Poppy Liu is seemingly entering a new phase as an actress.
In her latest film, the Boots Riley-directed I Love Boosters, the actress stars alongside names such as Keke Palmer, Demi Moore, Taylour Paige, Eiza Gonzalez, Naomi Ackie and Lakeith Stanfield. “This level of visibility or mainstream-ness feels really new, and like I’m in real time still wrapping my head around that,” Liu tells The Hollywood Reporter on a recent Zoom.
On one hand, she’s closing a chapter — Hacks, where she first found mainstream Hollywood success, has ended. On another hand, she’s preparing to dive headfirst into a slew of projects.
Liu stars alongside Stephanie Hsu and Andrew Liu in a new Netflix adult animated comedy, Dang! She’s working on a new feature that she describes as an “erotic horror” about a character she plays that has “a sexual awakening” in the form of a ghost from the Chinese Exclusion Act period.
Then there’s the Chinese American western she’s been trying to find the shape of. ”That’s been a dream project and a thing that’s been on my mind for a long time,” she says.
“It feels exciting that Boosters is the kickoff for this era,” adds Liu. “It feels fitting.”
Below, the actress digs into working with Riley, why she loves films that “Trojan Horse” social commentary, the importance of mutual aid and how she’s feeling about Hacks ending.
What was it like working with Boots Riley?
He’s a bucket list director that I have wanted to work with. I admire him so much. His voice is utterly singular as an artist. I love the maximalism, the absurdism. I love that he uses satire and surrealism as a way to make very poignant social commentary. Sometimes I get the ick when people are writing stuff about social justice or whatever and I’m like, yeah, but there’s a way for you to also show up in your own life in that way too with the things that are happening around you. Seeing a lot of people not step up to the plate versus Boots, he’s walked the walk for forever. He’s so about this. It just makes me respect his work that much more because I know the kind of life that he leads. I know what his values are and what he cares about. I do feel like the artist outside of the art matters.
He’s known for using these surreal settings and absurdist ideas to make genuine commentary. What is it about this kind of story that draws you in?
With the absurdism and social commentary piece, I kind of like that it’s a little bit of a Trojan horse. Even with the color and the fashion and everything. Maybe you’re drawn in, or even based on what the trailer looks like, you’re like, “Oh, this is going to be a fun, awesome fashion heist.” You come out of it and realize this is about global class solidarity and how all of our oppressions are interlinked, etc., etc. But I feel like the veneer of the fashion and the beauty, and the humor of it, is part of what lets your guard come down. There’s people that have an immediate allergic reaction to social commentary, which is wild because every aspect of your life is political. It’s a willing blind eye to not see it that way, but sure, it’s your prerogative. Whereas, I think that people don’t really have the chance to put up that defense ahead of time [with Boots’ films] because there’s too much else happening in this world and there’s too many interesting and wild things going on. You’re drawn in for all these different reasons, and then the story unfolds as it does. That ability to disarm somebody through art and through story and through beauty is a very, very important form of soft power.
There is a weird aspect of this job. You have these red carpet premieres with a opulence and these award shows. Even though sometimes it feels like the world is burning. I wonder how you deal with it yourself. It’s a part of your job, but sometimes it is hard, I think, to reconcile that within yourself.
It’s honestly really front of mind for me a lot. Just there’s the cognitive dissonance, a bit, of it all and also this is part of … I don’t know, I’ve only been working in Hollywood for the last seven years. For most of my adult life, most of my 20s, I was just doing very indie, hyper-indie, grassroots [projects], mostly theater. Even the filmmaking was a very indie level. Even working in Hollywood, most of it has been TV, which I’m just learning is a really different beast than the visibility of film. This is the first high profile film that I’ve done. This is my first theatrical release film. I think the only other films I’ve done have been straight to streaming. I’ve had premieres for the shows. I’ve done the circus and the performance of the press, the bells and whistles that come with it and all of that. This level of visibility or mainstreamness feels really new, and like I’m in real time still wrapping my head around that.
What do you think is different?
