-You know, I did
And Paramount wants me to be in a television series.
On the other hand,
Warner Brother wants me to be in another one,
but both of them, I think,
they want me to be in a modernized type of a thing.
♪ (MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
Bruce Lee had this idea about a kung fu prodigy.
He had notes about that, he had notes about the character, Ah Sahm,
and this really nicely encapsulated story
about a time period that I really wasn't very familiar with.
-You want to do the Western, eh? -I want-- Because you see,
how else can you justify all this punching and kicking and violence...
-BERTON: Yeah. -...except in the period of the West?
We had a treatment,
which, at the end of the day, it's a handful of pages
and a lot of notes,
but we didn't have a full-fledged series or pilot.
We needed to find somebody to help us write this,
and create this world.
Nowadays, I mean, you don't go around on the street,
kicking people, punching people,
because if you do...
-BERTON: Yeah. -(BLOWS RASPBERRY)
-That's it. I mean... -With a gun.
...I don't care how good you are, (CHUCKLES) you know?
We wanted to tell a different story.
I mean, oftentimes, when you have especially the kung fu story,
I know I've heard the pitch a hundred times;
white man goes to Asia,
and, you know, has to fight the bad guys.
What we really loved about this is that
this is a young Asian man who comes to America,
who is kind of on his own identity search.
I was finishing up another show at Cinemax called
and Justin Lin had tracked down Shannon Lee
and found out about this notion they had,
uh, from Bruce Lee, for a TV show.
By then, the guys at Cinemax knew that I was a big martial arts fan
and a big Bruce Lee fan, so they introduced Justin and me.
When Jonathan sat down with us,
it was so clear that though he's a fan of martial arts,
he was talking theme, he was talking character,
and I felt like that was the best way to start this process.
The more I dug into it, the more I became really excited about
unearthing what went on during that time period.
I knew vaguely that a lot of Chinese had come over for the Gold Rush,
and a lot of them had come over for the work to build the railroads,
so I-- I was aware of that whole immigration,
but I had no idea what the politics of it were.
I didn't know what the Tong Wars were,
and I certainly wasn't aware of what life was like in Chinatown at that time.
And I guess I could have imagined the racism
and the prejudice that existed at that time,
but I was just never aware of how sharply it manifested
for the Chinese living in America in the late 1800s.
This is part of American history that has been totally ignored.
This Chinese American migration that is so important to-- to our country,
that chapter had never been really showcased.
On another level, I want to be part of a show
where we have three-dimensional Asian American characters.
I was sitting in the Perfect Storm offices
with Justin and Danielle and Jonathan,
and we were talking about the show,
and I got this hit, and I just thought,
"This is gonna be good."
That first script, the pilot script,
Jonathan really came in and created this whole world
that had the Sahm story, and the immigration experience,
but also had this, like, very sophisticated political machinations,
but was really fun and really pulpy,
and all these different characters
that populated that world so beautifully.
For me, it was that day where we all looked at each other
and said, "Okay, this is it, we're ready to go."
This show is the culmination of a lot of the elements for me personally in my career,
coming together to tell a story that is compelling,
and that has great characters regardless of their background.
It really celebrates kind of what Bruce Lee is all about.
It's about going out there and having an idea
and creating opportunity for people to come in and seize it.
BRUCE LEE: