Why Quentin Tarantino never cast Michelle Yeoh in Kill Bill

Michelle Yeoh is a damn treasure, but there’s perhaps no greater fan of the actress than Quentin Tarantino. When the future director was a mere video-store clerk, he headed into L.A.’s Chinatown to track down a tape of Yes, Madam!, one of Michelle Yeoh’s early roles. “I was just a huge, huge fan of hers,” Tarantino said “There was always a twinkle in her eye.” Tarantino has said that Michelle Yeoh’s character in Police Story 3 was a major influence on Uma Thurman during Kill Bill, which begs the question: Why didn’t he cast Michelle Yeoh in Kill Bill in the first place?

“I asked Quentin the same question,” Michelle Yeoh told Town and Country in a recent feature. “He’s very smart. He said, ‘Who would believe that Uma Thurman could kick your ass?’” I suppose that’s fair. Perhaps there will be a role for Yeoh in Tarantino’s upcoming tenth and final movie.

Quentin Tarantino first met Michelle Yeoh after she had decided to retire from the business after fracturing several vertebrae on the set of The Stunt Woman. Tarantino was in Hong Kong to screen Pulp Fiction and desperately wanted to meet Yeoh, who wasn’t into seeing anyone at the time. “I must say, Quentin, he’s persistent,” Yeoh said. “He is who he is today because he’s full of passion and love, so he wore me down.” She agreed to meet him for five minutes, during which he began recalling all of her stunts in great detail. “Suddenly we became animated,” Yeoh recalled, dabbing a tear. “So then I thought, Maybe I’m not ready to give up on this.” Once Yeoh recovered, she signed on to star alongside Pierce Brosnan in Tomorrow Never Dies, her first leading role in an English-language film.