Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
From WHYY in Philadelphia, this is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Tanya Mosley. Today, Lucy Liu joins us to talk about her new film, Rosemead, where she stars as a terminally ill woman grappling with her teenage son's escalating mental health crisis and the impossible choices she faces to protect him. It's based on a true story.
And Zadie Smith joins us to talk about her new collection of essays, Dead and Alive. The essays, like much of her fiction, reflect on issues that directly affect her life, like aging, she just turned 50, race, she's biracial, class, her mother grew up poor in Jamaica, and her father grew up poor in England, and generation gaps.
Chapter 2: What is the story behind Lucy Liu's film 'Rosemead'?
Plus, film critic Justin Chang shares his list of the best films of the year. That's coming up on Fresh Air Weekend. This is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Tanya Mosley. For nearly three decades, Lucy Liu has been one of the most recognizable faces in film and television.
From her breakout on Ally McBeal to the stylized violence in Kill Bill and her reinvention of Dr. Watson on Elementary, Liu has expanded representation of Asian American women on screen. She also directs and creates visual art, exhibiting her mixed-media work internationally.
Her latest project is a film she spent years shepherding, and as the lead, she takes on one of the most emotionally layered roles of her career. It tells the story of Irene, a terminally ill Chinese immigrant living in California's San Gabriel Valley, who discovers that her teenage son, who has schizophrenia, has become fixated on school shootings.
In a community where mental illness is rarely discussed openly, Irene confronts this fear largely on her own. And as her own time runs out, she becomes haunted by a question she can't escape. What if her son becomes violent? The film is called Rosemead, and it's inspired by true events. Lou signed on as both producer and star, and it's her first dramatic leading role in a feature film.
And Lucy Liu, welcome to Fresh Air. What a thrill to be here. I'm so happy to have you.
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Chapter 3: What themes does Zadie Smith explore in her essay collection 'Dead and Alive'?
And I'll tell you, I was so moved by this movie. I read that you were kind of terrified when you first read this, the script for this. And I can understand why as we talk more about it. But what was it about that script that made you say, I can't really look away from this. I have to take this on.
I think that this story is so devastating, and I also realize that there's nothing like this in our lexicon.
Chapter 4: How does Zadie Smith reflect on aging and generational discourse?
We don't have a story about a family, an immigrant family, struggling with cancer or even mental health. And I wanted to highlight the love in this family. I think sometimes the title of the article or things like that is very clickbait and not a way to humanize this woman and her son and to really talk about what happened behind closed doors. And I know that.
For myself, there's a lot of cultural stigma and there's a lot of fear about being seen in a true light, thinking that it would be judged or I guess you'll be shunned from the community. And I think that there's something about exposing that in a positive way that might help spark conversation for not just the AANHPI community, but for so many other cultures. Yeah.
You mentioned an article because I said in the introduction that this is based on a true story. And the articles you're referring to are the articles after a crime happens. And this mother makes this decision that... really is such a hard one without giving it away.
How did you find a way to humanize her after reading about the choices that she made in the end as she faces terminal cancer and she also sees that her son is very disturbed?
I think understanding that she had a fragmentation in the language. I think when she was home and she was speaking Mandarin fluently with her Son, you can see that there was nuance and poetry and love and in humor. And when she was outside in the world, there's a vulnerability that she has.
And I think that was a really important part of understanding how she was in many ways marginalized and also that she did not have an advocate. I think the one thing that we see is when we start the movie, you know, you see the love between these two, a parent and a child. But also we have to recognize that she's coming from a place of grief and of loss.
Because she lost her husband several years before. That's correct. I want to slow down a little bit because when you talk about language, there are two languages here we're talking about. We're talking about the literal language. She's an immigrant and She speaks Mandarin Chinese, and she's here in the United States as an immigrant. So there's that cultural thing as well.
There's that cultural language in addition to the literal language that she's isolated.
She's very much isolated, but she also sequesters herself as well. And I think that is because there's a lot of judgment within the community, and I think that they are not – as open oftentimes to mental health services, like therapists. And I mean, the extreme of that is Western medicine, taking SSRIs or whatever it is. Is there a suspicion?
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Chapter 5: How does Lucy Liu portray the struggles of immigrant families in her film?
Um,
We hear your accent there. You are speaking Mandarin, Chinese. You spoke Mandarin until you were five years old, but you had a coach work with you in this film. Can you tell me a little bit about that experience as you were trying to really master the language and the importance for you to really get there? that tonal quality and the exactness of it.
Yes, when I was living at home, we only spoke Chinese. So when I went to public school, I was under the age of five and really got dropped into the immersion of public school and just trying to understand what was going on. And it was also very insular in our home.
