Yvonne Chapman Isn’t Letting Hollywood Stereotypes Define Her

MIXED ASIAN MEDIA - JUNE 9, 2021

By Olivia Truffaut-Wong

Like Zhilan, her character in Kung Fu, Yvonne Chapman has lived a few lives. Before finding her place as a star in network television’s first Asian family drama, the Canadian actor worked in finance in her native Calgary. “I was a mergers and acquisitions analyst for about six years,” she told me. “And I really liked what I did.” But, just as Zhilan felt a call to fulfill her family legacy on Kung Fu, Chapman just couldn’t get acting out of her head.

“I always loved acting when I was really young,” she explained. “I was really shy growing up, and I just had it in my brain that only extroverted people could be actors. I don’t know where that came from… And because of that, and because I was so shy, I kind of kept it a secret.” Even her parents didn’t know about her passion for acting, despite the fact that she did drama in high school. “I just went on the straight and narrow path,” she said. It turns out, the “straight and narrow path” led her right back to acting.

“I was studying for the CFA [Chartered Financial Analyst certification], and it was really very demanding for us,” she recalled. “And I was studying every weekday, every evening, every, every weekend for hours on end, and I just needed a stress relief. And so, I signed up for an acting class.” The class worked — maybe a little too well — and what started as stress relief became a career path. “And then I really fell in love with it, and I couldn’t get it out of my head. It just got to a point where I figured, if I’m going to do this, I gotta do it. So, I left my job, packed up my car, and drove to Vancouver.” It’s been seven years since Chapman made that fateful move, and she hasn’t looked back. “I think this stuff really chooses you, and it doesn’t leave you alone until you try it out,” she said.

Not even the extreme lack of onscreen roles for Asians was enough to dissuade her. “I didn’t look at that as a hindrance. I look at that as an opportunity because that must mean that there’s so much room for growth there.” And while her Kung Fu co-star Olivia Liang has said she actively tried not to audition for roles that involved martial arts to avoid being stereotyped, Chapman took a different approach to avoiding being typecast. Even if there was martial arts involved, “it had to be a role that was going to go beyond that,” she said, adding that the role of Zhilan was truly one that checked all the anti-stereotype boxes.

In her very first scene as Zhilan on Kung Fu, Chapman kills her onscreen sister (played by Vanessa Kai), and almost murders our heroine, Nicky Shen (Olivia Liang). All so that she can get her hands on a mystical sword. It’s a character that could easily fall into the trope of the mystical Asian. You know the one: the martial arts master who wants to harness an ancient East Asian magic. But instead— thanks no doubt in part to Kung Fu’s diverse writers room, Asian showrunner (Christina M. Kim), and Chapman herself — Zhilan is anything but a stereotype. And on top of that, she does do some pretty badass martial arts. “For me it was all about ‘what is the role, itself?’” Chapman told me via Zoom when we chatted just 24 hours before the season 1 finale aired on The CW. “Even if there was martial arts involved, it had to be a role that was going to go beyond that, which this whole show does.”

Kung Fu might sound like a vehicle for Asian stereotypes (it is literally called Kung Fu), but, as Chapman noted, “There’s so much depth and dimension and facets to each of these characters [in Kung Fu] that it doesn’t even matter.” 

Over the course of its 13-episode first season, Kung Fu proved itself to be more than just a story about martial arts. At its core, it’s really a show about a Chinese American family, something that felt particularly timely when it premiered just days after eight people were shot and killed in Atlanta, Georgia, including four Asian American women. The attack was the culmination of a year of anti-Asian sentiments and hate crimes across the country, and made the idea of a show specifically about an Asian American woman protecting her family and community especially meaningful. “That time for us was really emotional because our community was hurting,” Chapman said. But, it was also a chance for Kung Fu to emerge as more than just another TV show.

“In my opinion, hatred stems from a lack of exposure, a lack of communication, and a lack of education. And the media has such a powerful influence over how we formulate our ideas about people and places and concepts and perceptions, that if we’re not doing the work to try to showcase a group of people and ideas in a fair and equitable light, then we’re doing a disservice to everybody,” Chapman explained, saying that, while she knows Kung Fu won’t solve anti-Asian racism, it could, at least, be a tool in the fight. 

“The truth of it is that the media has the ability to expose people to, perhaps, a group of people that they won’t be exposed to in their day-to-day lives,” she added. “And that’s what we try to do with the show, to show this American family in a way that you don’t necessarily need to be Chinese American to relate to them.” In celebrating the specificity of the Asian American experience, Chapman hopes that audiences will learn to connect with the Shens despite any cultural differences. “That is what I’m hoping will resonate with people, so that we’re not the other anymore, we’re not foreign. And you can see that this family is so much like your family, and that bond should connect all of us so that we don’t hate each other for the differences, but rather love each other for the similarities.”

For Asian American audiences, and women in particular, Kung Fu became a source of comfort. For months, Chinatowns across the country experienced a wave of hate crimes, including the San Francisco Chinatown Nicky Shen calls home. And then here came a show about a woman who returns home to protect her community. Not only that, but the show also has a whole host of strong female characters. “In past interviews, it’s been said that when you don’t see us on screen, you forget that we’re part of the community. And then when you do see us, and there’s only a specific type of us, you forget very much that we’re just as human as everyone else, and we’re not a monolith of one thing,” Chapman said when asked about what she hopes Asian women take away from the show. “I just really hope that we can just start celebrating each other and our diversity and the wonderful things that come with that. The more that you get exposed to that, the more we learn about each other, the more that we connect.”

Olivia Truffaut-Wong is a movie and TV obsessed writer and editor who loves to spotlight Asian voices in Hollywood. She can be found in many corners of the internet, and is most likely currently marathoning a Netflix show with her cat, Minou, by her side. You can find her on Twitter and Instagram @iwatchiam.