Pop-Culturalist.com

Eddie Liu’s star is shining brighter than ever. His past credits include The Waiting Room, Silicon Valley, and Never Have I Ever. But he’s probably best known for his role as fan-favorite Henry Yan in the CW’s hit series Kung Fu.

Adapted from the popular ’70s series, Kung Fu follows a young Chinese-American woman, Nicky Shen (Olivia Liang), whose quarter-life crisis causes her to drop out of school and make a life-changing journey to a monastery in China. When she makes her return home, she discovers that her town has been overrun with corruption. Nicky must rely on her community as well as her martial arts skills to protect those she cares about the most and seek justice for those who are unable to.

Pop Culturalist was lucky enough to catch up with Eddie to talk about Kung Fu Season 2, Henry’s future, and finding his community.

PC: This season, we’re getting to dive deeper into each character. What has that collaboration been like for you working with Christina [M. Kim], Robert [Berens], and the writers, as you’ve developed Henry’s arc? How has that affected the way that you approached this character?
Eddie: This season was even more fun because we already laid down this great foundation for who these people are and who they are to each other. To be honest, there’s a different feeling coming back for a second season where you don’t feel like a freshman anymore. You do feel more of a sense of agency to speak up and ask questions. Not saying, “Hey, I want to make changes,” but, “Hey, can you clarify this? Can we deepen this?” Personally speaking, I understand where Henry is coming from better. I have a fuller scope of who he is as a person and where he comes from. That’s been very cool as an actor to dive into that kind of work.

So yeah, there was definitely a stronger sense of collaboration, and I even pitched a couple of little ideas. I do that with the fight choreograph sometimes here and there, wherever it’s applicable and where we can pull it off. It feels more like a team effort. It’s really fulfilling.

PC: Season 2 has really upped the ante, especially with the fight sequences. As the actor who has to bring this to life, have you felt that? What’s been your favorite sequence thus far?
Eddie: We always want to do better. This is a very good student group where we get good grades; we don’t rest on our laurels easily (for better or worse). I’m so proud of the work that we did to level up the stunts and the fights. I could see how our stunt team has been able to create these more elaborate, detailed fights. It’s easy to miss on the first viewing, even for myself. I’ve been watching martial arts stuff since I was a kid. That inspired me to get into acting early on. Then, my inspirations evolved later on as well.

I got to see how much detail and how much time goes into shooting a certain type of choreography. I could throw a big punch from far away, and that’s not a hard setup. Once we start getting into kung fu and the specific little hits where somebody strikes somebody in the throat or body, that could potentially be another camera set up.

Now having been on this side of the work, I appreciate that so much more. I always feel like a student on set. I’m always trying to learn as much as I can. I feel like a kid in a candy store sometimes in the midst of the craziness on set.

Do I have a favorite fight sequence? I do. Episode 208. We did this library melee. If you have your main characters hanging out, working, and sitting in a library long enough and doing dangerous things, eventually the danger’s going to hit home. Fortunately, we were able to make it work really well.

Joe Menendez directed that episode. He has such a great eye for movement, dynamics, and bringing that to the screen on a lower budget but making it look like a really high budget.

PC: In Season 1, it was established that Henry has a really complicated past and family dynamic. In Season 2, we’ve seen that now manifest on-screen with the introduction of his father. What has it been like getting to collaborate with Terry Chan as the two of you’ve brought this relationship to life?
Eddie: I love Terry. I said this to him before, but I was like, “Hey man, I don’t mean to make you feel old at all, but I’ve been watching you since I was young.” It’s cool to work with someone like that. He’s such a pro. He’s an actor’s actor. He’s so kind and an absolute team player. Those are the qualities that we value the most, especially in our workplace. We pride ourselves in trying to be as healthy and positive of a work environment as possible, from the cast all the way through the crew.

As far as fleshing out Henry and who this guy is and what makes him tick, I’ve really enjoyed that work. We’ve seen two sides to him. He has a couple of different modes that we usually see him in; he’s in alert, mission mode, and then he’s his cool, calm, and collected self. I love being able to peel the layers back and show what’s underneath and showing these feelings that he has towards his father, which are resentment, abandonment, and this underlying anger. That hurt sits underneath.

