Summary

Poppy Liu shines in
No Good Deed
as Sarah, tackling secrets and a murder mystery with her wife, Leslie, played by Abbi Jacobson.
Liu discusses working with
Dead to Me’
s Liz Feldman and being star-struck by Lisa Kudrow.
Liu also delves into their upcoming projects, including
Hacks
Season 4 and a new Boots Riley film, and explores how motherhood and activism have influenced their life and career.

You’d be hard-pressed to find a cast more stacked than No Good Deed. Lisa Kudrow, Ray Romano, Linda Cardellini, Teyonah Parris, and Luke Wilson are just a few familiar faces you’ll see in the Netflix dramedy about three very different families all vying for the same house, which is full of the same strong dramedy that characterized Liz Feldman’s Emmy-nominated series Dead to Me. With an ensemble so large and talented, it would be hard for any one person to stand out, but Poppy Liu manages it, emerging as one of the best parts of the series.

Liu plays Sarah, a doctor who is addicted to the Citizen app and desperately trying to have a baby with her wife, Leslie (Abbi Jacobson). They have a lovely marriage, though it’s not without its flaws — or its secrets, especially when the two of them get tangled up in a murder mystery. The role is something of a turn for Liu, who is best known for playing quirky blackjack dealer Kiki on Hacks and mysterious housekeeper Greta in Dead Ringers. They’ve also appeared on critically acclaimed shows like The Afterparty, American Born Chinese, and Better Call Saul.

Collider got the chance to speak to Liu about working with Jacobson and Kudrow, how this role feels different than anything they’ve gotten to play in the past, their exciting upcoming projects, how motherhood and activism have impacted their life and career, and more.

Poppy Liu Talks Working With ‘Dead to Me’s Liz Feldman

COLLIDER: I was so excited for this show because I’m a huge Dead to Me fan. Were you familiar with Liz Feldman’s work? And what was it like working with her? I feel like her process is probably interesting from her style of writing.

POPPY LIU: Yeah, that was part of what drew me to the show — I was really excited to work with Liz. I also love Dead to Me a lot, and she has such a specific and unique sense of humor and voice in the dramedy genre. I feel like I can watch something or hear something and know if it’s Liz. LIU: For me, in particular, I really love a murder mystery, but as I get older, I’m more and more emotionally fragile. I can’t handle true crime anymore. I really can’t do it. I used to love it, but I can’t even watch anything that’s scary. I think maybe becoming a mother now, the world is getting too real. I know too much. Things are too bad out there. I don’t know what it is, but I’m way too emotionally weak. But I like that Liz’s world lets me still indulge in a murder mystery page-turner binge-watch thing without me being like, “Well, now I can’t sleep for five days, and also, my psyche is wrecked.” She finds levity and fun and buoyancy in it still, so it’s good to be able to indulge in that still but not get fully wrecked.

100%. A nice middle ground. She’s a good example of why it’s so important to have queer female showrunners and how much of a difference that makes. Obviously, Sarah and Leslie are a sapphic couple, but they’re far from the only queer characters in this, and they’re not one-dimensional, which is so refreshing to see. I’m curious for you what it’s like to work on a show that approaches LGBTQ+ characters in this more nuanced way.

LIU: It’s kind of the thing where Abbi and my characters just got to live out our lives. It’s nice to be able to play queer characters where we’re not unpacking queerness, you know? We’re not traumatized by queerness. Most-slash-many of us have had the difficult conversations with our parents and the hard parts of feeling fully seen in our identities. This is not a new thing at all to say, obviously, but there’s also life beyond that. It’s nice to just be able to be the identities that you are and be like, “Okay, but now we’re really invested in solving a murder. That’s our thing.”

It’s nice to be in an onscreen relationship dynamic where we have our secrets, too, between us — all the couples in the show do. It’s so rich with secrets, and the whole show is about the unveiling of secrets and how they all intersect and stuff, so we have that, too. But I would say, overall, it’s a very functioning, healthy, loving relationship. And it’s kind of nice to play that, actually, because I don’t know if I’ve had that many functioning ones like, “This is my partner, and we really get each other.” Or, “We’re in this together, and we’re this team.” I found that to be pretty inspiring. My character, Sarah, is a relationship gal, and she loves being in a relationship, and she loves thinking about family, and she loves having her person.

