Exclusive Interview: Pop Culturalist Chats with Kung Fu’s Eddie Liu

Actor Eddie Liu and the cast of the CW’s Kung Fu have shattered records since their debut in April. They are the network’s first drama to feature a predominantly Asian cast, and their premiere episode went on to become the highest Wednesday viewership in over seven years.

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.

Eddie shines as Henry Yan, Nicky’s partner in crime, whose wealth of knowledge on ancient Chinese history and folklore has proven invaluable. But as the season unfolds, we learn that Henry may be trying to escape his own demons.

Pop Culturalist was lucky enough to speak with Eddie about his career, embracing the struggle, Kung Fu Season 1, and the show’s impact.

Career

PC: You discovered your passion for storytelling later in life. What was the moment you knew you wanted to pursue a career in acting? How challenging was that decision to make that pivot?
Eddie: The moment that I decided to become an actor was when I booked a P.C. Richard & Son’s commercial, which is a regional chain in the Northeast for those who don’t know. It was non-union, and we shot in the middle of the night. We were renting out the store because you can’t shoot while the store is open during daytime hours. I remember I was under these really hot, uncomfortable lights. I was waiting for my turn to go in front of the camera. My castmates and I had become friends really quickly. We were just shooting the sh-t, hanging out, and quoting our favorite funny movies.

I remember being so happy. I really came alive in that whole setting, being with creatives. Granted, it was a commercial, and you’re there to do this particular job, but I remember feeling like I belonged there. I had already been auditioning for commercials and whatever I could get my hands on at the time leading up to that.

This was two weeks before my college graduation. I remember it was in the middle of the Great Recession, and the job market was awful. I realized, “Oh no. I could potentially be pursuing a path that I don’t really want to do. There was a time when I thought I was going to pursue a career in public relations because that was what I majored in.

PC: You moved to LA in 2014 to pursue a career in the arts. You worked a lot of different jobs to make ends meet. Having experienced all the success that you’ve had now, what’s one thing you would tell your 2014-self?
Eddie: It’s okay to have a chip on your shoulder once in a while, but know that it’s temporary, and enjoy the process as much as you can. Sometimes, we take struggle, hardship, and obstacles as a sign of, “Oh no. I’m either failing or I’m not on the right path,” but the struggle is just meant to strengthen your wings; it’s meant to teach you things. You have to look at obstacles, whether it’s the fault of your own doing or whether it’s just because what you’re pursuing is difficult, keep looking for opportunities to ask yourself, “What is the lesson? What can I learn from this?” I would tell myself, “Hey, it’s okay. You’re doing fine.”

PC: Great answer. When you look at your career as a whole, who or what’s had the biggest influence, either personally or professionally?
Eddie: A lot of people, a lot, especially in this line of work. Whoever tells you that they did it by themselves is either lying or ungrateful. I would say my mom has had the biggest influence. She was the second person I told that I wanted to do this.

After shooting that commercial, and after I decided I wanted to be an actor, the time came, and I had to tell my mom and dad; I couldn’t hide it from them. My mom believed in me right from the start; it’s almost like she knew before I did that this is what I should be doing. Everyone knew I was auditioning for commercials and pursuing acting part-time outside of school, but she was really the first person to believe in me.

Of course, she’s my mom; she’s going to say, “I believe in you,” which is great. I feel like as cliché as that may sound, some people don’t have that in their life. You need to have those key people throughout your life and career that will give you the really crucial “yes” at the moment when you need to hear it. It goes a long way.

She’s put money in my bank account when I was really poor and couldn’t sign up for classes. She was like, “Don’t tell anyone, but I put a little money for that casting director workshop.” Like, “All right. I didn’t ask, but thank you very much.” I’m glad I didn’t stay no.

Every little bit of learning, every little bit of being in a class setting, my mom was the person who presented me with those opportunities. Of course, you go on to meet all these great teachers along the way, all these great classmates and people who help you—those coaches and friends who help you book your auditions. There’s so much help, and there’s so much opportunity for connection and collaboration in this field.

PC: You got your start doing commercials and local theater. What has the transition been like going from those mediums to the silver and small screens?
Eddie: I remember there was a series of months that I really dove into the local LA theater scene. It was fiscally a really bad idea. [laughs] I was really struggling financially, like really hard. I started in May or June, and I plowed through three plays back to back to back, all the way until the end of 2018.

Even though it was financially a bad idea, artistically, it gave me so much experience and so much rich, hands-on, hours on the clock. I was learning. I had various roles. I was either in the ensemble or understudying for a lead role or was a fight choreographer. Looking back, all those hours in the lab were such a great investment in myself.

