Kung Fu Star Olivia Liang Has The Fight In Her

Even before the entire question has been uttered, Olivia Liang sounds as if she's been momentarily caught off-guard, and understandably so: Little feels as absurd as being asked to explain your Instagram bio. That’s where the 27-year-old actress describes herself as a “sewer dumpling.” “Um,” she pauses, then fills the brief silence with an earful of welcoming laughter. “I don’t ever aspire to take myself also seriously. I love dumplings,” she says. “But I also like to describe myself some days as a ‘trash goblin’ as soon as I'm looking really rough. Just marrying those two things.”


Those who have seen Liang act — because the brooding witch with a tragic backstory Alyssa Chang in Legacies or, most recently, the San Franciscan martial-artist Nicky Shen in the CW’s action series Kung Fu, which premiered yesterday (April 8) — know she is aware the plight of being caught between two things. In Nicky, she plays a young Chinese-American woman weighing her family’s high expectations against a personalized hope to carve out her own path. As soon as her controlling mother Mei-Li (Kheng Hua Tan) pressures her to marry, she flees to a monastery in China where she learns hand-to-hand combat. Yet right after an assassin murders her teacher (Vanessa Kai), she returns to California to track down the killer and reconnect with her family member. Meanwhile, as a prophecy surrounding a sacred sword comes to pass, questions of fate and destiny collide with Nicky’s emerging sense of autonomy.


Kung Fu is a update on the 1970s series of the same name that starred a white actor, David Carradine, who'd no previous experience with the sport, as a Shaolin monk roaming the American West. This iteration, helmed by Lost writer Christina M. Kim, hopes to create up for some of these insensitivities with a predominantly Asian cast plus a stunt-pulling, ass-kicking lead heroine. And arriving unexpectedly on the heels of a sharp rise in anti-Asian racism, the timing feels prescient, if not outright harrowing, as that narrative becomes inevitably entangled with its viewing. “At face value, it seems foolish, right? To mention that somehow we'll be segment of the change, because it seems like such a deeper problem than media and entertainment,” Liang posits. “But truly, entertainment has shaped a lot of worldviews.”


Yet for Liang, the role is personalized because Nicky Shen’s story reflects her own in several ways. Where the character's journey of self-discovery takes her through mountains, monasteries, and back again, Liang's first leading on-screen role comes soon after years of prioritizing her acting dreams in spite of outdoor expectations. She’s devoted to being her authentic self, “sewer dumpling” Instagram bio included.


MTV News: This version of Kung Fu is a reboot of the original ‘70s show, which was a little before your time. What was your relationship with martial arts movies or media growing up?


Olivia Liang: I watched clips of the original While I booked the part. As you mentioned, it was a little before my time so, as piece of my studies, I did watch a little bit of it, just to be able to see what elements we were honoring and keeping in our reimagining. I grew up watching Jackie Chan in Rush Hour. I rewatched it the other day and it's a bomb. It's so funny! The fighting is so good. I would drive my sister to her Taekwondo lessons, nevertheless I don't have a background in martial arts, so my experience with it growing up was from a distance and as entertainment.


MTV News: How much of the fight choreography do you perform yourself?


Liang: a large amount. It’s really critical to me that we honor the art form and the sport, and that I make our people delighted. The really huge stunts with wire work, that is my astonishing stunt double, Megan Hui — she's the one who's making me look so kickass. Yet with my background in dance, I'm able to pick up at least the choreography. Fighting in TV and film, it really is a dance. So, it's been really fun to unlock that side of me and physical training that muscle. I feel cool and thus badass.


MTV News: I love those high-flying, slow-motion scenes. Matrix style.


Liang: I have been begging our stunt team to let me get on a wire and fly, however they're very afraid that I'm going to get hurt.


MTV News: I believe in you! I feel like that is the next developments, right?


Liang: Yes, I'm going to let them know that Coco mentioned that I should do it.


MTV News: How would you describe your character, Nicky Shen? What characteristic of her do you relate to? 


Liang: she's a girl who basically lost it. Her mom was controlling most of her life. Once she finally had that awakening, she did what I think all of us would do, which was run away to a Shaolin monastery in China and really immerse herself in kung fu. Very relatable. And once we pick up, she’s a new woman coming house to San Francisco, and she really has to reconcile this new Nicky with the old Nicky she left behind.


I think that is something several people of color can relate to. There's this dichotomy of our culture versus where we live, the history of our family member versus our immediate surroundings of being In America, and battling with that duality. That was something that really struck me about the story we're telling about Nicky and the struggles she goes through. And that's definitely something that I feel as a Asian-American woman: feeling neither here nor there, not quite Asian yet not quite American, and figuring out what that in-between is.


