV+’s Brothers, became an unexpectedly personal experience for the actor.
“To just to be part of a family dynamic that is so different than my own in a way,” Kuan said in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter. “My family, for what it’s worth, I love them dearly, but it was not what Olive is experiencing in a way. That gives me perspective.”
Kuan plays Olive in the comedy, which stars Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson as fictionalised versions of themselves whose families move in together after they begin investigating whether they might actually be brothers.
The American-born German-Chinese actress said that filming scenes with Harrelson allowed her to explore father-daughter relationships from a new angle.
“A lot of scenes with Woody, they’re about father-daughter relationships, and that’s something that I, even as an adult, am trying to navigate,” she said. “I told Woody this too, I think after we wrapped, I said something like, ‘This was also in a way sort of healing for me, but in a very fun and safe way.’”
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Kuan added that the experience extended beyond her scenes with Harrelson, describing the cast and crew as having “truly did become a little dysfunctional family.”
“That’s always really, really, really nice to get,” she said.
In the show’s fourth episode, Olive takes on a sleuthing mission to help her father work out whether he and McConaughey are brothers. Kuan described it as a pivotal moment for a character who begins the series dealing with a broken engagement.
“It gets her out of her head a little and more mission-based,” Kuan said. “As a character, that’s good, but also as humans, we need to have a goal.”
She said Olive’s investigation helps her move from heartbreak towards renewed agency.
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“This is good for Olive,” Kuan said. “We’re seeing her go from heartbreak into the thought ‘Maybe I do have a purpose here. Maybe I can have agency in life again.’”
Kuan also praised Harrelson’s presence on set, saying his openness made it easier to ground the comedy in emotional truth.
“When you’re playing opposite someone like Woody, all you have to do is really just look into his face, and he’s so earnest and present,” she said. “How can you not buy into everything? He’s also so deeply funny and talented. You’re just along for the ride.”
Brothers is streaming on Apple TV+, with Kuan starring alongside Harrelson, McConaughey, Brittany Ishibashi, Holland Taylor and Oona Yaffe.
