Actress Kallie Hu (Yellowjackets, Motherland: Fort Salem) has been gracing the screen on the Paramount+ original Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies as one of the ensemble members of its incredibly diverse cast. The musical series takes place four years before the original Grease; in 1954 before rock ‘n’ roll ruled, before the T-Birds were the coolest in the school, four fed-up, outcasts dare to have fun on their own terms, sparking a moral panic that will change Rydell High forever.
In honor of Asian and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, PopWire interviewed Hu, where she discussed the importance of representation in the media, the stars who have brought inspiration to her life, and what viewers can look forward to in the last few episodes of the season.
The Vancouver-born actress and daughter of Chinese immigrants grew up in Richmond, which has a vast Asian population. During her upbringing, she explains she never felt like too much of an outsider, which she says she is very fortunate and thankful for.
“It wasn’t until I got into high school that you realize wow, it’s actually really different,” Kallie Hu tells us. “I grew up watching TV and thinking that everything’s fine until the whole [lack of Asian representation] movement came along. Then I watched Everything, Everywhere, All at Once, and it changed almost everything for me.
“It was like, wow, I actually can see my heritage, my people, faces like me. I know that’s super recent, but Everything, Everywhere, All at Once moved me so much and it makes me a little emotional right now to say, but honestly just seeing that gives me so much hope and being part of that [representation on Rise of the Pink Ladies] just means so, so much to me.”
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That triumphant film broke records, garnering multiple Oscars at the Academy Awards, including one each for its leading stars (Michelle Yeoh & Ke Huy Quan), and even winning the big award of the night for Best Picture. Of the few Asian luminaries she looks up to, one of them is the film’s very own Academy Award nominee Stephanie Hsu. And growing up, she also has admired action star icon Jackie Chan.
“My dad tried to tease me,” she says. “He’s like ‘Oh, we know Jackie Chan. We can go meet him.’ I was so stoked because he was the one Asian face I knew from TV. He didn’t know him after all. I was like, ‘Wow, you can actually do really cool stuff in movies and be Asian.’ I really, really do look up to him. To this day, if I could ever play a badass assassin or someone who kicks some ass, I would absolutely love that.”
Until Hu lands that killer dream role of a kick-ass action star, you can catch her kicking it and killing it with the choreography in many of the musical numbers on the show. And it’s no surprise that our favorite so far, “World Without Boys,” is also “definitely” one of hers. “[I enjoyed it] just because of the technical aspect of it all,” she says.
“It was actually one of the first ones we ever filmed. Fun Fact: The whole spin-the-bottle scene was the first week we ever met anyone. It was this really weird energy but it worked for the scene. I really enjoyed ‘World Without Boys’ and how the lip syncing and the movement had to be choreographed a certain way to still go with the music when played backwards. It was absolutely nuts.”
With the first half of Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies ladies behind us and the finale just around the corner, the actress teases what viewers can expect for those still catching up on the latter half of its inaugural season.
“You’ll see people being pushed and pulled certain ways,” Kallie Hu shares. “You’ll have people diving head-first into these musical numbers again. They just get better and better and better. You’ll see tributes to Grease. We already had that fantasy sequence in the first number where they just float up into the sky. It’s all within that Grease energy, so you’re going to get this electrifying *wink* experience watching the rest of the season.”
Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies is streaming now only on Paramount+.
