No divine aspirations for Joanne Tseng who romances a god in new apocalyptic fantasy drama

The idea of an almighty and handsome god falling in love with a mortal woman and fighting heaven and hell to be with her is romanticism played up many times on screen. Think Marvel's Thor, the American TV series Lucifer, K-drama Goblin, and now, iQiyi's new apocalyptic fantasy drama Rainless Love in a Godless Land.

It might make for great entertainment, but in real life, it would be "troublesome and impractical", Taiwanese actor Paul Fu, 34, admitted to AsiaOne during a recent Zoom interview to promote the series, where he plays the God of Rain.

His co-star, 32-year-old actress Joanne Tseng, elaborated: "Such a relationship would definitely be romantic because of the great differences between god and human, and there's room for your imagination to go wild. But as I was portraying my character, I also felt a sense of guilt.

"Your love can be very grand, bittersweet and sacrificial, but the world doesn't revolve around you. Your actions will affect others. When you get too consumed in your love, a lot of people will get caught in the repercussions."

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Rainless Love in a Godless Land is based on the myths of the Amis, an indigenous ethnic group in Taiwan. In the series, supernatural entities called Kawas decide not to bless Earth after the humans' destruction of the environment and intend to leave Earth after the last rain.

'Orad (the God of Rain played by Paul) has guarded and protected a human Xie Tiandi (Joanne) for years, and he tries to save her before judgment day. But Fali, the God of Wind (Joseph Cheng) that decides social order, and the Goddess of Cloud Toem (Alice Ko), become obstacles to their romance.

As 'Orad appears only during downpours, a lot of the scenes involving him and Tiandi were shot in the 'rain' and Joanne joked she had a few "pitiful" experiences during filming.

"We had a very important scene in the rain that was also very difficult to film and it was shot on the street outside iQiyi's office… Alice and I bundled ourselves with shrink wrap in the toilet to keep ourselves warm," she said.

"In the scene, 'Orad tries to save Tiandi after a traffic accident, so my head was covered with fake blood on the first two days of the shoot, and I remember washing my head with warm water at the toilet wash basin."

Joanne, Paul and Joseph said they couldn't reveal much about the series to prevent spoilers, so continuing on the fantastical theme of the drama, we asked them what gods they would want to be and what they would do first.

Joseph, 39, said he would be the thunder god.

"Because all I need to do is throw out a few claps of thunder when it rains and my work is done. And the three things I'd do first is eat, sleep, and create thunder."

Paul, on the other hand, seems to be cut out for grassroots work. He replied solemnly: "I think I'll be the Tu Di Gong (the God of Earth) and bless families with safety and peace. I'll look around to check on the families in my area and see what assistance they need."

Joanne prefers to remain mortal and keep her fingers out of other people's affairs.

"I might appear like a bubbly and easy-going person but I'm actually very serious. Everyone and everything has its destined path so I don't want to be a god and I don't want to interfere with things."

Rainless Love in a Godless Land is now available on iQ.com and the iQiyi international app.

kwokkarpeng@asiaone.com