In the past, working on stuff, especially story that has meaning and with friends and whatever, it’s almost like we’re just conversing amongst each other. You just get to be in your bubble of community. The net hasn’t been cast this wide before. People like Keke [Palmer] and Eiza [Gonzalez], I have a lot of admiration for how long they’ve been under the spotlight. How everything is under such public scrutiny, especially being a young person and still figuring yourself out and making mistakes. I’m a grown adult at this point. I didn’t join Hollywood until my frontal lobe was developed, so even if people are mad at me or something’s going [on], I can put it in perspective. I know what matters and what doesn’t matter.
Do you have thoughts on this in the context of I Love Boosters specifically?
We’re promoting this particular film, and there’s so many themes of anti-capitalism and global class solidarity and revolution. This is the movie, and we obviously want people to see it and we believe in it, but also we’re performing capitalism at its highest in order to do that also. It’s like, how do you grapple with that? Maybe you don’t. If I wasn’t in the movie doing this and watching it, I probably would also be like, what? I think having this realization in it — we are performing this because we are also the commodity too. We’re selling the movie, but we’re also selling ourselves and this is the commodity and the performance is part of the labor. I can write an essay about this.
It’s very interesting because if you make a movie about these ideas and then no one sees it, is that helping?
If it does really well, then you’re peak capitalism, but then it’s like… we’re all complicit under capitalism.
Exactly.
Obviously, in so many ways the hypocrisy is unavoidable on so many levels. I can [talk about] worker exploitation [but] I’m talking to you on my iPhone, probably made in Congo. I held off on getting a new one as long as I could, but then still was like, “Oh, fine. I’ll trade it and get an iPhone 16.” Sometimes I think about this too — knowing also Boots’ revolutionary spirit and what the takeaway is — just how daunting it can be when what we’re up against is something like capitalism. Who ethically can even speak on that? Nobody. Also what do we do? It can be so debilitating, which I think is also a method of the ruling class to make you feel so hopeless you can’t do a single thing.
How do you aim to combat that?
The practical thing that I can touch and hold onto is mutual aid. I actually feel like the evil of buying into the system is actually the evil of believing the lie that it is every man for himself. That it is an individualistic thing. We live collectively, and we live interdependently. At the end of the day, I care less about where maybe someone is on a political spectrum than I do about [whether they’re] practicing mutual aid with their community. During a time of crisis, who do you show up as? Are you the person that’s responsible for the people around you? [Are you] going to do what you can? Or are you like, “Fuck off, I got mine. The hell with the rest of you.”
Going back to I Love Boosters, something you said at the SXSW screening made me pause. You said you lived in “windowless” hotel bedrooms in Atlanta. Please tell me more about that.
Thank you for bringing this up. It’s actually a beautiful hotel. It’s called Forth Hotel. It’s kind of newish, but their second floor is their longer term stay floor, and it’s a nice apartment. You have a little kitchenette and a living room, but it’s just that the placement of the bedroom because it’s long, it’s kind of railroad style. It’s just one long hallway that goes to the end. The window could have been for bedroom or for living room, and they chose for living room, so the bedroom is within a windowless, completely pitched black cave. When you have a long day on set and you just go to pass out … I have slept in that room for 15 hour stretches at a time.
I feel like that would be an incredible sleep.
Is an incredible sleep, but also at some point your circadian rhythm doesn’t know anything anymore. As your film days get longer throughout the week, and then you’re starting at 4 p.m. finishing at 5 a.m. or 6 a.m., you go to sleep then you have days without seeing sunlight because you’re just asleep in your windowless room during those hours. There’s no idea what’s going on out in the world. It’s quite a liminal space being on set.
I’d love to quickly chat about what Hacks ending means to you? It was such a pivotal moment for your career.
It feels kind of like graduating from high school. Cue the Vitamin C “Graduation” song. Especially for my character, Kiki, since I’m not there all the time. I just bop in, bop out. It’s not so much that my daily life is that different now than it is the emotional feeling of an era coming to an end, and that era just spanning some really pivotal milestone moments for all of us. We started filming in 2020 during COVID, everything was covered in saran wrap. Everyone was spraying down the vegetables. We all had the masks, the visor. I was living in an RV during this time to do social distancing and hadn’t moved to L.A. I was still living in New York, I lived out of an RV for a little bit, and then the show came out and also the vaccine came out. The world opened back up again, but now with this show emerging. And it was such a huge hit. For my career, it really marked the beginning of [something]. I have been working ever since, which I feel really, really grateful for. I feel like Hacks was really the catalyst.