Lucy Liu has been a fixture on screens both big and small for decades. After making a name for herself as an action superstar in films such as “Charlie’s Angels” and “Kill Bill: Volume 1,” she moved into a new phase of her career with a starring role in the hit CBS procedural “Elementary.” But in every genre and medium in which she’s worked, she’s always been a pioneer for on-screen Asian-American representation.
2025 has been a landmark year for the acclaimed actress. She started the year by delivering a fantastic, chilling performance in Steven Soderbergh’s “Presence.” Now, the film “Rosemead” (in which she also serves as a producer) is coming to theaters. The family drama – inspired by a tragic true story – centers around Liu’s portrayal of Irene, a Chinese-American woman struggling to help her schizophrenic son work through his mental hardships, all while facing a health crisis of her own. Liu gives a focused, heartbreaking performance that stands as one of the most impressive works of her illustrious career, managing to evoke endless sympathy in her depiction of a mother who would do anything for her child.
In anticipation of the release of “Rosemead,” Lucy Liu spoke with Next Best Picture about the difficulties of making this movie, least of which included working to get the movie made in the first place. She also discussed delivering a bilingual performance, and what it was like working with her director and young co-star, both of whom are making their feature film debuts.
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This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Hi, Cody.
Hi Lucy. How are you doing today?
I’m good. Nice to see you.
You too! So “Rosemead.” I mean, wow. “Powerful” is an understatement. And your performance specifically just really affected me.
Oh, thank you. I mean, it’s a hard movie to watch, I’m not gonna lie.
Yeah. But I wanna go back to even before it got made. Tell me about the process of saying “yes” to this film. What attracted you to the script? And were you familiar at all with the real life story that it’s based on?
I wasn’t familiar with it. I had moved back from LA to New York a while ago, so I’d kind of not been reading the local news, but I read the script first and I found it to be really unbelievable. So then I went and read the article, of course, and it really broke my heart to know that this happened. And that it could continue to happen because there’s such a lack of, I guess, advocacy for…I mean, this particular family, she really didn’t know all of the facts and I don’t think she was able to understand all of the information because there was no translator. The healthcare system really was not on her side. So there’s many levels of how people who are immigrants or people who are marginalized are not able to really make the best choices because they just don’t have anyone helping them. I guess the reach, the outreach for that is limited.
For me, it was important because this movie is the first movie that is about, I guess, the Asian-American experience and mental health. We don’t have any of that in our library, in our lexicon, there’s none of that. And there should be, because whatever happens with the movie, I just hope that people who need or want to see something like this to help them understand that they’re not alone, that it’s just there and that’s something that I think was the most important thing for me.
Did that desire to want to create a new area of representation, was that part of what helped you stick with the project for so long? Because I know you were announced to join the cast five years ago. So tell me what it was like working on that process for so long.
I guess it was so kind of eye-opening to see how difficult it was to get our story told. We had 16 different investors, which is a lot of investors, I’m sure you know, and it’s a very small budget. What we’re doing right now, now that the movie’s done, it’s really a grassroots movement. We don’t have money really to even press it. I mean, the fact that you even watched it really means a lot to us because we want people to feel seen and it’s so hard to be the only one to really for our community to sort of get it out there because there’s a lot of stigma, of shame. I think that’s something that we talk about in the movie, or we express how people really try to…I mean, they have an idea of what mental health is, but it’s not accurate. That if somebody takes medicine, it’s gonna permanently damage your brain. If somebody sees a therapist, they sound like a foreigner in their own community. That they want to perform an exorcism with Buddhist monks. These are all real things, and I think the fact that Irene sequestered herself to that degree. The loneliness that she felt, it did not help. How she made that decision in the end was because she was so isolated.
Tell me what was like working with your director, Eric Lin, who, amazingly, this is his feature film debut.
Tremendous work by someone who has been a cinematographer for a very long time and who took on a story that was not an easy story to tell. And also based on an article, a true story, and he was able to bring this beautiful, intimate, personal story to life in a way that is felt. There is something there that is very special and I’m so proud to have been part of that working relationship with him. And he’s a very kind and loving person. I spent a great deal of time with him and if you even started to speak to him even for five minutes, you would see what I’m saying. And I only wish great things for Eric, especially after this, for him to be received and to be, to work continually as a director, if that’s what he wants.
He brings a very considered, sympathetic energy to the story, and I think that’s also conveyed through your performance, which obviously has its fair share of highly emotional scenes. How did you prepare to get into such a potentially difficult head space, and what was it like coming out of that, if you had to at all, after the director yelled “cut”?
Well, first I wanna say, I’ll answer the second question, which was, I don’t even remember what happened because I was gone. I mean, I have to laugh because I think it was just so cathartic and so intense to fall into that space. Just thinking about it now is giving me the chills because it required a great deal of empathy for this character, and I really wanted to make sure that, you know, that she was seen as not a monster, but someone who was so loving and so terrified and wanted just to protect her son. And obviously the way that she does that is a very different interpretation from what most anyone would’ve done. But, you know, the humanity of her, and there’s ways to look at it in different ways of how the audience would receive it. And I think that is an important way into how I was able to kind of connect to Irene was through my own family, from my heritage, from my parents being immigrants and also knowing and feeling their interrogation of how they live their lives in America, to a degree.
