I really have to give Net-a-porter’s relatively new online magazine (The Edit) a lot of credit – they’re doing a better job with interesting editorials and celebrity profiles than most fashion magazines. The Edit also skews older too – they’re not parading 20-something celebrities on their covers. Which is nice, because women in their 40s don’t drop off the face of the earth, you know? Their current cover girl is Lucy Liu, current star of CBS’s Sherlock Holmes drama, Elementary, starring Lucy as Dr. Watson and Jonny Lee Miller as Sherlock.
I watched the first few episodes of Elementary last fall, then I missed a chunk of about six episodes in the middle, and then I started watching it again. I started watching it again because it got really good once they stopped with the “Watson is a sober companion” storyline and she became his assistant/intern/co-investigator. The pace picked up significantly and if you’re looking for a decent detective show, this is it. Anyway, Elementary’s two-hour finale is tonight and I’m really looking forward to it! Jonny is a decent Sherlock – he’s not as immature and abrasive as Benedict Cumberbatch’s Sherlock – and Jonny and Lucy have a great deal of chemistry. Surprisingly, their chemistry isn’t sexual in the least. They just seem like they like each other and enjoy each other’s company, which is exactly how it should be between Watson and Holmes.
Anyway, in The Edit interview, Lucy talks a little bit about her Hollywood journey and Hollywood typecasting. To be fair to Lucy, she’s not yelling “Racism!” at everyone, and she doesn’t name names, but you get the feeling that she’s experienced a lot of subtle and unsubtle racism:
Her family: “They wanted me to have a nine-to-five job with a title… My brother, John, let me stay in his apartment. There was no kitchen, it was just a room, and I slept on the floor with him, while his roommate was on a bunk bed. He also paid off my credit card from college. Without him, I don’t think I could have taken [acting] on.”
The daughter of educated Chinese immigrants who worked menial jobs in America: “After their struggle, they just really wanted to see me struggle in a different way, in a more obvious way, maybe something they could understand – she’s at college struggling, but then she will be a banker or a doctor. They understood that.”
Looking younger than her 44 years: she attributes it to “good Asian genes”
She wishes she wasn’t typecast: “I wish people wouldn’t just see me as the Asian girl who beats everyone up, or the Asian girl with no emotion. People see Julia Roberts or Sandra Bullock in a romantic comedy, but not me. You add race to it, and it became, ‘Well, she’s too Asian’, or, ‘She’s too American’. I kind of got pushed out of both categories. It’s a very strange place to be. You’re not Asian enough and then you’re not American enough, so it gets really frustrating.”
Racism in Hollywood: “[I had to] push a lot just to get in the room… I can’t say that there is no racism – there’s definitely something there that’s not easy, which makes [an acting career] much more difficult.”
What’s interesting is that Elementary is sort of set up like a romance because Holmes and Watson are so withholding with each other, and when they do have a brief moment of emotion and connection, it’s extremely powerful (and kind of sexy). But yeah, I think Lucy might have been typecast a little as Joan Watson – why does the Chinese girl always got to play the DOCTOR? And the Indian girl will always be good at math and spelling bees. Racism!
Photos courtesy of Net-a-Porter.
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