How ‘Ticket to Heaven’ Creator P’Aof Made a BL Drama That Tackles Religion With a Happy Ending
Well, don’t ask a follow-up question about who I was in that scene, [Laughs] because in some scenes, in some way, I identify as both characters, Barth and Tanrak, so I can’t really tell you who I was in that scene.
TV: So who are you in that scene then?
P’Aof: [Laughs, thinks about it] Uh, I’m Barth in the scene.
TV: Ultimately, Ticket to Heaven asks the question: Do you choose God or do you choose the life and the person that makes you happy? Tell me about the way in which the show answers that question.
P’Aof: The main goal for us was that you don’t need to choose between faith in God and your life, but we’re putting the big question out there of how to live with both of these in our lives, which is the key message to our story. You might have seen at the end of the final episode the character Na Lek, who is an LGBTQ+ character, who says that we can love God and love ourselves at the same time. We thought that was the most important factor and proof of this show.
TV: Yes, Auntie Lek delivers a crucial message in the final episode. Why was it so necessary to include a trans woman who remains deeply connected to her faith?
P’Aof: This is a character who has had a very special place in the series since the beginning, when we started to write our script for the series. We wanted this character to represent that you could still have faith, no matter how you gender-identify yourself. Our first goal was to find someone who was either gay or transgender to represent this character, and upon our research, we found so many individuals who still have faith in God and are true to themselves. I feel like that was one of our best choices to include this character in the show.
A fun fact is that this character, Na Lek, was one of the most recast characters in the show—I think around six times. So you can see that’s why this character was so special and we took time deciding on who would play it. We [had originally] cast famous people in the community or even newbies in the entertainment industry, but we ended up casting who you see as Na Lek today.
TV: Tanrak’s loss of his parents is a perfect motivation for him to keep his faith because his parents are unchanged, unshakeable, and frozen in his memory. What discussions did you have at the storyline stage about how this loss would drive him?
P’Aof: To be honest, we wanted a character who represents someone who believes wholeheartedly that God exists. So we wanted this character to grow up living in God and be filled with the faith he believes in. Then, we let this character lose both his parents to allow him to step into a scholarship at a church school. This has shaped the character and prepared him to believe and have faith in God since childhood, and after losing his parents, he still has the mindset that if he believes in God, he could meet them again.
