Lucy Liu says she helped add a Pulp Fiction nod to Kill Bill: Volume 1

Movieweb reports that, per Vogue, Lucy Liu said she convinced Quentin Tarantino to include a tribute to Pulp Fiction in his 2003 film Kill Bill: Volume 1, where she played O‑Ren Ishii.

Liu told Vogue that costume designer Kumiko Ogawa created O‑Ren's kimono after Tarantino originally wanted a different, "communist gray" look. She said she saw an elegance and femininity in the character and suggested drawing on the black suits and white shirts from Pulp Fiction, noting, "For the first scene that you see O-Ren in, she's in a black kimono with a white underneath the black kimono." For the snow garden scene she said they reversed the colours to "make it white on the outside and black on the inside," and that the change altered how O‑Ren was perceived.

In early 2025 Liu also compared working with Tarantino to working with Steven Soderbergh, saying their approaches are "not even apples and oranges" and describing Tarantino as having "more energy than the sun."

Key Topics

Culture, Lucy Liu, Quentin Tarantino, Kill Bill, Pulp Fiction, Kumiko Ogawa