All language subtitles for Becoming Warrior Part 7 The Series Cinemax.en

Martial art
has a very, very deep meaning

as far as my life is concerned
because, uh... as an actor,

as a martial artist,
as a human being,

all these I have learned
from martial art.

♪ (WESTERN MUSIC PLAYS) ♪

(SWORD RINGS)

You know, when we first started
talking about this show,

it was ahead of its time,
I think,

when Bruce Lee was typing it up
and coming up with the idea,

but it felt like we kinda
brought that to life

exactly as written,
we're not doing it justice

because so much time has lapsed,
and the medium has also evolved.

We felt like it was important
to build this world.

It takes place
in 1800s San Francisco.

At the same time,
it's very contemporary.

We really wanted to create
three very specific worlds.

We wanted the world
of Chinatown,

which is our primary world.

We also wanted a world
of the working-class Irish

to see how they're living
and they're sparring

with the Chinese,

and we wanted the aristocrats
and the politicians

because it was really important
to me to convey

how the decisions were happening
really,

at the top
of the government chain

that were affecting the laborers
in Chinatown.

The San Francisco of our show
is a seething cauldron

of intolerance and tension.

Chinese labor
is just flowing in rapidly.

A lot of the Irishmen
who have been the workers

of the area are being pushed out
for Chinese laborers

who would work for pennies
but what happened was

Chinatown kinda grew and became
its own world.

San Francisco's
sort of a microcosm

for the United States
at this point.

It's sort of a powder keg moment
and a tipping point

in racial relations
for the Chinese community

as we start to climb
towards the legislation in 1882

of the Chinese Exclusion Act.

Many people never even heard
of the Chinese Exclusion Act.

It's a period of history
that's been glossed over,

and it was a very harsh
immigration policy

that targeted
one race of people.

Chinese people
could not own property.

Chinatowns, a lot of them,
became sort of the boundaries

within which they were allowed
to be.

I think back to when
I was in high school,

and you know,
you take history class,

US history class,

and there's literally, you know,
a four-sentence paragraph

about the Chinese-American
experience,

and they helped build
our country.

And for me, personally, I think
it was important to tell a story

of a character that's going
through that journey,

that American immigrant story
we can all relate to.

JONATHAN TROPPER:
We wanted to take this time
in history and take the racism

and take
the immigrant experience

but move it into, you know,

a more elaborate
and heightened world,

a world where we could
also have fun

and generate a level
of pulp and action.

My father did that in his films.

He had amazing,
entertaining action.

He had humor, and then
you also got to sprinkle in

some of the philosophy,
some of the seriousness,

some of the deeper messages,

and this show
is exactly the same.

It's very Bruce Lee.

BRUCE LEE:

When I set out making the show,

you know,
because Shannon's involved,

and I knew that the fans
of Bruce Lee

were gonna scrutinize this,
I wanted to give them

-a lot of to sort of grab onto.
-(GRUNTING)

There are moments
where I slip in

some of his famous phrases
into the dialogue.

There's other times
where certain fight moves

we steal right out
of Bruce Lee movies,

and it's all done really
to pay respect to the master.

It was really, how do we
pay homage to Bruce Lee,

and at the same time,
create our own show?

Bruce Lee has this idea
that our warrior, Ah Sahm,

would form some kind
of relationship

with a cop named Big Bill,
so I definitely wanted

to take that name and take
that idea that Bruce had

-and build on it.
-The character of Ah Sahm

was a character
who came from China

and came over to America,
you know, searching for someone,

and then Big Bill was sort of
his adversary/friend

who sometimes was described
as a drunk,

sometimes as just sort of
a loud Irishman,

but those two characters
really stood out on the page.

In this world, Ah Sahm is like
the draft version of Bruce Lee.

We really wanted to get away
from the tropes

of the 70s and 80s Hong Kong
action movies,

where the martial arts hero

is this sort of pure soul
on a quest.

We took Ah Sahm and wanted
to make him really human,

with flaws, and you know,
he's very reckless,

he's impulsive. He doesn't
always think things through,

and he's very much
the antithesis

of what Bruce Lee would've been.

The goal was not to make Ah Sahm
a clone of Bruce Lee,

so what we do instead is
we find ways of inserting

some of the Bruce Lee philosophy
into all of our characters.

BRUCE:

When people see this show,

I think they're going
to be surprised.

There's a lot
of preconceived notions.

When people hear Bruce Lee,
they hear martial arts.

Of course, there's great action

but I think
they're gonna be surprised

how emotionally involved
they're gonna be,

and we have the ability
to able to take the audience

into different points of view.

These are compelling characters,

not just Ah Sahm,
not just Big Bill.

When you watch the show,
you're gonna see that

we care about every frame,
every second of this story.

DANIELLE WOODROW:
We honored Bruce Lee's legacy

and what his real hope
for the show was.

I hope that the picture
I am in...

would either explain
why the violence was done,

whether right or wrong
or whatnot.

(SWORD RINGS)

♪ (WESTERN MUSIC PLAYS) ♪

-(CROWD YELLING)
-(SWORD RINGS)