Warrior fought to be a show revolving around Asian characters

Vanity Fair

The Asian characters are the most important ones on the Cinemax series inspired by Bruce Lee's writings, and they are not exoticized or stereotyped as “inscrutable.” “The heroes of our show completely take the ‘model minority’ narrative and flip it on its a**," says Warrior star Olivia Cheng. Warrior is one of the rare shows with a large number of actors of Asian descent, a short list that includes The Terror Season 2, Wu Assassins and Marco Polo. Warrior executive producer Justin Lin recalled shopping the show around -- and leaving with the impression that the show would be better off with a white protagonist. “When it comes to a commitment to (spending) tens of millions of dollars, people can talk about inclusion and diversity, but they also tend to be very conservative,” Lin said. “When we presented the fact that we wanted to have all these three-dimensional Asian American characters, there was a price point, you know?” But, as executive producer Jonathan Tropper notes, the Asian characters were always “the purpose of the show.” Warrior also tries to combat Asian stereotypes by having Chinese characters speak in unaccented English. “I remember in season one, Henry Yuk, who played (tong leader) Long Zii, said to me, ‘Jonathan, I really want to thank you for a role where I get to use pronouns,’” Tropper recalls. “Because he was often cast as the wise old Chinese man who would speak in broken English.”

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• Warrior faces an uncertain future, but it's still worth watching in Season 2: "Similar to the fourth season of Noah Hawley’s Fargo, Warrior explores America’s racial history and its intersection with the immigrant experience—it shows how, in a nation of immigrants, nonwhite people are seldom considered 'American' by their white peers," says Miles Surrey. "But unlike Fargo Season 4, which is mired in too many overwrought monologues about America to have any fun, Warrior makes itself an extremely entertaining watch through the prioritization of bountiful a**-kicking. With Warrior, you’re guaranteed at least one epic action scene per episode, and one of the joys of the show is that each fight has its own unique flavor. In the hands of series fight coordinator Brett Chan, Warrior flexes a mix of different fighting styles and settings—from face-offs involving judo and taekwondo to street duels with hatchets and drunk Irish blokes bare-knuckle boxing outside a bar. It’s especially thrilling when these different fighting styles intersect; watching a racist Irishman get dropped like a sack of potatoes will never get old."
• From 21 Jump Street to Warrior, Dustin Nguyen is an inclusion pioneer: "Usually, it’s me and when I look around there might be another Asian actor or two," says Nguyen. "For me, this is the first project with a huge Asian cast. I look around and I’m surrounded by my peers."