I was thinking this earlier today — I feel like a lot of times I’m like, “Oh, I can do everything myself. I’m very independent.” I have so many friendships that I feel a lot of intimacy in, and I feel really cared for. I don’t feel a shortage of love in my life. I don’t know if I need partnership like that, but I think I actually do, and I want to. It still feels kind of new for me to be like, “What does that look like? What does it feel like to have?” So it’s just nice. It’s sweet.

You mentioned the secret aspect, which is a huge theme of the show, but I think what’s cool about Sarah is that, while she makes questionable decisions, she is always actually striving to do the right thing. There’s an ethically grey aspect, but she’s trying her best — it’s an interesting dichotomy. What was it like to dive into that aspect of her?

LIU: I don’t think it was that hard honestly because, you’re right, it is ethically grey, and I think she’s a really good-hearted person. Abbi and I talked with Liz a lot about the dynamic of our relationship, and Liz had said Abbi’s character, Leslie, has many more traits of Liz that she wrote in, but I think Sarah has aspects of Liz as well. Their dynamic is very much that Leslie is the head, and Sarah is the heart. On the best days, that balances each other out really well, but they’re motivated by different things. I think Sarah is so heart-forward and does mean the best and is incredibly caring and empathic. There’s a version of her that’s like, “I’m keeping the secret to protect Leslie. I’m doing it out of love.” I think we all do stuff like that. We tell ourselves stories bout why we lie or why we don’t say things, and I think — more often than not — we think it’s out of something good. We like saving someone else the trouble, but it comes back to bite you after. But I do think she has good intentions. She has a good heart.

Poppy Liu Breaks Down Their Onscreen Relationship With Abbi Jacobson in ‘No Good Deed’
Image via Netflix

You’ve talked a little bit about working with Abbi, who I love. I was so excited to see you two get to work together in this. What was it like working with her? Because you guys have such great chemistry and such a fun dynamic.

LIU: It was really, really easy. When I was cast, we had never had a chemistry read before. I did meet with Liz and Silver Tree, who was our director for many episodes. Liz directed some episodes, too. We went to…I forget where — some restaurant in Los Feliz — to meet each other and have a drink and talk and everything, so I guess they got a chemistry read of me by us hanging out and stuff. But Abbi and I never did the chemistry read until we were both cast, and it was incredibly natural. We had I think one Zoom rehearsal with each other to just be like, “Let’s read our scene together and see what our vibe is like with one another.” It was just incredibly easy. We would talk about our physical language with each other or the cadence things, but it didn’t really need a lot of intellectualizing because it came easily. Sometimes, we would just be in character holding hands and were like, “Oh, we’re holding hands now. Cool. Great.” [Laughs] I think it was probably good casting on their part — whenever I feel like there’s natural chemistry there, I’m like, “Oh, that’s not a coincidence. You did that on purpose.”

I know you mentioned you talked with Liz and Abbi to discuss their backgrounds — can you share anything you developed in terms of their past that we might not have seen on screen but that you guys had in your head while you were doing it?

LIU: It was a lot of character motivation stuff. We wanted to fill in the internal landscape of who Sarah is. The show is such an ensemble, and everyone’s in their own little nucleus of a world, so you only see an aspect of each other’s lives. It was a lot of backstory about how long Leslie and I had been together. Have we talked about having a family before? Where is Leslie’s head versus mine? It was making Leslie and my relationship very real because that is my anchor point in the show. Most of my scenes were just Abbi and I, so I think that was the main thing — it really was just about hanging out and vibing. We talked about our parents, we talked about our childhoods, and we talked about being women and friends in the industry. We talked about spirituality. We chatted and vibed with each other, and it felt good. It was less dramaturgical because, at the end of the day, it’s like, “Do we all want to work with each other? Do we want to be on set together and hang out?” And we were like, “Yeah, it feels great.”

Your characters are definitely a power couple, but they’re also so dorky with each other.

LIU: They’re really dorky.

It’s so funny. I was like, “This is cringe in my favorite way.” Was there a favorite line that you had or one that was constantly tripping you up when you were trying to say it with each other?

