SPOILER ALERT: This story reveals details of Prime Video‘s Spider-Noir.
Prime Video’s Spider-Noir set in the sultry crime world of Depression-era New York City, follows an older Spider-Man, Ben Reilly, now working as a private investigator after leaving his superhero past behind him. But, when old traumas resurface in the form of a new, unignorable case that strolls into his office, he’s forced to confront the life he thought he escaped. The one that trusts him back into his old life? The beautiful and captivating femme fatale Cat Hardy, played by Li Jun Li. A singer at a nightclub, Cat is much more than a pawn in powerful men’s games. She’s a woman in love with a complicated man (Jack Huston’s Sandman) who wants to start over fresh and away from the local trappings of the gangster syndicate.
Here, Li talks to Deadline about Cat Hardy’s inspirations, working with Nicolas Cage and how she’s crafted a versatile career for herself.
Watch on Deadline
DEADLINE: Between Babylon, Sinners and now Spider-Noir, you’ve been living in the great depression era. How are your previous works informing each other on portraying that era through your characters?
Li Jun Li: I always joke like, “My gosh, I think I’m the go-to girl for period pieces.” It’s not intentional. I love it personally because I’ve always loved period projects. I don’t know if it’s theater training or if I just think there’s an elegance to it. It’s romantic, timeless and atmospheric. There’s a certain discipline that comes with the requirement from an actor to be in these kinds of projects that I love. So, I think that each project sets up the other, whether it’s the research that I do, because I certainly have been pulling from Anna May Wong for Spider-Noir.
DEADLINE: You used your background in theater to help you? Can you talk a bit more about that upbringing?
Li: I grew up in New York City. Chinese parents either like to send you to piano lessons, which they did, or some after school activity. I also did Chinese classical dance school on the weekends. That’s where I caught the theater bug. I really enjoyed the energy that you get when you’re on stage and the joy you bring to people. I know it sounds corny, but it’s a very infectious feeling and I really loved it.
When it was time to choose a high school, I didn’t want to focus on academics. So, the next best option was to audition for LaGuardia High School of Performing Arts at Lincoln Center. And I got in for both dance and art. My dad is a visual artist, so I knew how to draw as well. So, there was a lot of back and forth. He said, “Dance will never feed you.” And I said, “Well, visual art might never feed me either, so might as well do something I enjoy.” I went to LaGuardia for four years and from there on, they had annual musicals where they allowed all the majors in the high school to audition. I was an ensemble actress in A Chorus Line and then I played Cinderella in Into the Woods, and I loved it. Then I auditioned for college for musical theater and acting and I ended up going to Purchase Conservatory for acting.
DEADLINE: You are certainly using all those skills and then some in Spider-Noir, especially the singing. Talk about preparing and filming for the “Dream a Little Dream of Me” scene.
Li: I knew that this role required someone who could sing. As I mentioned before I started out in musical theater and I did Miss Saigon and I toured America, then I was lucky enough to make my Broadway debut at the Lincoln Center in South Pacific about four years after that. I believe during my read for the show, I sang acapella and then a week later I was asked to get on Zoom with the rest of the creative team. I didn’t have to sing then for some reason [laughs]. I think everyone understood what I was able to bring to the table. They just gave me a bunch of notes and how they wanted me to perform the scenes that were given for Cat Hardy. Then when we went on set, it was relatively fast paced because the lyrics or the music wasn’t quite ready yet. And I remember [being antsy] and thinking like, “Please, I need to work on this as I haven’t sung in a long time. I need to work on my vocal cords, and I don’t know what we are singing.”
But then I went to a music studio. The song was produced by Oak Felder, and I had trained with a vocal coach named Adreana Gonzalez and it was the most hectic few weeks because I had to get that perfect. I can’t let my people down. My musical theater peers would have been very hard on me [laughs]. So, I got to the studio and recorded. Then when we came on the set it was ready. And you know that scene where Ben Riley sees Cat Hardy for the first time and I have this shot where it kind of morphs. I’m literally on a little moving cart and I’m being pushed into the camera and I’m singing the song twice as fast so that they can slow down the frame. Kind of like a music video, which is hilarious because there’s a part of “Dream a Little Dream” that was written specifically for the show and it was so fast that when I sang it, I felt like I was crazy.
