Trivia / Curse of the Golden Flower

• Awesome, Dear Boy: Gong Li took the role because she liked the idea of playing someone with an incurable sickness.
• Cast the Expert: About twenty soldiers from the People's Liberation Army were cast to play soldiers in the film.
• The Cast Show Off: Jay Chou contributed two songs to the film's soundtrack.
• The Danza: Almost. Jay Chou plays Prince Jai.
• Deleted Scene: Zhang Yimou regretted having to cut a sequence showing the Emperor and Empress getting dressed, which showed what they wore underneath all the finery. But ultimately it served no purpose and was cut for pacing reasons.
• Enforced Method Acting: To properly convey the Empress's sickness, Gong Li would have the set quietened before filming a scene where she'd need to be especially feeling, and walk around in laps to get her blood pressure up.
• Fake Nationality: Taiwanese actor/pop star Jay Chou plays Chinese prince Jai.
• Production Posse: This marked the sixth collaboration between Zhang Yimou and Gong Li - and their first in over a decade.
• Stunt Casting: Pop star Jay Chou was cast mainly because of his name recognition, but Zhang Yimou did maintain his performance was right for the role.
• Typecasting: Gong Li drew lots of parallels between the Empress and her character Hatsumomo in Memoirs of a Geisha.
  "...both women who know what they want, but they’re in social situations that prevent them from directly expressing it. So they have to find indirect ways to struggle for what they want."
• Ni Dahong (Imperial Physician Jiang) would later be cast as Sima Yi in the 2010 version of Three Kingdoms.

---