From a laundromat owner to a goddess seems like a titanic leap. But not for Malaysian actress Michelle Yeoh. Yeoh won the Oscar for the surreal comedy “Everything Everywhere All at Once” and is now the Goddess of Mercy in a reiteration of the graphic novel “American Born Chinese.”
“The Goddess of Mercy is a very well‑known god in our world,” says Yeoh of the character she plays in the eight-part series, which premieres Wednesday on Disney+.
“There are a lot of things written about her and understanding where she comes from. But we were always, always very respectful of the Goddess of Mercy because she's very, very iconic in our world. And we had to be careful of how we did that without taking too much liberty and sort of damaging her persona,” she says.
