Our Flag Means Death Creator On What Ruibo Qian Brings To Her 'Hot Mess' Of A Character [Exclusive]
This post contains spoilers for the first three episodes of "Our Flag Means Death" season 2.
The second season of "Our Flag Means Death" has premiered on Max, and if you've watched, you know that one of the newcomers to the cast, Ruibo Qian, is playing someone who has a few run-ins with our beloved, Muppet-like pirates.
Qian also has something in common with the show's two leads — Rhys Darby, who plays Stede Bonnet, and Taika Waititi, who plays Blackbeard — in that her character, Zheng Yi Sao, is based on a real-life pirate who once sailed the seas.
Like the show's Blackbeard and Stede, however, Qian's Zheng Yi Sao differs from her real-life counterpart. "There's about a 100-years' time difference between Zheng Yi Sao and Blackbeard and Stede, so we're already inventing that they're all together in the same world," series creator David Jenkins told me an interview. "Zheng Yi Sao's about as authentic as our Blackbeard: We're inventing them from whole cloth."
Reinventing pirates to match the sensibility of the show is just one of the things "Our Flag Means Death" does well (Jenkins' aptly described Waititi's Blackbeard as "Sofia Coppola's Blackbeard" à la "Lost in Translation"). And developing Zheng Yi Sao for the show also required Jenkins and his team to find the right actor to portray her.
An instantly relatable hot mess
David Jenkins described the series' interpretation of Zheng Yi Sao as "a hot mess," adding that "she's also really good at her job, but at the same time, she'd like to meet someone." That someone, it seems, is Oluwande (Samson Kayo), whom Zheng Yi Sao is enamored with in part because of his adorable softness.
Jenkins went on to describe why Ruibo Qian was the right performer to take on the part:
"I think Ruibo brings a wonderful sensibility to [the character], where she's relatable — I get what she's going through, and she seems like she'd be a good boss, but at the same time, she's looking for these other things that a modern person would be looking for. And I think that her take on it was instantly relatable, and made us laugh, and gave us a very clear idea of who our version of Zheng Yi Sao would be. And she's a person who could go toe to toe with Taika and Rhys. It wasn't a small order, but Ruibo, she's incredible."
You can see more of Qian's pirating adventures in the near future, as two new episodes will drop weekly on Max, leading up to the season finale on October 26, 2023.