PC: Speaking of that hurt, for you as an actor, how do you create the space for yourself to dive into those moments in particular?
Eddie: Because I hadn’t visited that kind of work in a minute, I had to dig up my old acting tools from school. Shout out to my teachers: Deb, David, and Nancy. All of them gave me these tools like ten years ago. I had to think back and be like, “How do I make these techniques my own?” Then, I worked with my coach Amy, and she was super helpful in helping me bring that off the page.

To be honest, there was a bit of performance anxiety. I was questioning, “Is this good enough? Am I good enough? Is this going to work?” because part of our job is to take big swings and you hope that you can connect and make contact with the ball, but if you miss, it’s like, “Ah, crap.” I think everybody experiences insecurities when it comes to performing at their jobs and stuff.

I love having that chance to grow as an actor. It was fun seeing that come together. It’s one thing when you’re working on something and you have anxiety and you’re like, “I’m working and preparing this by myself.” Then, you get on set and you’re like, “I get to play with someone else.” I get to have Terry there and I get to look into his eyes, and he’s got that deep, sexy gravelly voice. [laughs] He’s booming at me as he stands over me. That’s very helpful.

PC: You and the cast were recently at WonderCon. For the first time since the series is premiered, you were able to see the fans in person. What was that experience like for you?
Eddie: I was shocked that people knew my name. I couldn’t believe it. It was awesome. We did WonderCon on Zoom in 2021. I’d never been to a con as a fan or guest, so going to WonderCon this year was my first time. I’d never had the time or money to go to any of these things. For me, it was a great life checkpoint moment, especially as a geek myself. I had a great time and loved being on that panel. There were people in the crowd. I was like, “Wow. More than just our moms came! This is awesome.” It would be awesome if it was just our moms and our people. That would have been great as well because it was just the fact that we were at WonderCon.

PC: We know you can’t say too much, but is there anything that you can tease about Henry’s arc for the remainder of the season? How will the events that happened in the last week’s episode impact (Ryan being shot), not only Henry, but also everybody moving forward?
Eddie: Everybody is going to be dealing with things in their own ways. You’re going to see a conversation between a couple of the main characters, particularly with Henry, addressing some unaddressed feelings and issues that are going to come up at a very inopportune moment. But you’ll see that there’s going to be trouble in paradise for Henry and Nicky. They’re not always the perfect couple. You’ll see Henry continue to navigate his feelings about his father.

Henry didn’t even want to answer his dad’s text—he was fully prepared to blow his dad off. It wasn’t until he and Nicky had a fight that he was like, “All right, fine. I’ll go see this guy.” Thankfully, it worked out where they were able to reconcile a few things. Henry could walk away from that moment and be like, “Oh, this isn’t terrible. This is okay.” But we’re not done…

PC: Great teaser. Kung Fu has already been picked up for a third season. Congratulations. As you continue to build this story, is there an aspect of Henry that you want to dive deeper into? Is there a character that you would love to see him interact more with?
Eddie: I would love to see Henry explore his roots more. I mean that in a very open-ended way. That could include anything like his Chinese culture. We’ve now made it known that Henry is part Hakka Chinese, which is what I am in real life. It was really cool to be able to even mention that on camera. Speaking as a Hakka person, we’ve never seen that (at least to my knowledge). I’ve asked my family and anyone that I know who might be Hakka, and we all feel like we don’t think we’ve ever heard Hakka mentioned, let alone spoken, in Western media. Long story short, I had pitched that to our showrunners Christina and Bob. I asked if I could speak a couple of words in that language. It was my way of preserving my language, even in just a small way in a Hollywood production. It would be really cool if I could explore something like that.

We also know that he has a trouble past. Maybe we can see him connect with somebody from there. His father has a network and team of people he works with that are kind of like pirates. They’re modern city-dwelling pirates in a Robin Hood kind of sense. It’s a very noble pursuit that they carry…maybe they go about it in a sort of antihero, shady kind of way, which is fun to see. So, I’d like to see Henry either mixed up with them or clash and meet more of these characters.

