Shuhua Yeh, a member of the K-pop group I-dle, is making her film debut in “Happily Ever After,” a Taiwanese family drama that premiered this week in the Special Presentations section of the Toronto International Film Festival. The role marks a return to a goal Yeh set for herself years before she became a pop star, and it lands as the sophomore feature from director Feng-I Fiona Roan draws attention across the film, television and music industries.
The film follows two sisters, played by Yeh and Heather Chen, whose sharply different personalities and long-buried tensions surface after a stray cat enters their household. Roan built the screenplay around sibling dynamics rather than the parent-child conflict that defined her acclaimed 2021 debut “American Girl,” which won five prizes at Taiwan’s Golden Horse Awards, including best new director. Roan told Variety that Ang Lee warned her during those Golden Horse celebrations that a second film carries its own particular difficulty, a comment she said stayed with her while shaping this project.
Yeh, who grew up in Taoyuan, Taiwan, and studied drama at an arts high school in Taipei, told The Hollywood Reporter that acting was her original ambition before she moved to Korea and trained under Cube Entertainment to become an idol. She said she gravitated toward her character, Kitty, because the role felt distant from her own personality and offered room to stretch. Roan said the decision to cast Yeh came together quickly, recalling that her natural confidence emerged after reading only two scenes.
Yeh, the middle of three sisters in her own family, said the material forced her to confront family dynamics she typically avoids discussing directly. She said she hopes the film reaches audiences beyond her existing fan base and that viewers will judge her performance on its own terms rather than through the lens of her music career.
Hong Kong-based Moebius Entertainment picked up international sales rights to the film ahead of its Toronto bow, reuniting the company with Roan and producer Clifford Miu following their work together on “American Girl,” which went on to a global streaming release through Netflix. The cast also includes Kent Tsai, Yang Kuei-mei and Jack Kao.
