Shannon Lee brought her dad's long lost TV series to life, nearly 50 years after his death. Special thanks to Warrior on Cinemax.
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00:00I think my father would be thrilled to know that what wasn't possible then is
00:14possible now and that he had a big hand in creating that possibility.
00:31My father created a treatment for TV and pitched it to Warner Brothers but they
00:38said at the time that he couldn't star in a show because he was Chinese and the
00:42American audiences would not accept that. I had gotten to know Justin Lin a
00:46little bit. He reached out to me one day and he said is that true that your
00:50father wrote this treatment and I said yes absolutely and he was like gosh I
00:54wonder where it is and I said I know exactly where it is and he said we
01:01should make this the way your father intended it to be made.
01:12That was something that was very important to us here especially in
01:16trying to do a show to not only honor kind of Bruce Lee's vision and embrace
01:23the essence of what he was trying to achieve but also to create a process
01:27where we create an opportunity. The show takes a real look at the immigrant
01:30experience and the systemic racism built into the founding of America. What's
01:35happening in 1878 was also happening in 1978 is also happening in 2019 and it's
01:40sort of the conundrum of this country is that we're a country built by immigrants
01:44that encourages immigration and doesn't quite know how to absorb immigrants
01:49without a lot of trouble. I think what Jonathan and the cast have done such a
01:56great job is that they really are owning these characters who are flawed who live
02:00in this world there's pain there's been conflict but there's also joy and there's
02:05humor. You had that the whole time? There's definitely a lot of nods to
02:15Bruce Lee thrown in there. The martial arts is handled with a lot of care in
02:19the show. I would say for sure people who are Bruce Lee fans will get to see some
02:25of the homages that we slip in there.
02:31My father experienced a lot of prejudice throughout his whole life in many
02:36different forms. For me it's very personal as an Asian American personally
02:41I feel like it's trying to right a wrong. He had this dream and this goal of
02:47bringing the representation of a strong Chinese man an authentic representation
02:53of that to the screen which he did. It's so current right now this conversation
02:58about representation and then the show also happens to be very current to the
03:02topic of immigration. The moment is now and I think my father would be thrilled
03:07to know that he gets to have this fantastic Asian cast in this show that
03:13the conversations that he wanted to have he's getting to have in this show and
03:18I'm absolutely honored and privileged to be able to extend his legacy in that way.