PC: You shared a beautiful tweet on social media about taking up this space that you deserve, igniting your own flame and those around you. How has this community shaped the artist that you are today? What advice would you give up-and-coming creatives who are trying to follow in similar footsteps?
Eddie: I had been living in LA for a few years before I really started meeting other members of the LA-based Asian acting and entertainment community. When I was younger, I had a lot of unresolved, not well-fleshed-out feelings about what it is to be Asian in this industry. I carried a lot of resentment and I pushed things away. For example, I never wanted to do a stereotypical Asian accent and I never practiced it, but I would get auditions—whether it was for TV or film or a commercial—where they would ask me to do it, not even in an overly racist way, but just like a character from Asia. He’s going to have an accent. I would have a hard time doing it, one because for me, technically it’s difficult, and two, I was like, “I don’t know…” It took me a long time to begin to unpack this stuff about how I struggled to be an Asian American kid growing up in a really White, suburban town in Long Island, New York.

I was so afraid that people would find out that I was different, so I clung to this proximity to Whiteness as a kid. It made me not proud to be Chinese. I wasn’t actively ashamed of it, but I was afraid of it being used against me. There was a lot of that. Looking back, I’m like, “I had a lot of those behaviors. I’m letting go of that sort of thing now.” I was afraid to take up space. Occasionally, I would feel a swallow of pride and be like, “Yeah, this is what I am. This is the food that we eat.”

But sometimes, it didn’t feel safe to share that and be open about that with certain kids because kids, in general, can be not nice and can be exclusive at times or even just racist. Growing up now, finding that community, especially here in LA, it turns out we’re everywhere! Having that kismet and that feeling like, “We get it. We understand each other. We’ve gone through the same similar experiences,” it lets you know that you’re not alone.

There are people who I may not know and met on Twitter and they’re happy for me and I’m happy for them. We root for each other from afar. That’s such a beautiful thing. When I was younger, I never dreamed that I could have something like this. To this day, we’re still meeting more people, especially as more Asians take up the arts. Every year, I meet more, not just actors, but writers, producers, executive assistants.

These are the new generations who are going to shape the industry as we go forward. That’s what we need more of. It’s so easy to be like, “We need more actors in front. We need more Asian actors. We need more people of color in front of the camera.” That’s all true. But we also need these people behind the camera in executive roles who are making decisions and keeping these gates open. That’s the most important thing.

As far as advice, I have to repeat what somebody else said, which is that all the things that you’re afraid of about yourself, the things that you’re insecure about, those will become your superpower. I also believe that in a super capitalistic business where everybody’s trying to create the next big thing to make a lot of money and be successful, whether it’s the most amount of views or makes the highest box office money, there are entities that are more risk-adverse than others. There’s a lot of heat behind rebooting or making a sequel 30 years after the first trilogy came out. That’s fine. That’s not good or bad. It’s just what it is. Sometimes we see less people trying to take on original ideas and writing original stories. My point is that this industry is often trying to duplicate and replicate something that’s been successful, but I believe that it’s really important for us to dare to be ourselves and the best unique versions of ourselves.

There was a time when Zooey Deschanel started hitting it big with her show New Girl, her movies, and that stuff. The next year in the audition rooms, there were so many breakdowns for young women wearing big frame glasses and bangs in a nerdy, hipster sort of thing. That was big. Then, you saw it happen with Awkwafina when she killed it in Crazy Rich Asians and Ocean’s 8. There were so many breakdowns for a quirky, funny type of Asian girl.

Just because one person is successful doesn’t mean we all have to be like that. It’s great to observe what’s working and what’s successful. Whether you’re a writer, actor, etc., see what works. See what you can learn from that for yourself, then discard what doesn’t work for you. It’s actually a Bruce Lee principle. Take what works for you and discard the rest that’s not useful to you. I would say that.

Also, work hard at the craft. Whatever your craft is, take it seriously. Take classes. Work with great mentors and coaches who help you grow. Find a community of other artists at a similar level or slightly higher who you can learn from. If you’re a young actor starting, once you’ve gone to class and you’re starting to audition, find a community of great self-tape buddies who you can rely on to help you lay down a really great competitive audition take. But the point is, do it, get in there, and do it.

To keep up with Eddie, follow him on Twitter and Instagram. Catch new episodes of Kung Fu every Wednesday at 9/8c on the CW.

Photo Credit: Jonny Marlow