Good Omens S2E5: Who Plays Ms. Cheng & Why Is She Familiar To Doctor Who Fans?
Contains spoilers for "Good Omens" Season 2, Episode 5 — "The Ball"
Aside from being a divine comedy about the divine, Amazon Prime's "Good Omens" excels at Easter eggs and metacommentary. This shouldn't come as a surprise given that the series' showrunner, Neil Gaiman, co-wrote the production's source material with the late Terry Pratchett. Furthermore, Gaiman is a Tumblr man, which means that he's deep in the trenches when it comes to understanding what makes viewers and readers tick.
With that in mind, there's a bit of casting in Season 2 of "Good Omens" that could very well be a reference to "Doctor Who." If that is indeed the case, then it wouldn't be the only Easter egg for Whovians — "Good Omens" is practically littered with nods to Time Lords and Gallifrey because, aside from Gaiman himself having written for "Doctor Who," both shows star David Tennant.
In Season 2, Episode 5, Aziraphale (Michael Sheen) lobbies for every shop owner on Whickber Street — a fictional version of the well-known Soho locale Berwick Street — to attend a party thinly veiled as a street traders' meeting where he plans to play matchmaker for Nina (Nina Sosanya) and Maggie (Maggie Service). One of these shop owners is Ms. Cheng (Crystal Yu).
Loyal Whovians will recognize Yu as Madame Ching, a 19th-century pirate captain who appears in Season 13, Episode 8, "Legend of the Sea Devils." Then again, there's no actual evidence that suggests Yu's casting is an intentional reference to "Doctor Who," and it's toeing a dangerous line to assume that the phonetic similarity between the two character names means anything. It's just as likely that Yu was cast because she's a solid talent in the pool that Gaiman and his cohorts chose from.
Crystal Yu boasts a brief but stacked résumé
Crystal Yu is a Chinese English actor whose credits cover shorts, video games, television, and the big screen. Her most well-known project outside of "Doctor Who" is the long-running BBC One medical drama "Casualty," on which she played Lily Chao for five seasons. She also appears in Netflix's 2019 original film "A Christmas Prince: The Royal Baby."
Although "Legend of the Sea Devils" received notably mixed to negative reviews, writer and executive producer Chris Chibnall stated in an official Q&A shared on the BBC Media Centre that Yu's performance "just absolutely shone out," and by all accounts, her time with "Doctor Who" is still fresh since the episode in question is the 2022 Easter Special.
But maybe that's the only real connection between her presence on "Doctor Who" and her presence on "Good Omens." Maybe she's just the kind of talent artistic teams want to work with. "Good Omens" is now streaming on Amazon Prime.