It wasn’t just a simple life. It was a struggle and a feeling of great verbal violence and aggression for not speaking the language well. It was a very simple thing, asking where something is in a store and having that feeling of not belonging and also not wanting to be belonged. I think it’s a very difficult thing to watch as a child and to grow up with. It took me decades to find my own voice and to speak out because you learn from your family and I think that continues to transmit through your own life. And so I had to really unlearn a lot of things to be able to have a voice.
Speaking to your upbringing – this performance, you get to utilize both the languages you speak, Mandarin and English. What does it mean to be able to give a performance in both languages of yours, and did it affect your performance in any unexpected ways?
I think there’s a tenderness and there’s a smallness when you start to speak your own language. And when I say “smallness,” I felt young again, like a child. And I think there’s a feeling of vulnerability in there that really helped me to feel her vulnerability in a deep way. And it was such a beautiful way of reconnecting to myself and also seeing some of the traumatic history that we had growing up in New York as an immigrant family, and to really research and to dissect some of those moments. I mean, I don’t know if it was completely unraveled, but there was some things, the thread was pulled and there was an ability to, I guess, remember some things that I hadn’t remembered. And bring that to where Irene was. I think there’s a lot of grief that she’s going through and a lot of loss. And I can only imagine how my parents must have felt when they left everything behind separately and came to America and never really went back.
Your son in this film is also making his film debut, played by Lawrence Shou. What was it like working with him, with such a new actor?
Lawrence had a facility for expression and emotion even before he set foot on the location where we were shooting, and that’s why he was cast. He has a wonderful history with his own family. He speaks the language fluently, even more fluently than I do in, in fact. And there is a grace to how he performs, and a way that he can find into this character without encouraging an idea of something, but being it. And I think oftentimes people are playing what they believe schizophrenia is, and he was just in the essence of it. And there are a lot of people now who will film themselves on YouTube and talk about what they’re going through as they feel an episode coming on. So, without him having even done that, he was able to access that and bring it into his audition. And he’s just a wonderful, lovely person that earned this opportunity and many, many more to come. I’m absolutely thrilled for Lawrence.
So it sounds like you did your fair share of research and preparation for this role, obviously, but it being such a different role and even film from a lot of what’s in your filmography, did you approach the role differently than ones you’ve previously worked on?
Yes. I worked on the language a lot. Once we had the script, I then broke my own dialogue down and changed it because the English that was written, you couldn’t just say it in broken English. You had to really think with the mindset of the conjugation or the lack thereof. So, the word challenge and where it would land, but to still express it. So it had to be quite succinct. And I worked with this wonderful dialect coach, Doug Honorof, who speaks multiple languages and has just an incredible background in linguistics and history, and he was able to help me find a way through it.
And then we also changed some of the English into Mandarin because, some of it, she would naturally just say in her own language without thinking about it, and I think when she spoke English, it was more of an effort. And that created this layered history of how she was using her language and when she was using it. And I think that was the most important part of preparation for this character. And then once the language was there, all of it fell into place because you could really see where her vulnerability was and how she was saying something, or trying to say something. And especially, when she was with the therapist or the doctor, there’s this incredible awkwardness that she has that she doesn’t want to take up space.
Before I let you go, you mentioned earlier about how you really want as many people as possible to see this film for obvious reasons, and your film addresses some hefty topics of mental health that I’m sure many watching will be able to relate to. So what do you hope people get from “Rosemead”?
I hope that people who watch the movie can spark conversation within their own social circles and families. I think it’s a very simple idea, but it’s a very difficult thing to do. I think in the movie itself, even within her own family, she was unable to tell truths that were hard to hear, but important to talk about that could have helped her make better decisions. And it could have helped her son maybe be more expressive with what he was concerned about. And I think they were living in the same house, but they were emotionally connected. But, you know, they weren’t reading from the same book. And I think that’s such a tragic way to have that misinterpretation create this horrible ending.
Definitely. It’s such a powerful film and I think it’s impossible to not be affected by it. So I’m just so excited for more people to see it and to see your incredible performance. So, thank you so much, Lucy Liu.
Thank you very much. Nice to see you.
Before I let you go, I just have to tell you, my very good friend is Taiwanese-American, and he specifically wanted me to tell you that you were such a pivotal figure in his childhood and to thank you for being one of the areas of sparse representation that he had. So I just had to let you know for my friend Jon.
Please tell him thank you, and tell him that a lot of people from Taiwan actually helped fund this movie. People from our own community did this. And it wasn’t because of, you know, that they were gonna make their money back. It was about impact. So, tell him I’m proud of him.
I definitely will! Thank you so much.
Thank you, bye!
“Rosemead” opens in select theaters on December 5.
You can follow Cody and hear more of his thoughts on the Oscars and Film on Twitter @codymonster91
