Wang Yi-Bo 王一博
When Da Peng set out to make a film about a young dancer, he began asking dancers whom they pictured in the role. Most often they named Wang Yi-Bo. By that time, the member of the Chinese-Korean group UNIQ was widely known for The Untamed, in which he played the taciturn swordsman Lan Wangji. In those years he was also assembling teams for televised dance battles. In 2023, One and Only was released, and the role of a young man who spends every spare minute in the dance studio earned Wang Yi-Bo nominations for the Golden Rooster and the Huabiao Awards.
Wang Yi-Bo was born on August 5, 1997, in Luoyang, Henan Province. His mother was initially wary of his passion for street dance. As he told the Xinjingbao newspaper, he first saw breakdancing while lying in a hospital bed on an IV drip, watching a dance competition on TV. He was so eager to try it that he began pleading with his mother and eventually promised her he would improve his grades. By middle school he was heading off to practice every day after class. According to him, Yuehua Entertainment spotted him after a performance at a street dance competition. Trainees at the agency also studied music, and their progress was assessed every month.
In October 2014, seventeen-year-old Wang Yi-Bo performed with UNIQ for the first time on the South Korean show M Countdown. The group had five members, three from China and two from South Korea. Wang Yi-Bo was the youngest and handled dance and rap. A month later the group performed before a Chinese audience for the first time, and in the spring of 2015 they released their first mini-album, EOEO. By his own admission, performing on stage was far easier for him than giving interviews. Before answering, he would fall silent for a few seconds to collect his thoughts, and he learned to deal with journalists from his bandmates. In 2016 he began asking guests questions himself when he joined the regular hosting team of the entertainment show Day Day Up.
The agency sent the whole group to audition for MBA Partners (2016). Wang Yi-Bo auditioned for one role but got another. He played Zhao Shuyu, the first love of the heroine played by Yao Chen. In his very first scene he had to kiss her. As a child he had watched a comedy series starring Yao Chen every summer, and he was so intimidated by her that he mentally put himself in the shoes of her co-star from that series. Later Wang Yi-Bo joked that Yao Chen probably tasted the pizza he had eaten before the shoot when they kissed. That same year, in Jeff Lau's A Chinese Odyssey: Part Three, Wang Yi-Bo played Red Kid, and a year later, in Love Actually, he already landed one of the lead roles.
In the summer of 2019, two series starring Wang Yi-Bo in the lead roles came out almost simultaneously. In Gank Your Heart he played the esports player Ji Xiangkong, and a year later he received the Golden Eagle television award for this role in the category of Viewers' Favorite Actor. Far greater success came with The Untamed, an adaptation of the novel Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation. Wang Yi-Bo played the reserved and stubborn Lan Wangji, companion to the restless Wei Wuxian portrayed by Sean Xiao. After the first episodes, viewers nitpicked Lan Wangji's vacant gaze, and Wang Yi-Bo admitted in an interview that at first he himself did not really understand how to convey the character's coldness. After discussing it with the director and producer, he decided that Lan Wangji's gaze should be calmer and more confident. In the autumn, two concerts featuring the series' actors were held in Nanjing. In December, Wang Yi-Bo released the solo song "Wugan," for which he wrote the lyrics himself for the first time.
Next, Wang Yi-Bo played the far more talkative Xie Yun in The Legend of Fei (2020). In the historical detective drama Feng Qi Luo Yang (2021), he was cast as the unsociable Baili Hongyi, who understands food better than people and sets out to investigate his father's death. The series' producer recalled that he had first approached Wang Yi-Bo's agency several months before the premiere of The Untamed. The story is set in the actor's hometown, and soon after the series came out, Wang Yi-Bo was appointed Luoyang's ambassador for culture and tourism. In the police series Being A Hero (2022), set in the present day, he played an officer in the narcotics unit. Dance also remained part of his work. In 2018 he was a mentor on Produce 101 China, and from 2020 he assembled his own team and took part in dance battles across several seasons of Street Dance of China.
