Lucy Liu

And that's very different from Chinese, from Mandarin Chinese at least.

It's not a staccato and there's a gentleness to it that I just find so graceful.

And the costume, you know, we had somebody that came in from Japan specifically for my costume to create my costume for Ren.

And they also flew somebody in because we were shooting in China, actually, from Japan.

Who only was my costumer, who every time that I would finish a scene, she would come and rearrange and fix and redo my entire costume.

Because the thing about the kimono and the beauty of it is like it's covered, but the kind of the central part of the kimono is the wrist and the back of the neck.

Okay.

So those were things that had to be very, very precise.

And so she would kind of arrange it, undo the whole belt and redo it.

And that's why when I was working with Samurai Sword, when she kind of pulls up her sleeve.

You see part of her skin.

And that's very revealing.

And that's very intimate.

What a subtle storytelling device.

Isn't it?

Yes.

What other things do you really remember about embodying O-Rin that really stick with you?

Oh, just...

I guess where she came from, because she really had a backstory.

There was the anime that created this real feeling of survival for her and understanding that she was never going to die of old age.