It’s not that I recommend that you leave your job to do theater that doesn’t pay; what I’m saying is hours in the lab, any chance you get to throw paint on the wall and see what you can get out of it, is priceless. In hindsight, it’s easy for me now to say, “Oh yeah, I don’t regret it. I would do it again.” It was a struggle for sure, but I wouldn’t take it back.

Then getting to do commercials, it was about being on set, seeing how things go, seeing who was moving what around, and knowing the basic rules and language of what it is to operate on a professional set. There are a lot of actors who are either really well-trained or really not at all.

Somebody was recently telling me this story: they knew of somebody who went to a great program in New York City, and they get to set and it’s their first big job. They say, “Can you take your mark?” The actor says, “What’s a mark?” It’s rudimentary stuff.

I don’t want to be the person that finds out things like that the hard way. I’m still learning on my job now, which is on Kung Fu. Every day, I feel like I’m still learning something. Even though I have a lot of experience leading up to it, but also there’s so much I have yet to learn.

Now, I’m having fun learning the technical stuff about cameras, lighting, and all the film stuff because I didn’t go to film school. I studied PR, but I’m enjoying doing that now as well.

Kung Fu

PC: Speaking of Kung Fu, you’ve said in the past that you didn’t see yourself represented on screen. Have you and the rest of the cast and crew had time to reflect on the impact that the show has had in making sure that future generations won’t have to experience something similar?
Eddie: It’s a constant ebb and flow. We try not to self-aggrandize too much, but at the same time, we take this responsibility with full seriousness. We know that it means a lot to people; it means a lot to us. For us, even being able to do this and see ourselves in a way that we haven’t been able to before means a lot. We’re playing roles that we haven’t been able to before.

Showing Asian Americans, Chinese Americans on screen in Western television may seem very normal or nothing special to some viewers who are used to seeing diverse talent, but having a rich family dynamic, a love triangle featuring Asian Americans, front and center, and not off to the side, that in and of itself, we can recognize is an achievement because some people have never seen that before. We can appreciate that for sure.

It’s a constant thing of how do we not take on the burden of that responsibility so that we can do our jobs and not crumble under that responsibility while also being able to take a step back and be like, “Hey, we’ve gotten great feedback.” We’ve heard from people who have said, “This is amazing. My kids have something to see. I have something to see that I can look to and be like, ‘Wow, I feel seen in a way in the media.’”

You and I know how much that means and how that representation goes such a long way in such a deep, subconscious way. Seeing yourself as a main character, seeing yourself as maybe even your worst enemy, it means a lot. We’re so grateful that we get to do that.

PC: There’s so much authenticity that comes off the screen with this series. How much of that is written on the page for you? What’s that collaboration like with the writers’ room?
Eddie: The writers’ room sends us these scripts usually a few days in advance before we shoot the episode. A lot of the time, I find myself reading it, and I’m like, “This is just me.” Sometimes I feel like there’s not a whole lot of acting involved. [laughs] I love being able to read the pages a bit beforehand and absorb it.

Then, when there are times when we see opportunities to inject more authenticity, or even bring more of ourselves to it, we can approach our onset or visiting writer or producer, whoever is there with us. We get to bounce ideas off of them and clarify certain things or add more authenticity to what’s already on the page.

They’re super open to that process. It’s really cool to be able to even have the chance to be like, “Can I do this here?” or “Can we just change that little thing here with this piece of food or thing?” To be able to have that opportunity to take ownership of that and step into our power that way feels amazing.

PC: Something else that I love about this show, especially in this first season, is that it tackles a lot of timely and relevant topics. What has it meant to you to be a part of a production that’s not afraid to have these tough conversations?
Eddie: It means everything. There are days where what we’re doing, we realize it’s entertainment, and it’s supposed to be fun, and lead into the adventure aspect of it, and it’s great. Then there are other days where we do come across a very serious, heavy issue that sometimes either we don’t see talked about enough or we don’t see it talked about involving people with faces like ours. We see that there’s a responsibility there to tell the truth.

It’s interesting. Some people may see it as, “I watch this as a distraction. I don’t want this serious stuff.” However, we know that there are a lot of people watching who have gone through the things that these characters have gone through. It’s not trying to be political. It’s not trying to be provocative or anything like that.

People go through these hard truths in our show. There’s a level of responsibility where I do think we need to talk about it. Are we going to solve everything? No. Especially when we had that entire episode dedicated around racism, race identity, injustice—that’s an everyday occurrence for a lot of people, and to have the platform and to be able to shed light on it, we feel it’s right.

PC: We’re approaching the end of season one. What’s ahead for Henry? What can you tease?
Eddie: Hard choices are going to have to be made. Some sacrifices are going to be made. The sense of danger hitting home is going to feel very real for our characters, in a figurative and literal sense.

