Warrior who is it based on

But because Warrior feels like a deliberate tribute to grindhouse movies, it all sort of fits. Sadly, the untimely demise of Cinemax in means that Warrior is effectively canceled. I hope it does. The penultimate episode of season two, a violent clash in Chinatown following the lynching of a Chinese man — based on the real-world San Francisco Riot of — feels like a culmination of the series, despite the cliffhanger that follows in the next episode.

Ultimately, the episode that best encapsulates Warrior for me is a season one installment in which a spaghetti-Western-style shootout erupts in a saloon in Grass Valley, Nevada. The small business is owned and operated by a former Chinese railroad laborer who toiled for decades before using his long-saved earnings to build a homestead in the middle of nowhere with his American wife.

Their life feels like the realization of a humble immigrant fantasy that, suddenly sieged by violence, is as precarious as it is rare. Warrior is streaming on HBO Max.

For more recommendations from the world of culture, check out the One Good Thing archives. Our mission has never been more vital than it is in this moment: to empower through understanding. Financial contributions from our readers are a critical part of supporting our resource-intensive work and help us keep our journalism free for all. Please consider making a contribution to Vox today to help us keep our work free for all. Cookie banner We use cookies and other tracking technologies to improve your browsing experience on our site, show personalized content and targeted ads, analyze site traffic, and understand where our audiences come from.

By choosing I Accept , you consent to our use of cookies and other tracking technologies. Reddit Pocket Flipboard Email. Warrior follows the Hop Wei, a powerful tong that deals opium, in their power struggles during the San Francisco Tong Wars of the s. Olivia Cheng plays the madam Ah Toy, based on a real-life frontier sex worker. The character of Dylan Leary played by Dean Jagger is based on a real labor organizer and anti-Chinese agitator. It's an excellent opportunity to practice some of my life skill sets.

I've been hanging in there okay. I've been healthy. My family has been healthy. It's really a good time to practice being in the flow, being with oneself, noticing what comes up and working towards that sense of peace, that sense of inner calm that we really need to try to retain as we stay present with current circumstances.

Congratulations on a second season of "Warrior. For our viewers and readers who are brand new to "Warrior," can you give them just a brief synopsis of the world you've created?

Thank you. A martial arts prodigy who comes over from China into the United States gets swept up in the Tong Wars of the time that are happening in Chinatown, as well as the politics at the time. This is a time and place in America right before the Chinese Exclusion Act was written into law. We have different factions against one another, not just the Tongs within Chinatown, but the police, the Irish labor workers, the politicians of the time.

It's a very high tension, beautiful period piece, but also it feels very modern and contemporary. It's very relatable and let's not forget it's got lots of amazing martial arts action. The original script and story was developed by your dad, Bruce Lee.

How long ago? Fifty years this show has been in the making. At what point did you feel you wanted to just tackle this and bring it to life? Is this something that happened a few years ago or was this already in you from 20 years ago? Well, I wish I could say I had a plan in place but look, everything of my dad's that I work with, it is my absolute honor and joy to try to bring forth and into the world. I've known about this story my whole life really. He was writing it right around the time I was born.

I knew the story of him pitching it and being rejected and being told he couldn't star in a U. TV show because he was Chinese and all of these things. And then later in my 20s, when I started reading his writings and then later when I started running the business, I came across the actual pages. And I would love to say at that moment I was like "Okay, I'm going to figure out how to make this show.

But what it really took to get this off the ground was Justin Lin coming in and saying to me, he called me up and he said, "So I've heard this story over the years that your father wrote this show that he pitched and was turned down and rejected and all that.

Is that true? And not only is it true, here it is. He said to me, "We should make this into a TV show but we should only make it if we make it the right way. In terms of the research for this show, I imagine you had to do so much digging. Being a minority myself, I understand that different parts of my history are fragmented and not celebrated and there's so many pieces missing.

For this story, we're talking about the fire, we're talking about what people were able to document and hold on to, and even if you're trying to dig into those primary documents like newspapers, you have to questions like, "Was the journalist an honest person? Yes, thank you. As you said, there are books about the era. There are things to research and articles and all that sort of thing. But as you mentioned, there was a fire in San Francisco during which a lot of records were lost, a lot of the stories.

People are like, "What's the Chinese Exclusion Act? And so yes, Jonathan Tropper did a phenomenal job. Yeah, they gave me a brief description of it. They went through a rigorous process of picking people for the show who were gonna be a good fit. We were shooting in South Africa. You really wanna get that right. Were there any specific directions from Justin Lin or anyone about how the fight scenes should be handled? He wanted to make things authentic to martial arts. For all the things to gel well together, we created the most efficient ways to deal with situations when you have to get into fights and whatnot.

Or if you come across a bunch of angry Tongs with hatchets [ laughs ]. Jonathan, he does write a lot of the action—and him and I talk about it—and he tells me what kind of gruesomeness we want to see in certain scenes. When I build the fights, I have to build it according to the characters. Before we get into choreography, I talk to the actors; I see what character they play in the script and how they want to go with it, and I can tailor each style to each kind of person.

Yeah, that was intentional. I basically gathered my team from around the world—a lot of people from China, from Korea, from the U. I try and make my pieces a little well-rounded, so even though I have six Chinese guys [in a fight], their martial arts are all a little bit different.

Obviously, the fact that this show is based on something Bruce Lee initially came up with is a big selling point. Are viewers going to pick up on a very specific Bruce Lee homage at any point in the show? Are there any other fighting forms that were utilized?