Spike presents the follow-up to 2007’s animated series Afro Samurai with the original movie Afro Samurai: Resurrection, premiering Jan. 25. Set in a lawless world that is part feudal Japan and part future wasteland, solitary warrior Afro fights demons from his past while battling would-be assassins at every turn. Samuel L. Jackson returns as the voices of Afro and his sidekick Ninja Ninja. Joining the voice cast are Lucy Liu as Afro’s new nemesis, Sio, and Mark Hamill as Bin, Sio’s servant.
Bent on revenge against Afro, the cunning and beautiful Sio isn’t your typical baddie, and Liu made it a point not to play her like one. “I definitely didn’t want to make her somebody who was dastardly,” Liu says. “I just wanted to have some sort of a personal value in her character so that you can connect with the audience.”
In the chaotic fantasy world of Afro Samurai, where good and evil are relative, it’s hard not to sympathize with Sio. “The reason for her revenge seemed very heartfelt, which was connected to her brother,” Liu says. “She loved her brother and she was doing it because of that love. So it wasn’t just purely evil, and I think that always connects people to something that they can relate to and makes the story much stronger in the end.”
Liu, who has lent her voice to many animated TV and movie projects (such as last year’s Kung Fu Panda), likes the opportunity to inhabit characters and do things you can’t do in a live-action picture. “I think that’s kind of a lovely thing to kind of really go out there and go for something that you probably wouldn’t do in film,” she explains. “I think there’s a great freedom in that it allows you to have fun and do things that you probably wouldn’t be able to do on television because it would come off as soapy.”
Having played O-Ren Ishii in Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill: Vol. 1, Liu is no stranger to martial arts revenge sagas. So who does Liu think would win a fight between Sio and O-Ren? “It’s hard to say,” Liu says, mulling it over before picking her sentimental favorite. “Of course O-Ren Ishii has something that I very much connect to in the way that I actually played her and physicalized her, so she’s a much more tender character to me than Sio, because I only voiced her. But they’re both pretty fierce! In a fight, I would have to go with O-Ren.”
