Lucy Liu co-stars with Cedric the Entertainer and Nicollette Sheridan (Desperate Housewives) in the action comedy, Code Name: The Cleaner. Cedric the Entertainer plays a guy named Jake who wakes up with a bump on his head and a case of amnesia. Liu stars as a waitress who tries to convince Jake she's his girlfriend and that he's not actually a CIA agent but instead does maintenance work at a video game factory.
In the Mood for a Little Comedy: Liu says she’s always on the lookout for a good comedy script. “…I think it's one of the most challenging things to do; it's one of the most fun things to do. I think doing a comedy with a comedian is always very helpful because you've got a little cushion because if you're not funny, he's got to be funny.”
Working with Cedric the Entertainer: “I had seen a lot of his movies before and had actually seen a lot of his comedy, too. But I've never seen him in a lead role before, so it was actually refreshing. I really enjoyed watching him in the movie as an audience member. Do you know what I mean? The clog dancing is one of my favorite scenes, and the Ricola thing. It’s all improv and he's just hilarious.”
Liu said it wasn’t difficult to keep up with Cedric the Entertainer’s improvisations. The actor/comedian just raised the bar to a higher level. “It pushes you to improve your skills and sort of just get off the script and do whatever it is. You're so aligned to doing what is written a lot of the times. I come from a theatre background and you do what's written. You pause when you're supposed to pause. You take your moments but, ultimately, you respect the writer's wishes. And, in this case, we sort of just tore the whole thing up and re-wrote and did things on the day, especially if he was improvising as we were doing the scenes. So it kind of pushed me to just be a lot more open with the dialogue and come up with things that could be funnier.”
On Being Ready to Get Physical in Code Name: The Cleaner: Liu joked that she doesn’t have to worry much about stunts involving martial arts at this point in her career. “Oddly, it's now ingrained in my body. (Laughing) 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 [Sheridan] and suddenly they're like, ‘Let's do a fight scene together at the end.’ 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. It just felt like a very natural progression for me and I 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."
Stepping Up as an Executive Producer: Liu explained how she became involved in the producing side of Code Name: The Cleaner. “Well, they wanted me in the movie. I met with Cedric and I fell in love with him, and I wanted to work with him. I just felt like there needed to be some changes in the script. It just seemed like a lot of, you know, getting your hands involved. They said, ‘Well, come on board as an executive producer. You can be creative. You can get in there.’
Sometimes when you sign on as an actress, you don't want to step on too many toes in terms of the writing. But they were completely open to it and we gutted it completely. I mean, because originally the woman was written as someone who's Jamaican. So it was either Jamaican or me. ‘Up to you. Your choice.’ (Laughing) So obviously we just sort of changed everything around and just made her not as angry, and not as straight, but made her a little more comedic and gave her a little more sass. And on the day when we were improvising in the scenes, we tried to make it funnier, too. I think we had a really good chemistry together offset, so hopefully it came off on screen as well. Just that they have a really nice physical dynamic that I think is always enjoyable in a comedy – the physical energy between the people.”
Liu believes that special connection with Cedric the Entertainer was there from the beginning. “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, you can put me with... 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? 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. 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.”
Lucy Liu on Her Upcoming Projects: “A project coming up that I've shot awhile ago, that may be coming out, who knows, is a thriller, a sort of vampire horror movie called Rise. That I think is coming out next fall, but I'm not sure. And then I did a movie with Cillian Murphy over the summer. It was a romantic comedy, a very small movie called Watching the Detectives.”
Liu had a good time working with Murphy. “He's great. He's incredibly talented. It was his first foray into comedy. I think he did a great job. You know, he's very impressive because he focuses a lot on his family and he's not an intense person where you can't approach him and talk to him. Because all of his movies are so incredible, and he's always playing such dramatic roles, it's really refreshing to see him doing something much lighter and comedic. And he's running around naked in half the movie."
