Australian Charlotte Nicdao expands her horizons on under-appreciated comedy Mythic Quest

In the streaming age, it’s rare for a series to enter its fourth season when so many of its compatriots don’t make it past the second chapter.

It’s more impressive still when your show is called Mythic Quest, which is not some generic fantasy series as the name implies, but a raucous workplace comedy and one of the hidden gems of streaming.

Australian actor Charlotte Nicdao has been one of the leads of Mythic Quest since the start, playing the pocket rocket genius programmer Poppy Li, entangled in a co-dependent, platonic relationship with Ian Grimm (Rob McElhenney), the super-rich founder of the gaming company at which they both work.

Over four seasons, Nicdao has proven her chops in front of the camera. Poppy can be erratic, egomaniacal, spiky, vulnerable and very, very funny. She’s not always an easy character to like but she is one you always root for.

Her dysfunction is relatable, and that has a lot to do with how Nicdao plays her – and also because she’s spreading Australianisms such as “sex pest” into Americans’ vocabulary.

But now, Nicdao, who is known in Australia for her comedic work on Get Krack!n, Please Like Me and ABC web series Content, has stepped into another role on Mythic Quest, that of director, taking charge on the fourth season episode, “1000%”.

“I had some interest in directing for quite a while,” she told The Nightly. “I love the art form of my industry. I love film and television. I didn’t think that sort of thing, coming up at the very beginning of my career in Australia, that this kind of opportunity would arise to me, and I really have so much gratitude to the producers of the show for entrusting me with the responsibility.”

Mythic Quest has form when it comes to cross-pollinating its actors into other aspects of its production. According to Nicdao, from day one, McElhenney, who co-created the series, said to the cast, “How do you want to be involved?”.

Nicdao added, “He and (one of the) other creators, Megan Ganz, really have this attitude that the more that we are involved in creating this show, the more precious it is to us and the better it will be.

“For me, I know the world of the show, I know the characters so well, I understand so deeply what it is that we’re trying to achieve with it.”

Cast members David Hornsby and Ashly Burch have been in the writers’ room since the first season and have also previously directed episodes while co-stars Danny Pudi (Community) and Imani Hakim have also jumped into the director’s chair.

That behind-the-scenes context only enhances the onscreen camaraderie of this wacky workplace.

Nicdao’s directorial debut on Mythic Quest coincides with another project. Earlier this month, she premiered her short, Asian Male, 60s, Lead, at Flickerfest, one of the most prominent short film festivals in Australia.

She wrote and directed the short in 2023 in her hometown of Melbourne, and it’s something of a tribute to her father, Alfred Nicdao, who stars in it.

“He’s one of the first Asian actors on Australian TV and we made this during the actors and writers strike because we were talking about this idea of what the life of an actor really looked like,” she recalled.

“Not the big, glamorous lives but the job, the trade of being an actor, which is really what my dad has always done. So we wrote this film and we really made it on a zero budget and it was such an incredible experience to do as a director, to get to figure out how to tell that story.”

The production for Asian Male, 60s, Lead was scrappy and required a lot of flexibility and problem solving. They shot it in two days and only had one camera and limited equipment. They had 45 minutes to nail a scene.

The experience of directing the short came first, so when Nicdao put on the director’s hat on Mythic Quest, was a vastly different world.

“You have the budget to stretch a little bit more and to say, ‘Let’s play around, let’s try some improv, what if we try this experiment a little bit more?’. Yes, it’s a little bit daunting when you’re working with a bigger budget but it affords you a little more creativity in some ways.”

Then, for the rest of the season, Nicdao is able to shepherd Poppy through one of the show’s most interesting character arcs.

One of best things about Mythic Quest is that it allows its characters to grow in different ways, just as it would happen in the real world. Too often, especially in sitcoms, it feels as if characters are preserved in aspic, afraid that any change might upset the audience or the existing chemistry.

By season four, Poppy is not who she was at the start of the series. The relationship between her and Ian will shift as she starts to assert her independence from him, which opens up more dramatic and comedic possibilities for the show.

“There’s always a little bit of shifting power but right up to this point, Poppy does always seem like she’s on the back foot, she’s always the one vying for Ian’s attention and his validation,” Nicdao explained.

“So, it’s interesting that we come into season four, and she’s kind of decided that she can’t live like that anymore. She doesn’t want it to be what it’s always been. She’s creating a life for herself outside of Mythic Quest and, at the heart of it, she hopes that Ian will do the same.

“She’s like, ‘This is how we have a healthy relationship, we have to have boundaries, you do your thing, I’ll do mine, and then we can come together and have this incredible creative partnership’ and he’s just not able to meet her there, which is the heartbreaking thing about the season.”

Mythic Quest season four is on Apple TV+, with new episodes weekly