LIU: I think it was actually Abbi’s line. Sometimes, we’ll do the scene as written, and Liz will be like, “I have an idea. Can you say this?” And sometimes, we’ll ask her, “What would be your line read of it?” because it’s such a specific Lizism. I remember there was one where we had just uncovered a really big piece of the puzzle, and then Abbi was told to say, “Well, fuck a duck” or something in complete earnestness. And we were both just like, “What?” [Laughs] But it’s also so cute and real. When you are that close in a couple, when you zoom out and look, you’re so cheesy with each other, and it’s so cringe in a really sweet and loving way. But it’s stuff like that. I think she had to say, “Well, fuck-a-doodle-doo” or something. And we were just like, “Could we just hear you say it, Liz?” And then like we’re like, “Okay, cool, cool, cool. We could see how that could be a thing.”

Poppy Liu Fangirled Over Lisa Kudrow at the ‘No Good Deed’ Table Read
Image via Netflix

No, I love that. Your guys’ dynamic is so good, but I also love the relationship between Sarah and Lydia, especially because they’re both more of the spiritual, connected-to-energy characters. Could you talk a little more about that element and then working with Lisa Kudrow, who’s obviously a legend?

LIU: A legend. She’s also like the nicest person on earth, too. We were both talking about how much we love that scene and how, I think for both of us, it was one of our favorite days on set to do that. We are weirdly, as characters, on a very similar page in terms of this spirituality aspect. I think we’re two characters who define ourselves a lot by motherhood in different ways. So to have another character be able to resonate with each other on that piece was like a conversation only the two of us could have with each other, and it was just really special.

Lisa is so brilliant and wonderful to work with. There are few people that I’ve met working that I’ve legitimately felt starstruck by. For the most part, I’m like, “These are colleagues, sometimes friends, people whose work I respect, etc.” I have this grounded approach. But when I first met Lisa at our table read, I didn’t really expect it, but just seeing her face and presence…I think it’s so imprinted in so many of our childhood memories and in the cultural zeitgeist in a specific kind of way. I don’t know — I just felt kind of emotional seeing her. We were at the table read, and we were all saying hi to each other, and when I got to her, I really could not play it cool at all. [Laughs] And all I managed to say, I think — after being like, “What do I say?” — after stuttering for a long time was just, “Um…thank you.” And she was so sweet, and she just goes, “You’re welcome?” And I’m like, “Cool.” And I faded away. I was like, “Yeah, that went awesome.”

I know that you didn’t have a lot of interaction with her on the show, but Linda Cardellini is one of my favorites, so I also have to ask about her working with her in a small capacity.

LIU: I love her. We literally don’t have any scenes together, so I only saw her at the table read, but she’s sort of like your favorite cool aunt. I remember when we were filming, she was throwing a gigantic party for her kid or something, and the way she was talking about it, I was like, “Oh, you’re like the cool mom. You’re the house that all the kids want to go to and escape their own house.” She’s the nicest. We had scenes back-to-back to each other, so we’d see each other, and it’s always two ships passing in the night. But she’s really great. I didn’t realize until the other day — I don’t know why I didn’t put it together — but I love Freaks and Geeks. I don’t know why I didn’t realize that it’s her.

That’s one of her first, I think.

LIU: Yeah, it’s so iconic. It’s so good. She’s everything. I’m obsessed with her.

Poppy Liu Reveals How Motherhood Has Impacted Their Work
Image via Netflix

Obviously, you mentioned this is an ensemble. Everyone sort of meets a little bit at the beginning, but I was really excited that the stories get more interwoven when Sarah is the one delivering Carla and Dennis’ baby. I have to say, it harkened back to Dead Ringers . I’m curious if you found any parallels. I mean, they’re obviously very different shows, but with that element of things…

LIU: It is funny that I am around birth a lot. Actually, I think what was more interesting is that Sarah is a kind of character that I very rarely get to play. Not in a queerness way, but she’s a straight character in terms of the fact she is a doctor and has a mortgage. That’s just not the type that I normally get cast as, so I think that was actually the exciting part — that I’m just this working gal who just wants to get a house with my wife. I don’t know if I’ve gotten to play someone that’s like that. It’s normally drug dealer’s girlfriend; blackjack dealer; spooky, really well-dressed house manager who you don’t really know what she’s up to. There’s always some eccentricity to them, and I would use many words to describe Sarah, but I would not use the word “eccentric,” which is kind of awesome. That’s eccentric for me. [Laughs]

A little bit of a different vibe. You’re showing range. I do want to ask, though, I know that you have talked previously about your experience of being a doula, and you’re a new mom, so I’m curious how those things impacted how you approach this role because there is a lot to do with birthing and motherhood and stuff.

