*Minor-to-moderate spoiler alert*
Bruce Lee’s widow, Linda Lee Cadwell has also taken issue with Quentin Tarantino’s portrayal of her late husband in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
Cadwell found the depiction to be “just awful,” reports theLos Angeles Times. Cadwell told her daughter, Shannon Lee, “I thought the character was like a caricature of himself and made him look stupid, silly and made to be insultingly ‘Chinesey.’ It strayed so far from the truth of who he was and of any actual encounter he had. … It was terrible to watch.”
On Tuesday, news surfaced that Shannon didn’t approve of Lee’s portrayal (played by Mike Moh) after seeing the film on Sunday. She made her thoughts known in an interview with The Wrap, saying, her father is depicted as an “arrogant a–hole” and “not someone who had to fight triple as hard as any of those people did to accomplish what was naturally given to so many others.”
She elaborated on those thoughts, telling the L.A. Times that it triggered memories from the past: “I feel like [Tarantino] turned his confidence into arrogance and his intelligence into mockery. I feel like [my father] was picked on in the way that he was picked on in life by white Hollywood.”
“I’ve met Mike and I know that he loves my father,” she said. “I really hold no negativity toward him whatsoever. Again, I feel like the portrayal is a caricature—not a character, but a caricature. But I think he was probably directed that way.”
In Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Lee challenges stuntman Cliff Booth (played by Brad Pitt) to spar outside the set of Lee’s TV series The Green Hornet. Lee boasts about his skills as a fighter, saying he could defeat boxing legend Muhammad Ali. Lee and Booth fight in what eventually ends in a draw.
