Liu admits she’s blown away by how far the technology has advanced since she was a kid. “Even when I signed on for this project, I didn’t know that you couldn’t have the snake move in that manner. Like, that it was not something that had been seen on [film] ever before. And I thought, ‘Wow, how hard can it be?’ Cut to five years later, this incredible project. It’s magnificent to see it. If I think about it, I guess, you know, Tom and Jerry and Bugs Bunny, they didn’t really jump from a tree and do all these crazy things and all these movements. So to see that and to be a part of that really is a dream come true.”
Liu was sold on the idea of signing on to voice a character in Kung Fu Panda after walking into a room and seeing the concept art. “They had this incredible presentation on the wall of drawings and they were trying to tell the story, even though they didn’t completely know the story – because it’s changed over the past five years – of the backdrop and the landscape of what we were going to be going into,” explained Liu. “And then they also showed me drawings of what Viper was going to look like and her coloring. They also had, at that time, a very short clip on the computer of her, how she would move. That’s when I realized how it had not been done before. Her slithering across the floor was not something that was easily accomplished. You just learn so much along the way that you take for granted when you see something in its finished format.”
The story evolved over time, with directors John Stevenson and Mark Osborne allowing the voice actors to have a lot of input on their characters. “When I went in there, we would have – they don’t give you – they don’t ever give you the script. They give you just some pages because they don’t really know where it’s going, also. They want you to try out different things, so they make it more farcical, more serious. They don’t know exactly what they want and they kind of mix it up.”
Although she was allowed a lot of freedom in creating the character, the physical resemblance between Viper and Liu isn’t readily apparent to the actress. “Not really. I mean, her eyes are gigantic and, you know, obviously she’s got a small mouth. I didn’t feel like I could see a lot of it. But I think that that’s the subtlety of when they do film. There’s gestures that you’re not aware of when you’re talking, when you’re acting, when you’re doing things. And I know that they probably incorporated blinking and moving and things like that, when you’re doing it. You do forget that the camera’s there. I think that’s what they want. They want what is natural to what you would do normally.”
Liu thinks kids will be able to relate to the characters in Kung Fu Panda, even if one of them might be a little scary for younger viewers. “I was actually terrified by Tai Lung when I saw it in the screening. I thought it was quite real. And I thought, ‘Wow. Kids are going to be kind of scared when they see this.’ But I thought it had so much heart, and there was so much humanity in it, you forget that you’re associating and you’re relating to animals. Because they’re all so different. I think growing up… You know, I grew up in New York and it’s such a multicultural, multiracial place, that it kind of felt like that to me, watching the movie. You don’t differentiate yourself from anyone else, or from the animals, or from what’s happening on screen. And that’s what’s great about kids. Generally, they love animals very much and they can connect to them. And I love that they become a part of that. It doesn’t separate your world from their world.”
