In the '70s, Martial arts legend Bruce Lee pitched a series to Warner Bros. called The Warrior -- centered on a Chinese martial artist traveling across America's Old West.
Ultimately, Warner Bros. rejected Lee's pitch because they didn't think audiences would tune into a Chinese-led television show. A year later, Warner Bros. launched Kung Fu, casting a white male lead (David Carradine) with no kung-fu experience in a story that resembled Lee's initial pitch. Now, The CW is rectifying the past by rebooting Kung Fu with an Asian-led cast. Kung Fu's Olivia Liang (Nicky Shen) discussed what this show means for Lee's legacy to NYT.
"Representation, as much as it is about us being able to see ourselves onscreen, is more about being seen by other groups of people who are not Asian," Liang said.
The Legacies star added, "To be able to do this project that was so close to Bruce Lee’s heart is truly an honor -- it shows how far we’ve come as an industry that there’s an appetite for this kind of diverse and authentic storytelling," she said. "It’s exciting that we get to reclaim it and to say, 'Hopefully, we're doing it justice, the way it should have always been done.'"
The original Kung Fu TV show premiered in 1972, starring the late David Carradine as Kwai-Chang Caine -- a half-white American, half-Chinese Shaolin monk searching the American west for his half-brother and using his martial arts skills to help people.
Previously, Carradine denied the origin of Kung Fu's storyline in an interview with The Flashback Files, claiming that Lee's connection to the show was only by "mythology" and was confused with Lee's film project The Silent Flute.
Kung Fu's official synopsis reads,
A quarter-life crisis causes a young Chinese American woman, Nicky Shen (Olivia Liang), to drop out of college and go on a life-changing journey to an isolated monastery in China. But when she returns to San Francisco, she finds her hometown is overrun with crime and corruption and her own parents Jin (Tzi Ma) and Mei-Li (Kheng Hua Tan) are at the mercy of a powerful Triad. Nicky will rely on her tech-savvy sister Althea (Shannon Dang) and her fiancé Dennis (Tony Chung), pre-med brother Ryan (Jon Prasida), Assistant District Attorney and ex-boyfriend Evan (Gavin Stenhouse), and new love interest Henry (Eddie Liu) as well as her martial arts skills and Shaolin values to protect her community and bring criminals to justice…all while searching for the ruthless assassin who killed her Shaolin mentor Pei-Ling (Vanessa Kai) and is now targeting her.
Executive produced by Christina M. Kim, Martin Gero, Greg Berlanti, Sarah Schechter and Warner Bros. TV, Kung Fu stars Olivia Liang, Tzi Ma, Kheng Hua Tan, Tony Chung, Jon Prasida, Shannon Dang, Eddie Liu and Vanessa Kai. The series premieres Wednesday, April 7 at 8 p.m. ET/PT on The CW.
Source: NYT, The Flashback Files
0 Comments