“Cinematically Rich” Interview with ‘Warrior’ Actress Olivia Cheng

When it comes to exciting new shows, you’d be hard pressed to find a better offering than Cinemax’s Warrior, the new Martial Arts standout, inspired by Bruce Lee. Warrior tells a story of late 1800s San Francisco which is seeing an influx of Chinese immigrants. BNP was blessed with the opportunity to sit down with Olivia Cheng, who has already impressed this year with her portrayal of Master Gao on Deadly Class. Flexing her acting skills and changing roles completely, Olivia Cheng plays the captivating brothel owner Ah Toy in Warrior. Let’s jump into her thoughts on the season thus far. Representation Matters Always

Black Nerd Problems: How important is it to properly portray Chinese immigrants of the late 1800s, on screen? Olivia Cheng: I’m the daughter of Chinese immigrants from Canada. I translated for my grandparents. It would pain me when I could see that people would talk at or about my grandparents. As a kid, I understood my grandparents knew a lot more English than they let on and that they understood more English than they were able to speak. The fact that our show plays with that idea and the language device it used. In terms of having Chinese characters speak broken English directly to white characters. And speak modern day conversational American-English to each other to represent Cantonese. This is something that I think is so important because it opens a portal for audiences to be surprised and divided by the emotional lens. It also challenges our viewers to qu…