‘Warrior’: Shannon Lee, Justin Lin Talk Bruce Lee, The Series & Legacy

Shannon Lee, Justin Lin and Jonathan Tropper are ready to send a message with Warrior, a series based off of an original concept from Bruce Lee.

Warrior premiered on Cinemax this past Friday and it touches on a ton of subjects still relevant today. The series was inspired by an original concept from Bruce Lee and it’s pretty good from what I’ve seen so far. We recently had the opportunity to chat with Bruce Lee’s daughter Shannon Lee and executive producers Justin Lin and Jonathan Tropper, and they gave us an inside look on what the show means and how hard it was to get it off the ground.

Nathaniel Brail: The role was originally intended for Bruce Lee, so when you cast Andrew Koji, did you look at him to embody Bruce Lee or was it just for the role?

Shannon Lee: Well, we definitely wanted him to embody the role more than anything because it’s an impossible task to ask somebody to be Bruce Lee, so we didn’t want to put that on him. My father’s philosophy is that you actualize as a human, so we should all walk our own paths. We’re not here to copy anyone else, but certainly we were just looking for somebody who could move, who could act… Andrew’s got this great soulfulness to him and he really dived in there, and I think he does a great job and looks phenomenal.

Nathaniel Brail: Was there anything else that you took from Bruce Lee? Like a fighting style?

Shannon Lee: Yeah, for sure. So the action is really thoughtful in the way that it is done and we definitely wanted to do little homages to my father throughout the show in many different ways, so if you’re a die hard Bruce Lee fan, as the series progresses you’ll see all the little Easter eggs that are planted in there, including the fighting style. Even in the pilot, he does the hands the way my father held them and certainly the journey of the main character over the long arc of the show is for him to evolve as a true warrior and to learn how to mature in that way because that’s not how he starts out. Even though he can fight and kick ass, mentally, emotionally and spiritually he’s not quite there yet. But, in terms of the world, I mean certainly there are characters who are more well-versed in kung fu and they are martial artists. But not everybody’s a martial artist. There are people who have hatchets and knives and there’s the Irish men who are boxing in that old style. So, we wanted to really have each character have their signature and not everybody just doing kung fu because that’s the world we’re in.

Nathaniel Brail: You’ve done big budget films like most of the Fast and Furious movies and Star Trek Beyond. How different is bringing Bruce Lee’s work to life and did you feel any pressure to honor his legacy?

Justin Lin: Oh, there was a lot of pressure, but in a good way. That’s why I was saying that I wanted to make sure that… I didn’t want to… there were times on this and the development on this took a while and there were times where I was ready to shut it down. Again, I didn’t have to make this and until we found the right partner, I didn’t want to continue, and so part of this process that I enjoy and I treasure is the discussions ya know — it’s how we were able to build it. When Jonathan came on to have the right conversation about how we were gonna build it when we cast… that was another point where I was like ‘if we don’t create the right process and no one comes in and takes it, let’s not do it.’ It’s a luxury. I didn’t think this project needed to exist unless we had the right partner.

Nathaniel Brail: Did you always intend for the series to be as gory and as bloody as it was?

Jonathan Tropper: Do you think it’s gory?

Nathaniel Brail: I think it’s gory.

Jonathan Tropper: I mean my last show was like that as well. I think part of embracing the pulp style is to find that balance and to sort of celebrate a little bit of this stuff more conventional dramas have glossed over. And at the same time, we want the martial arts to be consequential. Martial Arts have become a little bit sterile on television lately where people throw a lot of kicks and punches and no one seems to really be getting hurt. So we want to see that. Legs break, arms break, knuckles break, noses break. We made sure that all that was being represented in our fights.

What do you think about Shannon Lee, Justin Lin and Jonathan Tropper’s comments? Will you tune into Warrior? Are you a Bruce Lee fan? Let us know in the comments!

The CINEMAX drama series WARRIOR begins its ten-episode season FRIDAY, APRIL 5 (10:00–11:00 p.m. ET/PT), it was announced today by Kary Antholis, president, HBO Mini-series and CINEMAX Programming. Filmed in Cape Town, South Africa, the show is based on writings of martial arts legend Bruce Lee, and created and executive produced by Jonathan Tropper (CINEMAX’s “Banshee”) under Tropper Ink Productions and Justin Lin on behalf of Perfect Storm Entertainment.

WARRIOR is a gritty, action-packed crime drama set during the brutal Tong Wars of San Francisco’s Chinatown in the second half of the 19th century. The series follows Ah Sahm, a martial arts prodigy who emigrates from China to San Francisco under mysterious circumstances and becomes a hatchet man for one of Chinatown’s most powerful tongs (Chinese organized crime family).

Led by Andrew Koji, who plays Ah Sahm, series regulars also include Kieran Bew, Olivia Cheng, Dianne Doan, Dean Jagger, Langley Kirkwood, Hoon Lee, Christian McKay, Joe Taslim, Jason Tobin, Joanna Vanderham, Tom Weston-Jones and Perry Yung.

WARRIOR is produced for CINEMAX by Perfect Storm Entertainment, Tropper Ink Productions and Bruce Lee Entertainment; created and executive produced by Jonathan Tropper. Justin Lin and Danielle Woodrow executive produce on behalf of Perfect Storm Entertainment. Shannon Lee executive produces for Bruce Lee Entertainment. 

Executive produced by Brad Kane and co-executive produced by Richard Sharkey. Pilot was executive produced by Assaf Bernstein.”

Warrior airs Fridays at 10pm on Cinemax.