Cassandra on Series 'Z Nation'

Pisay Pao | Biography

Actress on 'Doom Patrol'

• By Anil Pradhan
• Update : March 14, 2022

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Pisay Pao is a television and film actress. She has gained worldwide fame as Slava in the HBO Max series Doom Patrol and Cassandra in the TV series Z Nation.

Who is Pisay Pao?

Pisay Pao is an actress best known for her role as Cassandra in the Syfy TV series Z Nation. From 2014 to 2016, she holds credit for 19 episode appearances in the series.

Pao began her acting career in 2005 with the film Simply Fabulous. She portrayed the character Chantavy in the movie. Her second acting role came after four years as Inona Kim in the 2009 crime-comedy film The Whole Truth. Similarly, her other notable works are in NCIS: Los Angeles (2016 TV series), Velvet Buzzsaw (2019 film), We Take The Low Road (2019 film), Microaggressions (2019 TV mini-series), Doom Patrol (2019-2020 TV series), etc.

Age and Family Bio

Pisay Pao was born at a refugee camp in Thailand on 1 November 1984. Her parents are not available on any authentic websites, and as for her siblings, she has at least one sister. In addition, she also has a half-brother who currently resides in Auckland, New Zealand.

Although born in Thailand, her parents relocated to Seattle, Washington, when she was only two years of age. The reason for their relocating was to escape the Cambodian civil war.

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Pao developed a love for arts, especially performing, dancing, and painting. As a teenager, she excelled in her academics and later earned a scholarship at the University of Washington. However, she left her studies only after one year and moved on to pursue a career in fashion. 

Pao then joined fashion school, and after graduating, she began working as a model in commercials. Eventually, she worked her way up to become an actress with several TV series and movie credits.

'Z Nation'

Z Nation is a horror drama tv series about the zombie apocalypse. It first premiered on the American TV channel Syfy on 12 September 2014. It aired a total of 5 seasons with 68 episodes through December 2018.

Pao landed a role in the series as one of the regular cast members, Cassandra. She began appearing on it right from season 1 and continued as the main character until season 2.

In a 2015 exclusive interview with the Dead Central, she talked about her preparations for the role. She told that she was content with only the physical and emotional attributes of her characters as Cassandra had minimum lines on the show. 

She said, "I worked on Cassandra for a couple of months before we started shooting. I knew going into it that she was not going to have many lines, and I was perfectly okay with that because I loved working on the other aspects of her: her physicality, her breath, and how she reacted to her environment. There was so much there for me to explore and continue exploring even while we were shooting. At certain points it was actually hard to say the few lines that I had because I had not really practiced speaking as Cassandra at all."

However, in season 3, she only had a guest role as her character gets killed in the apocalypse.

Relationship

Pao is currently involved in a romantic relationship with the award-winning American screenwriter Paul Marchand. She has not disclosed many details about her dating life and their first meeting. However, she posts pictures of him on her Instagram handle @pisaypao regularly.

Pao's boyfriend, Paul Marchand, is a multi-disciplinary personality in the TV and film industry. He holds several credits as a screenwriter, director, producer, video editor, cinematographer, composer, and many more.

Moreover, Marchand has won several awards and has received several award nominations in different categories. He won his first award, Festive Prize, in 2004 as the writer of the short film Dementia. Later, he won the 'Golden Athena Award' and 'Special Jury Award' in 2015 and 'Audience Award' in 2016 for the same documentary film Jaco (2015).