LIU: Motherhood has changed everything about me. I think many mothers and parents would probably attest to that, too. It’s nothing new being said, but every atom of my body feels different now, and the center of gravity of my world is different. That made it very easy to understand Sarah’s desire to have a child and a family. It feels very primal. I think having a child reorients all your priorities in life. The number one thing in my life is now my child, and number two is a very, very far number two. In some way, I found that it gives me a lot of clarity. Obviously, there are a lot of really difficult things that come with having a child, but it’s given me clarity in terms of what is important and what things I can let go of. It’s a lot easier for me to let go of stuff. It’s a lot easier for me to not care so much about being liked or what other people think of me.

I think a lot of us who are socialized as femmes are very much people pleasers, and I was very much that way. I think I give less of a fuck. I feel very clear in myself, and that’s all I care about — that I’m in right relationship with myself and in right relationship with my child. There’s nothing in my life that I’ve experienced that I love as much as my child. It also rapidly made me have to become the best version of myself. I was like, “Oh, what’s best for my child is for me to be the best version of myself. To be the best mother I can be to them.” Kind of as a side effect, I had to do a lot of things to be in a better place with myself. It’s changed everything, and I love it so much. I think it’s made me a better actor, too, because I feel more grounded. I feel more at peace internally.

When I talked to you for Dead Ringers , you gave me a character playlist that was iconic.

LIU: That was a really good playlist!

It was a really good playlist. I’m curious if you have one for Sarah.

LIU: I don’t know if I do. For Dead Ringers, that character is so strange that I really had to build out her inner world because it’s not immediately intuitive what drives her or what’s going on in her mind and there’s kind of a darkness to her, whereas it didn’t feel that hard to access Sarah. There was less heavy lifting I had to do to be like, “What’s going on for Sarah?” I was like, “Oh, that makes sense.” I don’t think I have one, but maybe I will make one. I feel like, honestly, Sarah’s playlist would be like the NPR jazz channel.

Poppy Liu Teases What’s Next For Them, From ‘Hacks’ Season 4 to a New Boots Riley Film
Image via HBO Max

I love this project, but I do want to ask about a couple that you have in the pipeline because you have a lot of stuff that’s very exciting coming out. Hacks Season 4 — will you be in that, and can you tell us anything about it?

LIU: I will be in that. I feel like Kiki is your sort of fairy godmother friend who kind of pops in and is like, “Hey! Bye!” I kind of do my Kiki thing there. But I will say that we are in Kiki’s home turf of Vegas when we see her. I did have to brush up on blackjack dealing again.

Okay, very exciting! Another project sees you working with Boots Riley, which is iconic. Anything you can tease about that one for us?

LIU: Iconic. Well, I’m in Atlanta right now filming it, and he’s such a bucket-list director to work with. It’s very much a dream. What can I say about it? It’s very much a Boots work — there’s the magical realism, there’s like satire in it, there’s science fiction, there’s social commentary, there’s kind of offbeat humor. It’s all of the things. I’m really excited about my character because she’s very much a Chinese girl. I don’t feel like I get to play just Chinese characters a lot — I’m usually very much Chinese-American.

I’ve never had to play a character with an accent before because she’s from China, so that’s been really special diving into it. I was really nerding out about it. I was like, “I want to build her accent from scratch, and I want it to be very authentic.” Chinese accents have been portrayed in a very specific kind of way in media, and I want to be really careful about that. Boots is incredibly thoughtful about all those things as well. As I’ve been doing my script work, I’ve been asking my mom to send me voice recordings of all of the lines so I can listen to her accent and incorporate aspects of it and stuff. I’m getting all of my Chinese friends to teach me the dirtiest, nastiest curse words. Because my Chinese is really innocent — I mostly speak it with my mom and my dad sometimes. And my mom will swear, but there are some words I was telling her, and she was like, “Oh, what are some of them?” and I was like, “I actually feel too embarrassed to say to you. I feel like it would be dishonorable, and I really can’t.”

