Actor Jing Lusi talks to Adam Bloodworth in The City A.M. Magazine about Asian representation, her new leading role in ITV drama Red Eye and why she loves roast chicken
This is probably the role I’ve wanted most in my life,” says Jing Lusi, who doesn’t seem the type to resort to hyperbole. We’re in a hipster coffee shop surrounded by androgynous Gen-Z Central Saint Martins students, busy making roll ups. Lusi, most famously from Crazy Rich Asians, has had major roles in Netflix’s Heart of Stone and Amazon Prime drama Gangs of London, so what’s so incredible about Red Eye, the ITV thriller launching this April?
“To see an Asian female actor in a UK leading role, for me it’s precedent setting,” says Lusi, stirring her flat white. “Because we haven’t had that before. I think it might be the beginning.” Indeed, there has not been an East Asian female lead on a UK primetime drama – until this. Lusi will play Hana Li, a police detective investigating the alleged murder of the daughter of a Chinese diplomat by a British scientist, played by Richard Armitage. “She’s just an ordinary girl,” says Lusi of her detective on the new ITV thriller.
“An Asian being ordinary on screen in this country is extraordinary. I’ve had some really amazing moments on film sets, running through beautiful locations in socks with Gal Gadot in Heart of Stone, but there was a scene in ITV’s Red Eye with my family eating a roast dinner. When I found out about that I nearly burst into happy tears because I was about to have dinner with my Chinese parents and it was, I shit you not, roast chicken. I don’t know if people will even notice, but for us to not be eating noodles, chowmein, or dumplings. For us to just be sitting around having a roast: that blows my mind.”
How much proof do we need that Asian stories matter? Do you want the money or the critical acclaim? You have both! Almost everything Awkwafina and Michelle Yeoh touch turns touches to gold, literally, in the form of a statue
Jing Lusi on the lack of East Asian storytelling
White scriptwriter Peter A. Dowling edited his script after conversations with Lusi about authenticity, something that made the actor “feel heard.” Lusi also went shopping for the character’s clothes herself. “There are so many similarities between me and Hana,” she says. “I just knew who she was. This was so perfect for me. Where does she end and where do I start?” Lusi had her breakthrough – like so many British actors – in Holby City playing doctor Tara Lo in 2012, and has worked steadily since.
Red Eye: series begins on ITV this month
When not acting or walking her “still sprightly” 10-year-old dog on Hampstead Heath, Lusi is writing. A script for a televised adaptation of an “iconic” ‘90s rom-com has been commissioned, in which she plays the lead, and she has adapted another book for film, about which she remains tight-lipped. Her aim with her work is clear: to do more of what Red Eye hopes to achieve, putting the lives of ordinary East Asian people in front of mainstream audiences.
She says of representation right now: “I see it a lot on screen and on stage – they feel like if they cast a black actor, that’s done. Okay, but what about literally everything in-between? It’s baffling. Especially when you watch hospital dramas. What ethnicity has the most doctors? I mean, come on. When I was in Holby City I was the only one. It’s not reflective of real life and it is really weird. It is baffling to me: we talk about diversity on screen but are we talking from a corporate standpoint where you tick boxes or from a perspective where it’s actually diverse? Those dots haven’t been connected yet.
“You walk down the street and see yourself reflected back but you’re not seeing it on screen. Diversity isn’t black or white – literally – it’s all the other ethnicities, it’s everything. It’s a melting pot and it’s what’s so beautiful about life. And the more we polarise what diversity is the more everything else in the middle falls through the net.”
The UK lags behind America in terms of representation, where projects like Everything Everywhere All At Once, Beef and The Farewell have rewritten the rules, garnering critical and commercial success. One West End musical about Sheffield recently cast no Asians despite them being the area’s largest ethnic minority. And the lead in Kim’s Convenience also said she’d “love to see more Asians on London stages.” But Lusi refuses to move Stateside to capitalise on better work opportunities for East Asians when there’s a problem to fix at home.
“If you’re talking about box office, or awards, they’ve done that in the US. The model is there. Why are we not supplying it here? I don’t know what the next version of Red Eye is, I haven’t seen it. I would have read it by now – it’s just not there. This is why I’m so confused. How much proof do we need that this is a successful model? Do you want the money or the critical acclaim? You have both! Almost everything Awkwafina and Michelle Yeoh touch turns touches to gold, literally, in the form of a statue.”
She catches herself a little, clearly not wanting to sound ungrateful. “So much of this is not about me,” she says. “I’m so lucky, I cannot tell you how grateful I feel. This is about everyone behind me. If we can make Asian leads a bog standard thing to be happening, so many people will benefit. For those that haven’t had the opportunity, I want them to feel what it’s like to do the thing that you love.”
ITV’s Red Eye starts on 21 April at 9pm
The City A.M. Magazine is out now and features 90 pages of luxury lifestyle storytelling, including an interview with Keir Starmer, Top Boy’s Micheal Ward on returning to his teenage love of football, what it means to be middle aged right now and what it’s like to visit former gang territories in Colombia. Also inside, food inspiration, why allotments are the new members’ clubs, a spectacular pink Rolls Royce goes on tour through France and there’s a food tour of Vietnam.
Read more on Asian representation: Opinion: Standing at the Sky’s Edge erases Sheffield’s Asian population