NEW YORK (AP) – Up-and-coming actors sometimes claim to know various skills to be considered for roles, but Olivia Liang set a boundary early in her career. “When I started in the industry, people would ask me why martial arts weren’t on my resume because it was such a typecast for Asians to do martial arts roles,” said Liang. “So I made a promise to myself. I was like, ‘I’ll never learn martial arts until someone pays me to learn martial arts.’” Liang kept that promise. She learned martial arts as the lead of The CW’s new series, “ Kung Fu ” – and she’s getting paid for it.
“Kung Fu” is inspired by the 1972 series starring David Carradine. It stars Liang as Nicky Shen, who, while visiting China, joins a monastery where she is taught Shaolin values and martial arts. When her mentor is killed, she returns home to find her community disrupted by a local gang. She must use the martial arts skills she learned to protect her neighborhood and family and soon discovers she’s being targeted by the same assassin who killed her Shaolin mentor.
Liang says what makes “Kung Fu” different from the superhero shows The CW is known for is that Nicky is not a vigilante. “Nicky is heroic, but she doesn’t see herself as a hero. She has no hero complex where she goes out to find bad guys. She sees bad things happening and feels she must do something about it.”
The series has a primarily Asian American cast with an Asian American showrunner and executive producer, Christina M. Kim. “I’m so excited to give some people this opportunity to shine,” said Kim.
“When I was on set for the first time, we did a camera test, and I was staring at the monitor, and it just hit me. I was like, ‘I’ve never seen the screen filled with Asian American faces like this is.’”
Kim says her writer’s room is also diverse. She has five writers of Asian descent on staff. Half of the writers are also women, which Kim says is a novelty. “Usually, it’s just me and one other woman in a room.”
says it’s remarkable to have so many Asian backgrounds working on the show because he doesn’t have to explain the Asian experience to people making creative assumptions about what that’s like.
“Not only is there representation on screen, but we back it up from our writer’s room to all our guest directors. It is an amazing sight to behold. I’ve been doing this for a minute now, and I have never seen this kind of make-up,” said Ma. Ma hopes the authenticity of the series will help change the public consciousness when hate crimes against Asian Americans are on the rise.
