Olivia Liang said she barely needed to act for her starring role in the new version of CW’s “Kung Fu”.
“After reading the pilot, he would say to me,‘ Wow, so Nicky is me! “Liang, 27, told The Post.” Our amazing showrunner and creator Christina Kim instilled so much heart and nuance and specific experience into the script: it was the first time I read something and she said, ‘Yeah, I understand “.”
On Wednesday, April 7 at 8 pm, “Kung Fu” follows Nicky Shen, a Sino-American woman who leaves college and goes on an adventure in China, learning martial arts skills at a monastery. After her mentor is murdered, she returns home to San Francisco, only to find her overwhelmed by the crime and corruption her new skills require.
Meanwhile, he also reconnects with his family, including Father Jin (Tzi Ma), Mother Mei-Li (Kheng Hua Tan), Sister Althea (Shannon Dang), Brother Ryan (Jon Prasida), the fiancé of ‘Althea, Dennis (Tony Chug) and Nicky. distant ex-boyfriend, Evan (Gavin Stenhouse).
“My life experience gave me what I needed to play Nicky, because she was so punctual and so specific,” said Liang, who has also appeared in The CW’s “Legacies”.
“Nicky’s mother is a kind of tiger mother who relaxes a little bit, and that’s exactly what she had grown up with. I am also an older sister and Nicky has a younger brother on the show. The things he was going through were so relevant to me. ”
However, there were some aspects of Nicky’s life that were new to Liang.
“My experience with martial arts before was just driving my sister to her Taekwondo classes,” she said. “So I had to learn it for the show, but it’s been a lot of fun, rewarding and hard. It’s a very beautiful sport and art. If you add it all up, I’m probably doing between 65 and 70 percent. of the tricks. Anything super cool is my amazing double trick, Megan Hui. I try to do as many tricks as I can because it’s very important to me to be able to do the martial arts of it all. “
“Kung Fu” originated as a 1972 series starring David Carradine as a monk and martial arts expert traveling the American West. (It also spawned a syndicated sequel, “Kung Fu: The Legend Continues,” which aired from 1993 to 1997 starring Carradine again).
“That show was a little ahead of my time, but my uncle and my growing mother would watch it,” Liang said. “So it was very surreal when I got that part. I’m very happy to have been able to imagine it again, and maybe do it the way it should have been done, with the Asian people at the helm. “
Liang said a version of “Kung Fu” starring a mostly Asian cast resonates during a year in which hate crimes against Asian-Americans have been on the rise.
“It’s been impacting in a different way since we launched this program in April of 2021,” he said. “We knew the program would be important, but we would never have been able to plan how poignant it is at the moment and what is happening in today’s world.
“For the promotions that have come out, we shot the scene of [co-star Tzi Ma] lying on the ground, beaten, months ago, before the media really started shedding light on anti-Asian hate crimes. Seeing this image is so creepy in light of what is happening today. Our program is really needed right now to humanize Asian Americans in the world. “