Chapter 6: What are the challenges faced by the character Irene in 'Rosemead'?
So we never really... Did anything except for maybe hang out in the alleyway in Queens and played or was just at home really at that age. So understanding the struggle of, I guess, the fragmentation of... not fully understanding.
I mean, I went to school, I continued to go to school, but I really didn't have a grasp of, I guess, the bigger picture of what was happening and how everything was happening. And so when this project came up, it was really vital to make this authenticity sing. And I worked with this wonderful coach, Doug Onoroff, who's just
just a master at all different kinds of languages and he really understood the nuance and we went into the dialogue and we dissected the language and made sure that it was conversational when it was in Chinese and also made the English I don't want to say stilted, but very clear. Because I think when somebody speaks a different language, it's much more direct.
There's not this nuance, let's say, of us going back and forth. It's more direct. So when it's more direct, I think there's a vulnerability that shows. And that was something that I thought was very important to bring that humanity to Irene. To show that she was not able to really...
express herself fully when she was outside the home and also to I guess receive information from the therapist or from her own doctor when she was outside the home and I think that feeling of those gaps were really important to show how porous she was and how vulnerable she was.
What was it like speaking Mandarin for the first time in a movie, that extra component there after not speaking it for so long? There's such a tenderness that you feel.
I felt such a great depth of tenderness, and it just reminded me so much of, you know, the community and just the beautiful poetry of Mandarin and how some words just cannot be expressed in English.
Were there people that you patterned or you thought about as you were embodying Irene? Because you do transform in this film. And I feel like I'm getting a sense of a person. I mean, you don't seem like Lucy Liu. Like I'm watching Irene now. And Irene is an immigrant that is here and is experiencing all of these things. Your parents.
Absolutely. I think that for me, I really had grown up in that environment of seeing my aunties or my mother or my parents and just living in that world of going to Chinatown, going to Flushing, you know, the very...
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Chapter 7: What insights does Zadie Smith provide about being raised by television?
Yeah.
Well, it was something that was your desire, but there were also people who saw it in you. Is it true that someone saw you, like a scouting agent or someone saw you, discovered you on a subway?
There was a manager on a subway that gave me his card, and I was, of course, very suspicious because we've lived this very insular life, you know, and who's this person giving me this card? And how old were you about? I was a teenager because I was going to high school at that point and taking the subway by myself. So I was definitely in high school at that point, and...
I remember, I mean, we only had yellow pages back then. So I called the Better Business Bureau to find out if this person was real. And it turned out he was real. What did he say to you when he saw you? He just said, you have an interesting look. And I feel like you might, you know, be very successful doing commercials or something. Give me a call. I mean, I'm pretty sure that's what he said.
And then I did call him. He did send me out on some interesting auditions, and they were real. I ended up getting a commercial for school supplies back in the day. But there were also kind of some sketchy auditions as well. Like what? I remember going into like an audition where the person seemed a little bit off.
And I mean, luckily, you have that kind of New York common sense wherewithal where I was like, I'm not comfortable being here. And I left.
You have also talked about how, you know, your counterparts –
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Chapter 8: What are the implications of generational gaps in Zadie Smith's perspective?
They would go on like 10 auditions a day and you might have 10 auditions a year.
Yeah.
And what those auditions were like and how you kind of, in spite of the fact that you were only getting a few, could bring your whole self, knowing that there was a really big possibility of rejection.
I think rejection was on my resume. You know, it should have been like, rejection takes it pretty well. I think that there was so few auditions that I really didn't know how to get better. And so I think, you know, because when you audition, you really need to know how to understand the room. You have to understand what you're doing.
You know, there's a certain way to, I guess, introduce yourself. And because I kind of was very raw and... unpolished, maybe that worked in my favor. You know, I think the unknowing of it, the naivete and the, I mean, really the sincerity of going in and just like doing your best and not having any expectation was really a saving grace for me.
Being a shy little girl, I mean, describing yourself as shy, how did that girl learn to survive built on rejection?
I guess I didn't even remember that I was shy until I found those report cards that my mother had saved for me. She gave me this manila envelope. I think it was during the pandemic. Oh, just a few years ago. And in some ways it's kind of sad, you know, that I forgot this little girl that didn't have a voice.
And I also felt like, wow, not just, you know, look how far I've come, but wow, this poor child, you know, she must have felt so completely confused in these classrooms to not be able to even, you Everything was like she doesn't talk. She doesn't participate. She's too shy. You know, she needs to really, you know, step up. I just I don't know who that was.
And remembering that is sort of a shocking thing to feel like, wow, I really left her behind. When did you start to feel like that you weren't anymore? When I left for college, that's when I really started to find my own voice again. And literally my own footing because I was out of the house and I was in my own room.
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