In 2023, Wang Yi-Bo began appearing more frequently on the big screen. The first to be released was Hidden Blade by Cheng Er, in which Wang Yi-Bo played Mr. Ye. He serves the occupation authorities in Shanghai, and for a time it is hard to tell whose side he is on. The director said that Wang Yi-Bo quickly mastered his lines in the Shanghai dialect and in Japanese. The fight with Japanese soldiers was shot in a single take, so the entire four or five minutes of the brawl had to be repeated in full. The duel with Tony Leung Chiu-Wai, according to Wang Yi-Bo, took nine days to shoot. Cheng Er spoke of nine or ten days and explained that many separate shots had to be filmed for the duel. For Hidden Blade, Wang Yi-Bo was nominated for a Golden Rooster for the first time, in the supporting role category.
In Born to Fly, he played the military pilot Lei Yu, who is to test new Chinese fighter jets. The film was originally set to be released in the autumn of 2022, but three days before the scheduled date the filmmakers postponed the premiere, explaining that they wanted to refine the picture. In June 2023, for these two works, Wang Yi-Bo received the CCTV-6 "Press Attention" program prize at the Shanghai International Film Festival in the category "Lead Actor Who Attracted the Most Press Attention." The closing film of the festival was One and Only by Da Peng. His character Chen Shuo takes on any odd job, and he joins the dance crew led by Huang Bo's character first as a substitute. For the role of Chen Shuo, Wang Yi-Bo was again nominated for a Golden Rooster, this time in the lead role category. In 2025, for the same work, he received a Huabiao nomination.
In 2024, Wang Yi-Bo found himself once again in Shanghai in the first half of the 20th century, this time in the series War of Faith (追风者). He played the young bank clerk Wei Ruolai, who is taken under the wing of an experienced financier played by Wang Yang. When Wang Yang was nominated for the Magnolia Award, some of Wang Yi-Bo's fans demanded explanations from the organizers and lashed out at his colleague. The production team stated that they had submitted applications for all the lead actors and had not informed any of them in advance. Wang Yi-Bo thanked the audience and noted the contribution of the entire crew, while Wang Yang responded that he prefers his work to speak for him. That same year, Formed Police Unit was released. It was the first feature film in which Wang Yi-Bo starred in a leading role. He was twenty-three during filming. The director, aware of his dance training, added several parkour scenes for him. In one of them, according to Wang Yi-Bo, he had to jump from a height while running and grab hold of a rope.
Seven years after The Untamed was released, Wang Yi-Bo filed a lawsuit against five companies, including one of those that produced the series. The suit concerned the right to use his image. Among the defendants were companies connected to the release of a music album and collectible cards based on the series. The start of hearings at the Zengdu District Court of Suizhou on October 8, 2026, was reported by Fengmian Xinwen. The report was reprinted by Jimu Xinwen.
Wang Yi-Bo rarely speaks about his personal life. In March 2021, a rumor spread on Chinese social media about his romance with the singer Candy Li. Yuehua Entertainment called it a fabrication, and the singer's representatives stated that she is not dating anyone.
In 2019, Wang Yi-Bo signed with the Yamaha Wanlida motorcycle racing team. In October 2020, on the final lap of a race in Zhuhai, he flew off the track when Hu Tongmin's fallen motorcycle struck him. Wang Yi-Bo was furious at his rival's maneuver. Hu explained that his motorcycle slid in the turn and said that after the race he had personally expressed his regret to Wang Yi-Bo. According to Hu, the race arbitration left the results standing. Over time, Wang Yi-Bo also began competing in car racing. In 2026, at the Shanghai round of China GT, he raced for UNO Racing in the crew of car number 85.
In 2024, together with Tencent and Discovery, he began work on the documentary series Exploring the Unknown (探索新境). The first season was filmed in the mountains, the desert and on islands. Wang Yi-Bo became passionate about rock climbing, and in the second season, released in late 2025, he set off with instructors to North America to tackle climbing routes there.
