The child of Chinese immigrants, Liu grew up in Queens where she spoke Mandarin at home and didn't learn English until she was 5. She returns to the language in her new film, ‘Rosemead.’ It’s about a terminally ill mother grappling with her teenage son’s escalating mental health crisis and the impossible choices she faces to help him. Liu spoke with Tonya Mosley about rejection, representation, and the first time she heard her name in OutKast’s hit “Hey Ya.” Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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This is Fresh Air. I'm Tanya Mosley. My guest today is Lucy Liu. Over the past three decades, Liu has become one of the most recognizable faces in film and television. From her breakout role on Ally McBeal to the stylized violence of 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? In the end, she chooses to take matters into her own hands by choosing violence herself. The film is called Rosemead. and it's inspired by true events. Lou signed on as both a producer and star, and it's her first dramatic leading role in a feature film.
We spoke last week before the disturbing acts of violence at Brown University, Bondi Beach in Australia, and the murders of the Reiners. Lucy Liu, welcome to Fresh Air.
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Chapter 2: What childhood experiences shaped Lucy Liu's identity?
What a thrill to be here. I'm so happy to have you. 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. 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 personally. behind closed doors and I know 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. 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. When we start the movie, you know, you see the love between these two, a parent and a child, right?
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 isolated.
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Chapter 3: How does Lucy Liu's new film 'Rosemead' address mental health?
as open, oftentimes, to mental health services, like therapists. I mean, the extreme of that is Western medicine, taking, you know, SSRIs or whatever it is. Is there a suspicion? Even her own friend says, in the movie says, when Irene, who's the character I play, says he's getting better, he seems to be getting better in therapy, her own friend says, you sound like a foreigner.
So there is that, when I mentioned sequestering earlier, it's because there's really, even with a dear friend, There's that feeling of, I guess, the stigma of, well, that's not how you do it. We've got herbal medicine. We've got other ways to exercise literally this demon out of him or, you know, thinking that it's not a real diagnosis, not understanding that it's a medical thing.
And I guess steering it away towards superstition. And there's a lot of that in our community as well. Language, as you said, plays a big part in this story. I want to play a scene that really goes a little bit deeper into the comfort that she feels speaking her own language and also sort of a disconnect with her son over this.
So the scene that I want to play, Irene and her son Joe are having dinner together. He has gotten in trouble in school, and she's tried to help, but she doesn't know what to do. And she's asking him questions in Mandarin, but he is answering in English. And then it all explodes. Let's listen. I heard you there in the hallway.
You were there, I heard you, and you were trying to...
We hear him get up and throw the chopsticks at that point. He can speak Mandarin.
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Chapter 4: What challenges does the character Irene face in 'Rosemead'?
He chooses not to in that moment. What's happening in that choice for him and for her? I think there's just this void somewhere. between them. There's this communication where she's trying to reach out and say, if there's anything going on, you have to really think about your choices. And she's trying to communicate, but it's not really connecting. And I think that oftentimes happens in families.
And He's also not really taking his medication. He's throwing it away. He's starting to become more paranoid. And his way of trying to protect her is really going off in a very different direction. He's becoming paranoid, and she's also becoming very paranoid. And so the two of them are trying to protect each other, but they're not really on the same wavelength. Mm-hmm.
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. 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.
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 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.
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Chapter 5: What cultural significance does language hold in 'Rosemead'?
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 and literally my own footing because I was out of the house and I was in my own room.
And I think that it was the first time I really didn't have to, you know, compare myself. Mm-hmm. You majored in – you didn't major in theater or acting. Yeah. It was something like Asian Studies. Asian Languages and Cultures, yeah. Did you have an intention to do something with that degree?
You know, what happened was when I went to college, it was sort of a free-for-all, and I was so excited to take, you know, all these multiple courses like ceramics and Chinese, which I had rejected so much when I was a child. We would go to Chinese school on the weekends, and I would just absolutely despise going to Chinese school. Wow.
Because it was this, you know, Saturday morning, and here we are, you know, we didn't, I just wanted to have a childhood. I wanted to run around and just, you know, I guess, ride my bicycle and do all the things that everyone else was doing. And here I was sitting in a classroom, you know, I guess, repeating these vowels and these tones.
Yeah.
I just didn't – it wasn't my interest. And I think that also I was trying to get away from – you know, I was struggling with, like, am I Chinese? Am I American? Where am I? And so here I am trying to be American and try to find a voice, but then I'm stuck in Chinese school. And so – I think when I got to college, I was like, I can choose this now. And it was a choice.
And that's a very different feeling to make that decision for yourself. So I was taking all these courses that were interesting to me. And then all of a sudden, they're like, you need to have a major. And I thought, oh, my gosh, what am I going to do?
And all the things that I was learning, like Chinese philosophy and the language itself and art, I then saw, okay, these are the most credits I have. I better just I better find something that's going to get me out of this school in time. So that's how Asian Languages and Cultures came to be. Okay, so your breakout role came in 1998.
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Chapter 6: How did Lucy Liu prepare for her role in 'Rosemead'?
This holiday season on the StoryCorps podcast, a Christmas memory from the Cold War. I remember this red phone on his desk. If it rang, there was a national emergency. One time the red phone rang.
He answered it and there was a small voice that asked us to Santa Claus.
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This is Fresh Air. Today I'm talking with actor, director, and visual artist Lucy Liu about her new film, Rosemead. What's a role that people associate with you the most or come up to you to talk to you about the most? You know, it's so funny. It just depends on where people are from. I find a lot of people from Europe are very much into Ling Wu. Isn't that funny? With Anna McBeal, yeah. Yeah.
I don't know what it is, but it's something really connects to them about her character. Of course, there's the cult classic of Oren that people really love. And then I find a lot of... Parents and teenagers are really big Joan Watson fans. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And I think that there's a very big community of people that grew up with Alex Mundy, you know.
And that's – it feels like I've kind of hit a lot of different areas and different groups. And it's a good feeling to know that it's not just one group. And it's funny to think that, you know, the career has been over 30 years because it feels like I just started yesterday. I watched a panel discussion where a young woman – asked you a question and she was named after you. That's right.
It was so funny. I couldn't believe it. I thought, wow, that's such a strange thing. Also, when somebody has a tattoo of one of your characters on their body, it's really kind of, it really jolts you awake to have that kind of impact. Or when you're in a song. I think I counted five songs out there where your name is referenced.
Of course, Outkast's Hey Ya, you know, not to all the Beyonce's and Lucy Liu's. I know, I love being connected to Beyonce. Come on, that's not going to be something I'll forget anytime soon. Take me back to when you first heard that particular song or that line. I was driving down Laurel Canyon towards Sunset Boulevard from Mulholland and then...
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