The worry and the fear are going to be very present. Are my loved ones safe from what I have to do? The mysticism, the adventure, the hunt for the weapons, all that, in the last two episodes, we’re turning it up. We’ve turned it up. We’re going all the way up.

PC: With eleven episodes that have already aired, what’s been your favorite scene to film? What’s been the most challenging? I like doing these interviews towards the end of the season because now you can talk a little bit more about those moments.
Eddie: Yeah. Oh, man, that’s a great question. I wish I had time to think about that. We’ve enjoyed so many, and there have been scenes that have been really hard to shoot. Almost any fight scene answers both questions simultaneously.

Every fight we do is the most fun I have on set. We’re in such a time crunch. I forgot how fast the TV schedule is and how little time you have to do anything. If you ever watch anything on TV and you’re pleasantly entertained by it, that’s a great achievement. Sometimes you only get X amount of time or a few hours to pull off a certain shot or a certain sequence.

We had a bar fight—it had to get cut due to time constraints in the episode that you saw air on TV—but we spent all day shooting this sequence. I remember looking around. It was a circus that day; we had so many people. You have safety rules because of COVID. You have wires. You have bodies falling on tables, all kinds of kung fu happening. I remember just stopping and looking around for a second. I was like, “This is nuts, but I f-cking love it. I’m having the time of my life.”

I love any chance we get to have group scenes, especially for those of us who don’t get to interact as much together. There’s a gala in episode six. We get into some shenanigans. We have the Shen siblings and Henry, and they have to cause this distraction from the parents so they don’t know that we’re up to something very dangerous.

We did that wine gag spill. We were all bouncing off each other. That was one of my favorite scenes to shoot because we had everybody on set. I never get to see Gavin [Stenhouse], and he was there. I’m usually with Olivia [Liang]—hence why we joke that I’m her work husband and she’s my work wife. We’re constantly together. But then I get to act with Shannon [Dang], JP [Jon Prasida], Ty [Tony Chung], and Kheng Hua [Tan], too. Any chance we can have everybody is extra special because we spend a lot of time offset, but not all of us get to spend time together on the set.

PC: That’s a perfect segue to this next question. The series has already been picked up for a second season. Congratulations, by the way.
Eddie: Thank you.

PC: Where do you want to see Henry’s storyline head? Is there somebody that you want to see Henry interact with more in Season 2?
Eddie: They laid out a really interesting base for Henry’s character that’s so ripe for storytelling. I would love to see them go back to his past and see either people or the things that he might’ve done that could come back to haunt him. We know that Henry is connected to a few shady characters from back in the day. There’s a lot of room for bringing up some of those people from his past who could be either enemies or assets.

Because we were laying out some things ahead where if he makes it out of the season, we’ve got some characters to explore. We’ve got relationships to explore. I would love to see Henry interact with more villains. I want to see him fight with more villains.

I want to see him interact with the main cast because I don’t get to see them. We have a great rapport. We have a great chemistry. Like I said, Gavin, JP, Shannon, I don’t get to see them much. I would love to see them share more of those more of those scenes together.

Pop Culturalist Speed Round

PC: Guilty pleasure TV show?
Eddie: Last year during the pandemic, I was too emotionally drained to handle anything deep. I should’ve been watching Succession, but I watched Entourage from the beginning, and I tore through it. I was like, “This is my candy. Leave me alone. I’m depressed. I’m going to watch this again.”

PC: Guilty pleasure movie?
Eddie: There are no guilty pleasures. There are just pleasures. I’ve seen the Oceans‘ trilogy so many times. They’re my favorite movies. When I should be watching something new, I’m rewatching those because they bring me comfort.

PC: Favorite book?
Eddie: Siddhartha. I read that in high school. It brought me a great sense of peace. I should probably reread that for my own wellbeing.

PC: Favorite play or musical?
Eddie: It’s a little dark, but I love the Pillow Man by Martin McDonagh of Three Billboards fame—a lot of people know him for that, but he’s an incredible playwright too.

PC: A band or artist that fans would be surprised to learn is on your playlist?
Eddie: I don’t know if they would be surprised, but Harry Styles’ “Adore” was my number one song on Spotify in 2021.

PC: Dream role?
Eddie: Good question. Let’s do some sort of hybrid of action-comedy, buddy cop caper, sci-fi sort of thing. I just threw a bunch of genres at you, that wasn’t a real answer. [laughs] That’s a cheeky way of just saying I want to do so many different things. I want to work with so many different people and different kinds of styles.

Also, I would have a lot of fun in something like Ted Lasso—that sort of character. He uplifts those around him, and at the same time, he has his own demons to work out. He has his own things that are bringing him down on the inside that he has to overcome.

To keep up with Eddie, follow him on Twitter and Instagram. Catch new episodes of Kung Fu every Wednesday at 8/7c on the CW.

Photo Credit: Joshua Mobijohn