This is definitely up there with weird casting news... Lucy Liu has reportedly signed on to play Sherlock Holmes' sidekick in the CBS drama pilot Elementary, an American tweak on London's greatest detective: Lucy Liu To Play Watson In CBS’ Modern Sherlock Holmes Pilot 'Elementary.'While Arthur Conan Doyle's classic has been recently revisited in the recent movies with Robert Downey Jr. and BBC's Sherlock, this take will be set in modern day New York City, and Liu will play Joan Watson to Jonny Lee Miller's Sherlock Holmes. Well, that's different. Lucy Liu is a pretty huge leap from Jude Law or Martin Freeman, but I suppose that's kind of the point.
The project, written by Robert Doherty, is set in present day and stars Jonny Lee Miller as eccentric Brit Sherlock Holmes, a former consultant to Scotland Yard whose addiction problems led him to a rehab center in New York City. Just out of rehab, Holmes now lives in Brooklyn with "sober companion" Joan Watson (Liu), a former surgeon who lost her license after a patient died, while consulting for the NYPD.While I'm all for throwing some unexpected color/gender into the mix when it comes to non-traditional casting, and I'm not against Lucy Liu as Watson, as weird as that sounds. But I have to wonder how far you can stray from the source material until it becomes something entirely different.
Several years back, Lucy Liu was trying to produce and star in an updated, revamped Charlie Chan feature film. I don't think it ever got off the ground. Maybe starring as another famous detective -- or as his famous sidekick, at least -- is her way of exorcising those demons.
Anyway, in the meantime, you can currently catch Lucy Liu killin' it as Officer Jessica Tang on the TNT cop drama Southland. I'm not always a big fan of hers, but I've caught her on a couple of episodes, and she's great.