I love that. I can’t wait for that. The last one I want to ask about is His & Hers working with Tessa Thompson and Jon Bernthal — anything you can say about that?

LIU: Yeah, that one’s incredibly dark. That show is very, very dark. It’s based on the book [by Alice Feeney]. I get to work with William Oldroyd, who’s another filmmaker who’s a dream to work with. He did Lady Macbeth and Eileen more recently. He’s so awesome. But that world is so dark, and there is no levity to it. It’s dark and visually very beautiful. That’s been fun to work on. It’s fun to work on things that are different tones, especially because I ended up doing a lot of comedy, but I don’t really have a comedy background at all. It’s a thing that keeps happening for me, and I love it, but to do some other stuff is very fun and juicy. I can say I play a really cunty headmistress of an all-girls prep school.

Poppy Liu Discusses the Importance of Activism
Image via Prime Video

Oh, I’m ready. Incredible. I did want to ask about one more thing because I feel like you are really walking the walk when it comes to activism. I’m following you on Instagram, and I feel like that’s inspiring to see. I just wanted to let you talk about that and see if you have any words to encourage other people to do the same.

LIU: I really appreciate it. Thank you. I feel like it’s sometimes a topic that people really avoid talking with me about even though I’m always bringing it up. [Laughs] It feels like our responsibility as artists. Not even as artists — as people who are empathic and tuned in and don’t have this Western-centered view of the world entirely — but especially as artists. You see my social media, and I do like a lot of support for individual families with their fundraising campaigns. There are times when seeing the scale of the devastation of the genocide, it can feel like any of it is a drop in the ocean. I know it’s a meaningful change for those families, but it still just feels like — in the larger scheme of this, especially with how disheartening it’s been to be over a year of protests and so much action and organizing that not only are we not able to stop it, but it’s continually is getting worse — so hopeless. It can feel like, “What is the point? Will anything ever change? What is our role in it?” Specifically, as artists and people who work in the culture-change space, we do have a responsibility around culture and narrative shift.

I think that’s something that is…I wouldn’t say tangible, but you can feel it happening — humanizing the people that our media and our government are trying to sell as dispensable. Actually put individual stories to this increasing number of deaths that’s like happening. Center the world somewhere other than ourselves and see the world not only from this US or Western standpoint. Also, normalize talking about. In every industry — and very much so Hollywood — there’s a lot of McCarthyism and censorship around it. I have a lot of friends who have been dropped from their agencies and have lost jobs. I have lost work because of it, too. There are people who are like, “Yeah, I know if I said anything, I would lose the thing that I’m on.” I think the more we normalize talking about it, the safer other people feel to join the movement. We all have our lane and our role to play.

There’s no world in which I could see myself not doing this. Even with the consequences or whatever, I don’t see an alternative. I’m obviously still working a lot, and I’m really grateful for it, but there was a time when I was like, “If this does blacklist me forever, how would I actually feel about that?” And I was like, “It would suck, but I think I would be okay still.” There’s nothing that would make me sacrifice my soul for that. I remember talking to my mom about it, and it was so great. I was like, “What if I don’t work again? Blah, blah, blah. It would suck, but that’s that.” She was like, “You could be a teacher.” And I was like, “I sure could. There are a million other things. The world doesn’t end.” Hollywood can dictate maybe an in-group for getting jobs or whatever, but it doesn’t dictate whether you get to be an artist or not or whether you get to tell stories or make films. I always think about that — “You could be a teacher.”

No Good Deed is now streaming on Netflix.

Watch on Netflix

Your changes have been saved No Good Deed No Good Deed is a dark comedy series created by Liz Feldman for Netflix and stars Ray Romano as Paul Morgan in the lead role. Out of money and at the end of his rope, Paul considers selling his beautiful villa so he can pay his debts off and leave Los Angeles, but as he and two other families soon discover, the past is difficult to outrun.Release Date December 12, 2024 Creator(s) Liz Feldman