MTV News: Family member is a big segment of the show, not just Nicky's relationship with her mom nevertheless also with her Shifu character at the outset. How come do you suggest that is?


Liang: Family is the core of this show. It’s so key just have the ability to see a cohesive family member unit on TV, who is going through things that families go through — financial problems, fights, purpose, and belonging. To have the strong foundation of family member, to really ground it, and bring each person back to house base is really key for all the characters on this show. And I'm just excited that any family member can visualize themselves in the Shens.


MTV News: What’s your family members like? 


Liang: My family member is super, super close. My mom and sister are my main go to people in the whole world. My mom is an astounding singer, yet that was not something she pursued professionally. We're a really tight unit, and we make a lot of decisions with each other. We stick together.


MTV News: Nicky’s Shifu had this good quote that she repeats, “You make the path that you live.” I think that’s something we all have to discover to some degree, so has that suggestions ever been relevant to your life?


Liang: Something that resonated so much with me about Nicky was that she realized she wasn't on a path that she chose. It had been chosen for her. And I resonate with that so much, being a Asian-American woman and having to follow this trajectory that my mom set up for me being one of the best three — doctor, lawyer, engineer. Going through college attempting to figure that out, finally I was like, what I've habitually wanted to do was be an actor, and I need to do it. And I'm sorry that that's not piece of your plan for me, however this is the path that I want to go down. And thus I did.


MTV News: Was that a hard conversation to have, or was she accommodating? What was the vibe?


Liang: The vibes were not cooperative. To give my mom credit, she really came around more over the last four years, however the first fear she had was that it's unstable. “Are you going to be okay? Are you going have the ability to live and feed yourself and put a roof over your head?" I completely understand where the hesitation came from. Nevertheless yeah, it was a very hard conversation because I actually sat her down Once I was 18 and I was like, "I don't hope to go college. I'd like to be an actor." And she was like, "Absolutely not." So then I had to resit her down any time Once I was 20 and in college, and I was like, "I really hope to be an actor. And I'm going to get my college degree, which is what you wanted, yet right now you have to let me do what I want."


MTV News: And then you ended up in a professional program at UCLA, which seems like such a straight shot into the industry. 


Liang: Fully. And it also was the opening time that I was surrounded by actors. So I began to form a community, and find support in fellow artists who were struggling and also me.


MTV News: from then on, what would you imagine your breakout role? 


Liang: It was probably Whenever I did Legacies. I booked that in December 2019, and that came maybe each year plus one half immediately after I graduated from UCLA. I would not be here without the role of Alyssa Chang. She opened the doors, she brought me into the CW family member, and that's where I live now.


MTV News: Have you had any auditions where you felt you completely flopped?


Liang: My very first audition for Legacies was for a different character, plus it was the worst audition of my entire life. Fully didn't know what I was saying, I felt the casting director was embarrassed for me. I left that room being like, well, I'm never seeing them again. And then fast-forward to the audition for the character of Alyssa Chang, and I had this weird feeling If I was in the waiting room. Why have I been here before? Oh yeah, this is where I bombed. However the following thought was, I can't be worse than that. So let's just go in there and have fun.


MTV News: What trajectory for Nicky Shen can we expect to be able to see in Kung Fu?


Liang: you could expect to be able to see Nicky really continue to come into her own as a powerful woman, as someone who wants to fight for the underdog, really do what's right, and protect the people around her. Immediately after you visualize the pilot, there's sort of a fun, mystical element, and we get to be able to see that develop a little. And Nicky comes to terms with the path that has been presented to her. It's very interesting you brought up the quote of, “You pick decide on the path that you live,” because there is lots about fate and destiny. Any time you're presented with your fate and your destiny, does that become a choice?


MTV News: The past few weeks have been especially harrowing in terms of anti-Asian violence and racism In the
U.S.. At the same time, something that’s so fantastic about this show is its astonishing cast of all-star Asian actors. Representation isn’t everything, naturally, however what do you know Hollywood’s role can or should be as piece of a solution to end hate?


Liang: For so long, Asians and Asian-Americans were the butt of jokes, and some days we still are. Like Tzi Ma, who plays my dad on the show, mentioned, this show and representation of Asians in media is a long-term solution because we get to be invited into people's homes. Hopefully, they are going to visualize themselves in the characters we play and visualize that we're not so different from them. We are not other, we are all human, and we all have shared experiences. I think those small changes in mentality and in worldview are what will bring about macro change.