Lucy Liu once refuted Meghan Markle's criticisms of Kill Bill

Meghan Markle has slammed Kill Bill, among other films, for its depiction of Asian women, however, the star of the Quentin Tarantino film, Lucy Liu has often rallied against this type of criticism aimed as these characters.

Meghan's comments came as her Archetypes podcast on Spotify resumed for the first time since the death of Queen Elizabeth II in September.

In the podcast episode, Meghan criticised Hollywood for its “toxic” stereotyping of Asian women as over-sexualized and aggressive.

Markle said: “Movies like ‘Austin Powers’ and ‘Kill Bill’ presented these characters of Asian women as oftentimes over-sexualized or aggressive and it’s not just those two examples, there’s so many more.”

She continued: “This has seeped into a lot of our entertainment. But this toxic stereotyping of women of Asian descent, it doesn’t just end once the credits roll.”

Meghan was speaking alongside podcast guest, the American sociologist, Nancy Wang Yuen, who has also written about such stereotyping.

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But, the criticism against Kill Bill in relation to its character O-Ren Ishii – a violent Yakuza leader played by Liu – has been refuted in the past by the actor herself who slammed this type of character being labelled as a “dragon lady”.

In an op-ed penned for the Washington Post, Liu argued that other characters have been written similarly to O-Ren Ishii, but haven’t faced the same labels or backlash.

She wrote: “‘Kill Bill’ features three other female professional killers in addition to Ishii. Why not call Uma Thurman, Vivica A. Fox or Daryl Hannah a dragon lady?

“I can only conclude that it’s because they are not Asian. I could have been wearing a tuxedo and a blond wig, but I still would have been labelled a dragon lady because of my ethnicity.

“If I can’t play certain roles because mainstream Americans still see me as Other, and I don’t want to be cast only in ‘typically Asian’ roles because they reinforce stereotypes, I start to feel the walls of the metaphorical box we AAPI (Asian American and Pacific Islander) women stand in.”

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