Lucy Liu

Chris Brown is in the news again. And that means that people are publicly relearning and relitigating his history of violence toward women. Many of us are wanting to be protective of black men and boys to the point that we're unwilling to hold them accountable for the things that they do to women and girls. Listen to NPR's Code Switch podcast in the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Fresh Air, I'm Tanya Mosley.

My guest today is Lucy Lou. Over the past three decades, Lou has become one of the most recognizable faces in film and television. From her breakout role on Allie McBeale to the stylized violence of Kill Bill and her reinvention of Dr. Watson on Elementary, Lou has expanded representation of Asian American women on screen. She also directs and creates visual art, exhibiting her mixed media work internationally.

Her latest project is a film she spent years shepherding, and as the lead, she takes on one of the most emotionally layered roles of her career. It tells the story of Irene, a terminally ill Chinese immigrant living in California's San Gabriel Valley, who discovers that her teenage son, who has schizophrenia, has become fixated on school shootings. In a community where mental illness is rarely discussed openly, Irene confronts this fear largely on her own, and as her own time runs out, she becomes haunted by a question she can't escape. What if her son becomes violent? In the end, she chooses to take matters into her own hands by choosing violence herself.

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