Kung Fu is back! The best action series you probably haven’t seen yet which is also the best family drama you need to check out airs Wednesday nights at 9PM ET/PT on The CW, and tonight’s season premiere sees what happens when it appears Nicky’s “Shifu” has returned! Longtime fans of the show, of course, know that Season 2 left a lot of questions for the audience, and thankfully, KSiteTV was able to interview Executive Producers Christina M. Kim and Robert Berens for some Season 3 hints. You can find the interview below.
KSITETV’S CRAIG BYRNE: Season 3 starts with the students wanting Nicky to “show us the move” which leads to a montage of scenes from the previous two seasons. Is that a way to get viewers in on the ground floor for a new adventure?
ROBERT BERENS: I think yes, it’s a way to get a little glimpse of Nicky’s past. I also think it communicates to the audience that she’s a teacher now. She’s been teaching since the end of the Season 2 finale, and what she’s learned in her previous struggles is informing her teaching. Basically, she’s bringing it into the class and using it to sort of illustrate her methods and to teach her students.
One thing that impresses me so much with this series is that it’s a good family drama, in addition to being an action show. Is this something you always intended from the creation of the show?
CHRISTINA M. KIM: Yeah, for sure. For me, especially, I just really wanted to have an Asian-American family on screen, because you don’t see that and I didn’t grow up with that. I also have to say that we lucked out with our cast, because they’re so strong that the show can support all these family stories, and drama, and relationships. We think they’re so watchable and likable that we want to write more to them for them. Bob and I have a lot of fun doing that.
How long will we have to wait before we find out where Henry is?
KIM: Not too long. Hang in there. Not long at all.
BERENS: It was very exciting, peeling Henry away from the milieu of the show, to give a little taste of of what he’s been up to, and to see this sort of new side of him. We’ll be continuing that story over the next three episodes. The audience won’t have to wait long before our our beloved Henry and our beloved Zhilan cross paths with our heroes again.
What can you tell us about Bo?
BERENS: The fun of Bo is that, as we see, he’s someone who has a skill set that really brings him very much eye to eye with Nicky, but he is not privy to the sort of magical side of her life. He’s this new love interest where they have a chemistry in fighting, [and] they clearly have a spark from the jump, and they meet under these kinds of exciting circumstances, but he’s someone who’s sort of one foot in, one foot out of Nicky’s life and story.
We’ll be playing some tension about how much he knows, and when he knows it. When does he find out about Henry? When does he find out about the bloodline? Those are the questions we have in the first few episodes.
Nicky and Henry left things on kind of ambiguous but heartbreaking terms, so what does it mean to have this sort of second chance at love after a period of heartbreak? Is it too soon? Is it too late? Or is it just in time? There’s a lot of tension and internal conflict for Nicky, who’s still unresolved about Henry and sort of struggling with this. Is she ready for this? Is this a good idea? It only gets more complicated, of course, when her Shifu returns to her in the premiere.
I’m asking for the this Henry and Nicky shippers: Is all hope lost?
BERENS: We are very excited about the next stage in Nicky and Henry’s relationship. There are so many new layers and dimensions that we get to see between the two of them when they do come back together. They’ve had such an amazing partnership, and an amazing love story, and I think it only gets richer when it is faced with some pretty serious obstacles in the form of a new love interest for Nicky, in the form of everything that is going on with Henry, as well as the larger story involving [SPOILER DELETED].
The season premiere has a lot of very steamy Ryan and Sebastian romantic scenes. Are they given to us because we don’t get to see Nicky and Henry in bed together anymore?
KIM: I think they’re given to us because they’re hot! And I think we just love that relationship, because we’ve gotten to see Ryan go through a heartbreak and then sort of grow up as a character. Now he’s in a real relationship. It’s fun to see that.
BERENS: In the premiere, we get to draw kind of a contrast. Nicky has been nursing a heartbreak; she’s been living without a relationship for months, with Henry off in the wind. We get a glimpse of Althea and Dennis, and Ryan and Seb, who are in the middle of their relationships, so there’s a contrast between Nicky and her siblings that’s fun to play.
Also, this is a little bit of behind the scenes: We struggled to give Ryan and Sebastian the intimacy equity of the others, because Ryan didn’t have a bedroom set. There’s only so far they can go in Harmony Dumplings. [Now that Ryan has a bedroom set], we can actually give them a scene, just like Althea and Nicky get.
The interactions between Sebastian and Mei-Li: Are they written that way on the page, or is that just the chemistry between the actors?
