Bruce Lee's Daughter Revives His Lost TV Project

Shannon Lee brought her dad's long lost TV series to life, nearly 50 years after his death. Special thanks to Warrior on Cinemax.

Transcript

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.