Lucy Liu has become quite well known for her kick ass roles in films from Charlie's Angels to Kill Bill to even Ballistic: Ecks Vs. Sever. Even dramas like Lucky Number Slevin allow her to be a spunky femme fatale. Code Name: The Cleaner turns some of that on its head, pairing her up with Cedric the Entertainer as an amnesiac janitor involved in espionage.
Interview: Lucky Liu on Code Name: The Cleaner
"First of all, I'm always looking for a comedy because I think it's one of the most challenging things to do," said Liu. "It's one of the most fun things to do, and I think doing a comedy with a comedian is always very helpful because you've got a little cushion. If you're not funny, he's got to be funny."
However, she does have lots of experience in martial arts, so when the film calls for a fight scene, she doesn't need any more training. "Oddly, it's now ingrained in my body. It's like, 'Okay, we're going to do a fight scene off the fly.' We hadn't planned on doing the fight scene with Nicollette, and suddenly they're like, 'Let's do a fight scene together at the end.' So I helped choreograph a lot of it because I felt very comfortable doing it. I know all of the different moves that I have learned from my other movies, and it just felt like a very natural progression for me, and incorporated other things that I've learned. Like, my body has sort of changed and become more flexible, so we added splits, we added different things, and also added comedic elements of using the toilet plunger or the toilet brush, to make it extra funny."
Code Name: The Cleaner
Code Name: The Cleaner
Code Name: The Cleaner
Code Name: The Cleaner
In addition to fighters, Liu has played a few secret agents too. "I think the idea also of spoofing Bourne Identity, which I love that movie and I love the series, was really funny. Especially when he's really a janitor and she's sort of undercover as a waitress. It's not James Bond at all, and at the same time, it's not to the extreme of Austin Powers. So it's somewhere in the middle of reality, which I thought was very funny. And the flashbacks I thought were great, where he's in combat and doing his moves."
Liu had no problem bantering with Cedric, as she feels she gets along with all her costars. "I feel like people are sort of beginning to realize that they can kind of match me up with anybody. Like you can put me with Josh Hartnett, like the ethnicity boundary isn't really there. It doesn't really matter. It's sort of an open arena, and it shouldn't be about color. It should just be about relationships, you know? And I like to sort of meld that into my work, and make sure that it really comes naturally no matter who it is, and what ethnicity. It shouldn't matter. Actually, somebody pointed out in the poster, that it's a very multi-ethnic movie. And I was like, 'Oh, I didn't even notice that. Probably because I'm Asian! I didn't think too much about it.' So to me, I thought that was one of the attractions."
Code Name: The Cleaner opens to theatres on January 5th.
For poster, more interviews and additional movie info, go to the Code Name: The Cleaner Movie Page.
Stay tuned for updates.
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