Liu, who in 2019 became only the second Asian woman to be awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, also described the legacy of Charlie’s Angels, a boundary-breaking role in which she played investigator Alexandra “Alex” Munday.

“As part of something so iconic, my character Alex Munday normalised Asian identity for a mainstream audience and made a piece of Americana a little more inclusive.”

It was during Liu’s ceremony on the Hollywood Walk of Fame that Liu paid tribute to actor Anna May Wong, the first Asian-American woman to receive a star, who she crediting with persevering in the face of persistent “racism, marginalisation, and exclusion”. In her essay, Liu reflects once again on how Wong was the target of constant racism, and hindered in her career by anti-miscegenation laws.

Liu also points out that the pervasive stereotypes that depict Asian-Americans as either “dragon ladies or new iterations of delicate, domestic geishas” aren’t just restrictive, but can escalate to fatal proportions, referencing the recent shootings at spas in the US state of Georgia.

The suspect, Robert Aaron Long, “targeted venues staffed predominantly by Asian workers and said he wanted to eliminate a source of sexual temptation he felt he could not control,” Liu writes. “This warped justification both relies on and perpetuates tropes of Asian women as sexual objects.”

Lucy Liu reflects on how Charlie’s Angels helped “move the needle” for Asian representation