DEADLINE: So, it sounds like you need to star in a musical. What’s your dream project?
Li: I never want to boil it down to one dream role. I know a few years ago during an interview, someone asked, “What do you want to do next?” And I said, “I want to play a femme fatale.” And that kind of just manifested here for this. But usually, I don’t like to talk about good things because once you talk about it, it doesn’t tend to happen to me. So, I avoid it altogether. But I think I’ve done a pretty good job in keeping my resume colorful. I want to do everything that I possibly can. I want to be versatile in a way that as an actor I am not a typecast and I can fall into different tones and be involved in all sorts of different projects because that’s why I’m an actor. I wouldn’t want to do the same things over and over again.
DEADLINE: What kind of attributes did you want to specifically play up on the camera in your portrayal as Cat Hardy?
Li: There are certain roles that I connect with immediately. Instinctively, I understood her on a deeper level. I didn’t really have to force my way into trying to figure out who she was. I understood the theatricality, also the pain that she might carry underneath and her whole history that we built. It was important to me that we built a real and grounded background for Cat. I spent a good day with Harry Bradbeer, our director and Oren Uziel, our creator.
DEADLINE: How would you explain the relationship dynamic between Ben and Cat? By the end of the series, Ben has that harsh line to her where he’s like, “I’ll save you a set in hell.” Or something like that. Their cat and mouse game is fascinating to watch.
Li: I love their relationship. I think Ben and Cat, when they first meet each other, it was the first time they are meeting their match. Whether on an emotional IQ level or a sense of humor, they both have very similar wit and they’re both incredibly sharp. When they talk to each other they are playing speech chess with each other. I think that’s why they’re attracted to each other because they’re kind of seeing a version of themselves in each other. When I prepared the role, Oren’s iteration was inspired by Rita Hayworth, Ida Lupino, Kim Basinger from L.A. Confidential and Lauren Bacall.
We took little bits and pieces of inspiration and put it together. We also drew from the comic book biography of Felicia Hardy and built an entire background about her familiarity with crime because her father was a world-renowned cat burglar, but then we also wanted to bring it down or ground it and say, “No, no, no. I think he was a petty thief. He was imprisoned.” She had to make a life for herself where she then performed and that was her survival instinct to be dependent on her ability to perform, charm and seduce. She’s very familiar with how she can navigate through those things because she meets Silvermane.
Working with Nic, it was a whole different layer of surprise when we sat down at the table reading. When we started to hear all the words come off the page, then I thought I was just going to go in like a cool cat, no pun intended, then Nic was so dialed-in, and laser focused on his portrayal of the character. It forced me to instantly click into the moment. I think that’s when we just started. That was the birth of Ben and Cat’s banter. So, every time they’re together, they’re just constantly playing this quick little verbal ping-pong game.
DEADLINE: Cat gets some great outfits. What was it like working with Trayce Gigi Field for costume fittings? Do you have a favorite outfit?
Li: It’s really hard to boil it down to one outfit, but I can certainly tell you one of the dresses that we couldn’t stop talking about was the green dress in Episode 3 where you see Flint reappear and they have their little noir scene. It’s a very romantic scene. The dress is green, but if you turned, it was iridescent and it would turn yellow and blue and orange. It was so gorgeous that we really fought for it to be on stage, but then we ended up going with the other ones. She was so brilliant at the costumes.
Also, I want to tie this to just how difficult it was to film color and black and white at the same time. It is not like filming color and then later color correcting it to black and white. It is this constant conversation of how does this color look in color and how will it look in black and white? So, they’re constantly toggling in the pictures, the monitors. If I were wearing red lipstick in black and white, it would read black. So, there were different shades and colors that we didn’t know [would be appropriate] when we were given the option to stream the show in color initially.
So, when I walked on set, I was blown away by the set design and the costumes and textures and just thought, “What a shame that people won’t be able to enjoy this [color] version as well because this is so beautiful.” So obviously when we found out that it was going to be aired in both versions, I was over the moon. If you pay attention to the costumes, there’s a lot of stories behind the colors that Cat wears based on who she’s with. I’ll tell you that Flint’s favorite color is green and then there’s lots of burgundies and blues and it’s just so stunning. Everything is so rich and Tracye deserves her flowers.