Poppy Liu brings ‘I Love Boosters’ to a global level

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Zachary Lee: I heard you have a playlist for Jianhu and that “Meow” by Meovv was on it. What went into making the playlist for her, and how did that help you better understand your character?
Poppy Liu: I usually make a playlist for every character that I do. Music and smell are the fastest ways to get into a character emotionally. In addition to the playlist, I have a scent, perfume, or even a deodorant for the character. I think for one of my characters, the scent was literally Old Spice.

The scent I chose for Jianhu was a perfume I had, which wasn’t perfect–it was Woodforria. What I wanted was the smell of burning wood, but I can't really replicate that every morning in my hotel that well. As far as the playlist goes, when I would wake up at 5 a.m., I would literally put it on at max volume. I’d condition myself, and for two and a half months, “Meow” would wake me up every morning.

Initially, when I was making her playlist, I was really looking into revolutionary music, especially Chinese revolutionary music and workers' union songs, because that’s so much of her ethos, who she represents, and what she cares about. What I realized, though, was that all of it was probably me, Poppy, layering that onto her. I don’t know if Jianhu sees herself and says, “I’m a revolutionary.” I think more so, she thinks, “I just want to help my community. I want to help my family. I want us to have better working conditions. I want more rights for us.” Of course, that is literally the basis of what revolutions come from and what fuels them, but I don’t think she would self-identify as a revolutionary. 

Once I thought through that layer, I was like “Oh, she's just a young girl who is probably just into K-pop and Mando pop." Before she has her radicalized journey, she’s just f*cking around, playing hooky, and scrolling TikTok. So the playlist then became a lot of Mando pop and hype music.

ZL: On the note of the situational accelerator, I thought it was interesting to note that each character would hold the device differently. Jianhu holds it with comfort and glee. Were there conversations with Boots about how each character would hold the machine.
PL: I love that you’re looking at it from the lens of a character choice. When it came to holding the device, honestly, it was much more of a technicality thing. None of us knew what the VFX for that scene was going to look like, as we would hold the device and see what the stream out of it would look like. We had to take a leap of faith and have a suspension of disbelief, with the hope that in post-production it would all make sense.

The differences you notice in how we hold the machine, though, also speak to how the physical object of it ends up being a symbol for the things that we want the most. For Jianhu, it is a symbol of what she can do to help liberate my fellow workers. For a Corvette, it's the thing that can finally take Christie Smith down. Later on, we all handle the machine with less care. I also think that's because the characters at that point have changed, and maybe our objectives have changed at that point. Maybe it’s not the thing we always needed. It’s about the friends we made along the way.

ZL: I loved this quote you’ve shared for Queer Asian Social Club about how home is “a migratory seed that we can plant wherever we go.” I’m wondering how you see this connecting with the theme of class solidarity, where we see a beautiful image of people who may not even understand each other’s languages, but are united.
PL: I'm so glad you brought that up. Not only the international, global class solidarity piece, but also I loved Jianhu’s friendship with Corvette and Sade. It’s so special on so many levels. They realize they can lock in so quickly because they have shared objectives and motivations. They realize, “We have actual shared struggles beyond our cultural backgrounds.”

There’s a real ragged history around Black and Asian solidarity that Boots and I talked about. Historically in the U.S., there was the Yellow Peril and the Black Panther movement. There was a moment in which they were in coalition with each other. There was deliberate work to disband these communities because it is really powerful when they come together. The government, in its desire to oppress and control, uses propaganda to implant this sense of anti-Blackness that I think exists in a lot of Asian communities, when ultimately, we actually have more in common class-wise.

That Jianhu links up with these three Black girls in the story is something I love because it highlights this long lineage of Black and Asian solidarity. There was this false narrative of Asian Americans somehow feeling that if they lean into the model minority myth or emphasize proximity to whiteness, that it will save them. A lot of mainstream achievements of Asian American culture are celebrated in proximity to whiteness. In this film, the metrics of success are the opposite of that. It's the interclass, interracial, global solidarity piece that’s most important.

ZL: The film made me think about those who are on their own journey of radicalization, how they might wish for something like a situational accelerator so they can fast-track their growth. I’m curious about how the film made you reflect on this tension of, “I wish I could accelerate my growth sooner,” and “I need to trust the process.”
PL: I feel like we need to be transparent about not just our journey, but also what we didn't know before. I heard from a lot of, I think, seemingly well-meaning people who just  felt like the point of access was so out of reach for them. They were so scared of saying the wrong things, so scared of being canceled, so scared of not being accepted into activist communities, so they didn’t even take that first step. I think that actually is a larger conversation within justice movements of how we can make the point of entry more accessible and less daunting for people to enter into.

I really believe there's a lane for everybody, and not everyone is meant to be on the frontline, or not everyone has the skills to be an organizer. It takes time to figure out where you show up, and a lot of that's just being honest about what you're learning and what feels right, but also I think sharing that with other people, too, so that there's a stepping stone for them after you as well. I didn’t know sh*t for so long.

ZL: You shared in a quote about how, “cynics will shrug their shoulders and say it has always been like this, and maybe that is true, but part of the artist’s job is to imagine something other than this.” It made me think about how you do that in your doula work, where you’re helping people imagine new ways of caring for their bodies.
PL: I think in terms of imaginative filmmakers and people who are envisioning radical futures, Boots is at the top of that list. People talk about radical imagination as a way of showing social commentary or using satire as a way of reflecting on class struggle. We don't know what is possible for us if we can't imagine it. So we can't know what options we have for birth, unless someone lays it out and we're like, and we realize we have options. We can't create a different kind of future if we don’t have someone saying, “You’re not pigeonholed into being a puppet of capitalism.”

ZL: I know you lived in 13 different houses by the time you turned 18. How do you feel migration, the movement from China to Minnesota and back, has impacted and shaped your perception of community?
PL: My parents built a prayer into my Chinese name when I was born. I was born 刘方圆 (Líu Fāng Yuán) in Xi’An, China, named after the phrase 天地方圆 (tiān dì fāng yuán). When we immigrated to the U.S. when I was 2, we were all given English names picked from the Bible. I was named Christina. I never minded the name Christina; it just didn’t really feel like me, and it didn’t have any connection to my family or me. So in my early 20s, I renamed myself Poppy. Spiritually and symbolically, it felt like I was taking agency over my path and the future I wished to shape for myself. But I realize that my original name, the one my parents named me, the prayer they gave me, has followed and protected me my whole life.

I think many of us who are the kids of immigrants are highly adaptive. I am always joking that I can catfish in any direction, but it’s kind of true. Especially as a performer, everything is drag. I think because I can perform as many different people and can navigate so many different spaces, I am especially protective about my personal life and who I am with those closest to me. That is the truest community to me: my loved ones with whom I end the day, the ones who see me without any bells and whistles of performance.