Warrior's Dianne Doan Finds Her Power Both On-Screen and Off

The martial arts Western known as Warrior has had its fair share of ups and downs. Its first season premiered on Cinemax in the spring of 2019 to rave reviews and was swiftly picked up for a second season. But as production was underway on season two in Cape Town, South Africa, the merger between Time Warner and HBO put the show’s future in question. Then the pandemic hit. Cinemax eventually dissolved in late 2020 following the show’s second season, and the series was effectively canceled. But the following year, the show was revived when HBO Max added seasons one and two to its slate. With fantastic numbers, there was hope again. In 2022, its ensemble cast received a call that HBO Max was picking up the show for a third season. They were back, baby! "Everything that could have happened [and] could have gone wrong went wrong—completely wrong,” laughs Dianne Doan, Warrior’s female lead. But in hindsight, the wild, emotional roller coaster of the last four years was a blessing in disguise for the actress. 

Doan and I meet via Zoom on a Monday morning in early June, and the moment she appears on-screen, I can sense the excitement she is feeling around the opportunity to talk about Warrior again. So we dive right in. It’s the little show that could, but by far, it’s been Doan’s biggest responsibility as an actor. "Never in my wildest dreams did I think something like this would be created, and then a little old Canadian girl gets to be a part of it,” she gushes. Although she’d been in the business for 10 years (with recurring roles in Vikings and Disney’s Descendants), the character Mai Ling in Warrior was the actress’s first lead role, and she could definitely feel the weight of it. She admits to spending all of season one just trying to keep her head above water, telling herself repeatedly, "Don’t fuck this up. Don’t get fired.” By season two, she was more sure of herself, but the pandemic would knock her confidence back down. So she spent the majority of the show’s hiatus and lockdown working on herself. "I had to build myself back up—not just as an artist but as a woman,” Doan shares. "Years of therapy, it just prepped me to come back and really own who I am.” She flashes a big smile as she recalls feeling like a completely new person while stepping onto the Warrior set for season three. At that moment, I start to see the parallels between Doan and her on-screen counterpart. Much in the way Mai Ling comes into her power on Warrior, Doan is now owning her sense of self.

Set during the violent Tong Wars in the late 1800s, Warrior follows Ah Sahm, a martial arts prodigy who emigrates to San Francisco from China in search of his eldest sister Mai Ling, only to be recruited as a hatchet man for one of the most powerful crime families. The series is based on an original concept by Bruce Lee and delivers plenty of vivid and well-choreographed action coupled with intriguing historical narratives and drama à la Peaky Blinders and Deadwood. At the center is a complicated brother-sister relationship steeped in power struggles and tension-filled reunions performed brilliantly by Andrew Koji and Doan. 

Yes, this is a male-dominated show, but it’s important to note that the women really run the whole town. The female badassery on Warrior is unparalleled, and Mai Ling is no exception. While her rise to power may have been a bit messy with questionable decisions on her part, Doan is happy to report Mai Ling is much more comfortable and relaxed in her position this season. "I don’t know how much I’m allowed to say,” she chuckles. What she can reveal is that we’ll get to see Mai Ling exploring different worlds and relationships beyond Chinatown, which brings out a completely new side to her. "I’ve never seen her in that light of… She’s gentler. You can see charisma come out and the softness,” Doan says. "You can finally, for me personally, understand how she got to this position of power. She gets to be a human and a woman and finds these relationships. The evolution of Mai Ling for season three, for me, has been really fun.” As for where things stand with Ah Sahm and Mai Ling’s relationship? She’s hoping fans will be happy with where they get to. 

The beauty for Doan in playing a character like Mai Ling is that—although this woman lives in a completely different time and under vastly different circumstances—there is still a lot to relate to. She likens Mai Ling’s difficult journey from China to San Francisco in season one to her own when she moved from Canada to Los Angeles. 

"I feel like that was at a stage where I was very new and just moved to L.A., and there was this ‘treading water’ feeling of like, Where’s my place? How do I find my community?” Doan says. "I feel like Mai Ling was so lost. She had a vision of where she wanted her life to be, but it was about climbing to the top and surviving and not letting her past… It was never delved into, but there was a lot of trauma in her past, and she says in the script, ‘I will never allow that to happen again to me.’ I felt like I could relate heavily to that. Not the trauma, but I made this decision to move here, and whatever it fucking takes, I just have to make it happen. We were just on this journey together—surviving.”

Mai Ling is going on a bit of a sartorial journey in season three too. "We start the season off classic because we have to remind the audience because it’s been so many years. But then she just veers off,” Doan shares. "In season two, I was used to all of the greens, browns, blacks, maybe a very dark navy blue, and all of a sudden, they’re pulling out bright blues, pinks, and light purples.” 

From the get-go, Warrior has been praised for its costume design. With Moira Anne Meyer at the helm and a team of talented local craftsmen, the show has put out enough noteworthy looks to fill entire warehouses. But it’s with its alluring female leads, particularly Mai Ling and brothel madam Ah Toy (Olivia Cheng), where the bold design work really shines. Think 1870s-inspired looks with contemporary touches. 

Doan says she has a fondness for Mai Ling’s classic warrior garb. "As soon as that shift happened in power, I called it my uniform. It was full leather, a lot of buckling details, and even my posture changes. As soon as I’m strapped in, it zips up, and my whole body, my shoulders are up and back. It’s the most incredible feeling,” she says. Beautiful and powerful, yes, but definitely not practical. In the Cape Town summer, where temperatures regularly reach 95° to 100° Fahrenheit, Doan says the suit becomes a "sweatsuit sauna.” 

For a character that is never allowed to wear the same costume twice and is often wearing three to four looks an episode, Doan is in the costume department the most out of anyone. She guesstimates Mai Ling has upwards of 50 costumes this season alone. "My favorite thing is going in the costume room and just flipping through the Mai Ling rack,” she says.

The powerful story arc and gorgeous costumes aside, Doan does have one bone to pick with the show’s writers: "I do wish they let me fight a little more so I could feel that level of badassery, but they are very adamant. They are like, ‘You have people to fight for you.’ But I swear every script that comes out I go to the writers’ room, and I’m like, ‘Put me in! Let’s get dirty.’ And they are like, ‘No.’”

Doan’s eagerness to take on new challenges and step outside her comfort zone is also reflected in how she picks her projects. When I ask if she wants to switch gears and do comedy, she responds enthusiastically. "Oh, bring it on!” she says. Doan recently dipped her toe in the genre for the upcoming film Reunion, in which she stars opposite Nina Dobrev, Chace Crawford, and Jamie Chung. And then there was the quirky indie rom-com she starred in called Better Half, which premiered at the Brooklyn Film Festival last month. For Doan, both projects were a refreshing and welcome change from the much darker Warrior. 

Doan is at a point in her career where she has the luxury of being a little pickier with her roles, which is something she’s grateful for. Her priorities have changed as she’s gotten older, and where and how she spends her time is high on the list. Filming season three of Warrior in Cape Town for nearly half a year was an eye-opener for the actress, as it’s hard to be away from her family and community for that long. Now, when she’s reading a script, she will ask herself this question: Do I want to be in this headspace for how many months? She tells me she’s currently on the lookout for a really grounded, contemporary indie drama, but the world feels like her oyster at this stage. "I’m in my early 30s, and I feel like I’m just getting started,” she says.

Catch up on Warrior, which is now streaming on Max with new episodes every Thursday. 

Photographer: JJ Geiger

Stylist: Amanda Lim

Hairstylist: Cameron Rains

Makeup Artist: Tami El Sombati