Lucy Liu

I think it's, as a child, when you are the one to advocate for your parents and to translate for your parents, when you become more fluid with the language, even though you don't have the experience to understand exactly what you're translating, it really changes the dynamic of yourself and your parents.

So you become the parent's

in that situation, even though they're the ones who have the authority.

So there's a very strange dynamic that occurs.

And I think that a lot of people that are children of immigrants have experienced that too.

And that's something that I wanted to imbue in Irene, that she was still very childlike when she was outside of her home and outside of her community.

You use this word vulnerability when you talk about

the language in particular.

And so I can't help but think about five-year-old Lucy stepping into the classroom for the first time.

You only speak Mandarin, and so everyone around you is speaking English.

Do you remember when

Those pieces of yourself you had to let go when English then became a day-to-day practice for you.

And maybe what that was like.

I mean, that's such a moment of having to grow up at such a young age.

It's funny because I've forgotten a lot of my childhood.

And I think it's probably because it was a lot of trauma of, you know, not feeling like you belonged or...

you know, wanting to seem like everything was perfectly normal and not looking like everybody else.

I think that was also, I guess, difficult, you know, because on television there was, you know, I Dream of Jeannie and The Brady Bunch and all those shows that really indicated, you know, what

Life was like outside of your own home.

And I guess not having that in trying to aspire to something that you could never be or look like is a very strange, I guess, amalgamation of conflict, you know, as a child not understanding, like, why don't I see myself on television?