KIM: I would say that the actors have brought a lot of that chemistry, we always imagined that they would have this great working relationship. Mei-Li genuinely likes Sebastian for who he is, and also likes him as a partner for her son. But those two actors just get along so well in real life, and I think you can see it on screen. It’s another example of our actors being so strong that we started writing more for them, and more for that relationship.
We know Yvonne Chapman is going to be back. Will we have to wait long to see how she is back in the picture?
BERENS: I think it’s safe to tease that she will be in Episode 2.
Can you talk about the new challenges that Harmony Dumplings is facing in the season premiere?
BERENS: As we saw in the Season 2 finale, Harmony Dumplings was hit particularly hard by the earthquake. Mei-Li has spent four months basically rebuilding the restaurant. It’s been a slow process, and the whole family has pitched in. She’s right on the edge of pulling it off and getting it all together, but as we see in the premiere, the reality is that even with some help, and even with the help of the community, she’s kind of dug herself into a hole financially. She’s in a situation where she has to entertain possibly ceding some of her independence and control of the restaurant in order to actually reopen on schedule.
Is that the storyline that Kim Rhodes is in?
BERENS: Yes. We will be meeting Kim Rhodes’ character Carrie in Episode 2.
How is Althea doing after the trouble her app got her into at the end of last season?
KIM: We see that she’s kind of lost everything. She’s living at home in her childhood bedroom. She still has her fabulous wardrobe – she hung on to that – but everything’s in boxes and stuffed in her bedroom. I would say Althea is at a low, other than the fact that she’s still very much in love with Dennis, and they’re kind of figuring out their new reality. It’s going to be a really fun journey with her, as we watch Althea and see how she navigates her new existence, and how and what she’s gonna do, or if she’s going to change it.
BERENS: Across the gap of months between seasons that she’s absent a job while this deal gonna be with the DA is hanging over her, she’s really thrown herself into helping Nicky and working as part of the Shooby Gang. But in her mind, once this gets resolved, she can kind of go back to her previous existence and get back into the tech world, and as we’ll see very shortly, that plan will not go according to plan for Althea.
I know it’s kind of difficult with Althea and Dennis living at home, but might Mei-Li and Jin have any grandkids in their future?
KIM: We’ve talked about that a lot in the room. We certainly joke about it. But I don’t know.
BERENS: I would say “never say never.” But I think we I think we still have a few. We still have a lot more stories to tell before. Before the Shen kids take that step, I believe.
What can you tell us about the overall arc of Season 3?
BERENS: What really excited us about the season is that it’s a story where the danger is closer to home and more internal. It’s a little more mysterious. There’s stuff going out in San Francisco, as we glance in the premiere… a little bit of conspiracy and shenanigans behind the crime wave in the city. So we do have kind of an ongoing story that’s very juicy about what’s happening in the city, but our larger story is really about the family.
It’s about Nicky, and who is she now, post-Henry, and what does it mean for her to get a second chance with her Shifu when Pei-Ling returns to her? She never thought she would get the second chance, but there are dangers in it, and it connects to a larger story that will really introduce a lot of danger and emotion and jeopardy to all of our characters. It’s much closer to home than some of our villains from previous seasons, where we had Zhilan over in China, you had Russell Tan in his mansion with his with his children. Yhe danger here is rooted inthe much deeper and more intimate relationship between Nicky and her Shifu, and the entity Xiao who may be behind her Shifu’s return.
What’s your pitch for why people should check out Kung Fu Season 3?
KIM: Now that we’re about halfway through shooting, I have to say one thing that’s really exciting for us is that the fights just keep getting better and better. Our stunt team is incredible… and to see our actors really come into their own… Olivia does so many of her own stunts, and the fight choreography is just beautiful, and tells the story in its own way. So that’s something I’m super excited about. Story wise, I think we’re taking Nicky on an interesting and unexpected journey this season. She’s really grown up, and I think you see that in the premiere. You’ll see it more in her character and how she interacts with the people in her community, and her family, and her love life, too.
There’s humor, which we love writing, too. There was one episode last season [“Clementine”] that we had so much fun with, when Althea’s beloved car is stolen. We have an episode [this year] sort of in that vein coming up in Season 3, and all of our actors get to do a little more comedy, because they’re so talented.
BERENS: I say this every time: You’re not going to find a better ensemble cast on television. That’s the secret sauce. That’s the magic of the show. I think everyone who watches the show ends up falling in love with these actors in these characters.
There’s a lot of really great genre TV out there, but I don’t know of anything that has the combination of a cast like this and a story like this. We’re both very proud of the show, snd we want everyone to watch it.
The Kung Fu season finale airs tonight (October 5) on The CW. See some photos from the season premiere here and check out KSiteTV’s interview with Olivia Liang (Nicky Shen!)
