3 Needles uses three distinct storylines to illustrate some of the ways people deal with the AIDS epidemic. Lucy Liu stars in the segment set in China. Liu plays Jin Ping, a woman who runs an illegal blood collection service in the tiny village of Tonghu. Her collection methods aren’t sanitary or sterile, and would never be approved by any recognized health organizations. Unfortunately for the people of the village, Jin Ping’s illegal blood scam unleashes an AIDS epidemic.
The Appeal of Playing ‘Jin Ping’ in 3 Needles: “What I liked about her was that she had an emotional trajectory and she had sort of a choice she had to make towards the end that she was forced to make,” explained Liu. “I don’t think she would have made that choice if she hadn’t started recognizing herself as a human being, because she was put in such a situation where her back was up against the wall and she felt like she had so little free will. You know, like she had to do this. She has a son; she’s pregnant and she owes this man money.
Ultimately she recognized that she couldn’t, as a human being, go on making people ill, not knowing what it was she had herself. She obviously had AIDS and HIV, but it struck her that she couldn’t continue this way. I think that is a really courageous choice to make, to be forced into that situation where you can either go on and just take in whatever people give you, or you can stand up and you can fight against it.”
Playing a Chinese Character Made Lucy Liu Feel Close to Her Roots: “It really made me feel like I was at home. I think there is something about when you do a movie or anything that you do and you are speaking a different language, whether it is your home language or not, there’s a different feeling to it. It feels more tangible somehow. It also brings a very romantic quality, in my mind, into the role.
Let’s say Kill Bill was in Japanese. There was something, a quality, in that work that I thought was different from anything that I had done. And doing this role in Mandarin definitely brought that about, too. Not only because of the dramatic situation and all that was going on but also because…I don’t know how it is or how to describe it. It’s hard to explain but it makes you feel more rooted to yourself, like something in your soul that’s deep in there, that’s always been there, like part of your DNA that you touch upon when you do something like that.”
Tackling a Difficult, Heavy Role and Leaving It Behind: Liu said, “Ironically, I think that this role as heavy as it was, it really felt so light afterwards injecting that kind of energy into the role made me feel like I was releasing something into the role that was a very positive message. The more I put into it, the more light I felt afterwards. I don’t know how to explain that exactly but I felt like I was floating, especially after the birth scene. I felt so exhausted but, at the same time, so light.”
Fleshing Out the Role: “When I got the script, I loved the script. I thought it was great. I just thought that the role was very limiting at that point because he had her driving in in a van, and then she was collecting the blood, saw that the people were sick, and then she fled. I was kind of like, ‘She comes in and she leaves.’ You know, there was almost no dialogue. I think there were two lines. I called [writer/director/producer Thom Fitzgerald] and I said, ‘I think the script is great. I just don’t understand why you want me for this role. What am I going to add to it because it doesn’t seem like there’s a middle part? There’s a beginning and there’s an end, but there’s no center.’
We talked about it more and I just said, ‘We need to talk about what’s at stake for her. Okay, so maybe she isn’t a great person because she’s going around spreading this disease unbeknownst to her, but why is she doing it? What makes her flee? What makes her do it? Is her back up against the wall?’ Then we started raising the stakes more and more. I said I think it’s important that she has a child or if she’s pregnant, so you put both of those in. I think it’s important that she actually has the disease as well and doesn’t know what it is.
There’s this certain air of ignorance that’s within that storyline that’s created, that’s formulating her decision in the end. The ignorance can’t last forever. You have to come to a point where you hit a certain place where she makes a choice. So we sort of started mixing it and mixing it, and over the course of a year we kept going back and forth with the rewrites and it just turned out great. He’s a very collaborative director and writer and he has a great vision for human [emotions] - like an emotional source for people. He can bring that out without making it about AIDS and HIV. It’s just about these people that are in survival mode, essentially.”
The Status of Charlie Chan: Liu revealed she’s still working on getting the Charlie Chan movie made. “It’s been about six years. We are still forging the way to a script that’s feasible. You have to remember that it was a television series that people absolutely loved, but it was also something that was in some ways racially backwards at the time. It was cast with Caucasian people dressed as Asian people so we have a lot of stereotypes to work through. We want to bring what people loved about Charlie then and bring it to light now. I realize that now as I’ve been going through it, you know? When I look back, it’s not a process that is fast. And no, the wall comes down and that doesn’t mean we all have democracy all of a sudden. You face the issue and then you have to sort of break it down and recognize, ‘Okay, what is it we want to achieve as opposed to putting something up and being disappointed and disappointing other people?’”
Liu says the film is closer to becoming a reality now that it was before, but they’ve still got a while to go before it'll be ready to start production. “I think it’s closer than it’s been before. I can tell you right now it won’t take another six years, as far as I know. But I think it will be worth the wait.”
