Interview: Eiza González and Poppy Liu On How Fashion Helps Create Their Characters in ‘I Love Boosters’ and Why They’re Driven by Social Justice
A quick glimpse at the cast for Boots Riley’s I Love Boosters reveals a who’s who of standout performers as capable of carrying major tentpoles as they are to steal the show in awards darlings.
Eiza González, for one, gets to showcase a completely new side of herself in the film, playing the cool-headed retail employee Violeta who extensively comprehends workers movements and quantum physics alike. Although a standout in action comedies like Baby Driver (2017) and Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice (2026), her turn as Violeta is further proof of her abilities across various character registers, including her upcoming leading role in upcoming bodybuilding drama Iron Jane, making her one to look out for.
On the other side of the film’s thematic coin falls Poppy Liu, who puts her Hacks chops to phenomenal use as Chinese factory worker Jianhu. Providing extensive comic relief and serving as a strong catalyst for the story’s themes of unity and resistance, Liu explodes with wit and sharp timing from the moment she appears on screen.
Chatting with Eiza and Poppy on a breezy Wednesday morning, the pair shared insightful reflections on the film’s messaging, the contrasting realities of fashion, and the influence of personal roots on their latest roles.
Damian Danemann: I was really curious if you could talk about your relationship with fashion and how that played a role into how you dove into the character since it’s a very specific world in the movie.
Eiza González: For me, my mother was a model in the ’90s and the ’80s. And so I grew up in the backstage of runways. I was passed as a baby in between models. So I lived and breathed fashion since I was really, really young. And I remember my mother buying magazines when I was a kid and that was our activity, reading Vogue or reading Elle. But then moving into America, and then also being in a world where I couldn’t afford a lot of this fashion… it was so unattainable for me. And then getting the opportunity to be dressed by brands. I think it’s a girl’s dream in any sense. Fashion, it’s a real expression of self and it allows you to transform into different variations. And so for me, as an actor, wardrobe is a really huge component to performance and creating a role in the body, the way that it moves, the way that it exists.
As soon as I got into Violeta it was big oversized Dickies… you change your movement, you feel differently. The t-shirt, the baggy clothes, it really starts forming the personality of someone. It’s not a casualty you chose this outfit today. And so I find the fashion super pivotal when it comes to creation of character and you can express so much without saying anything. You could be sitting there wearing something, and the way that the shirt’s tucked in or untucked, it all is an expression of self, and Boots really gets it. So he worked obviously in tandem with some of the best creatives from hair and makeup to wardrobe that really made a difference.
Poppy Liu: I feel like for me, fashion has been something that has helped me at every stage of understanding my own identity. And I think looking back on past versions of myself, that’s the biggest thing that changes during different eras of my life. I think in my 20s, when I first came out as queer, it felt really empowering to show up in a certain way. There’s a full era where I looked like a twink for five years.
EG: A hot twink.
PL: I’ve had an undercut all around my head, just like a little island of hair at the top. I don’t know.
EG: Finding yourself, yeah.
PL: I was like a 13-year-old Chinese boy and it felt really, really important and empowering for me to understand this version. I even think [about] coming into being a Chinese-American person and stuff and how those things come together. A lot of it I explore just through my own body and what I wear. And right now actually, for the Boosters tour, [what] me and my stylist, Lindsey Hartman, are doing [is] I’m wearing all Asian designers throughout the whole tour. Which part of it is I’m like, “Yes, shout out Asian designers.” But also it feels exciting for me to just be like, I want to know who are the emerging diasporic designers out there and how they’re telling stories with clothes. And yeah, it feels like something that you have so much agency over, how you show up. And if nothing else, I can say what my body looks like right now. And that is saying something. Even if I don’t have control over anything else, I don’t know, it feels empowering.
DD: Speaking to the specificity of the characters as tied to the fashion, were there any particular entry points into the characters, whether from your own experiences or anything else considering that they kind of represent thousands and millions of workers, retail workers, factory workers. Anything that Boots gave you guys or anything that helped you directly dive into that?
EG: Well, I think Boots is just someone that lives and breathes social justice and understanding of the struggle itself. He’s an open vessel and when you see him talking to people, he’s incredibly present and he’s taking in stories. He’s never ambivalent [about] anything. And so when you’re speaking to him in the creation, as for me, just taking him in was the most important because [of] the passion he felt. Something that is really important for him is dialectical materialism. It’s how he lives life and it’s such a crazy thing to think about it, but a lot of social advocate, justice people live by it. And that passion was super important for me to inject into the character because it could seem like expositional dialogue, but it really is not. It’s expressing a movement. The concept of antithesis and synthesis, it’s all about the way that we’re living our lives.
So that was so… I’d never lived life like that. I’m sort of more simplistic and I’ve lived a very different… I come from Mexico, I come from a different culture that we couldn’t really… We’re a Third World country, we couldn’t fight in that way. And so being able to be now in a country where I can speak up for what matters for me, and then seeing someone that has such a strong pivot, I felt very passionate. And that was sort of the entry point. He stoked a fire in me where I was like, “I can really express what I’ve been living my entire life.” And I do think that I’ve fallen sort of victim to oppression, of thinking I can’t speak up or I can’t say, because I’m not a citizen… Those fears that exist in us as individuals, especially, I think, in the Latin community, it’s really prevalent.
So being able to steer away from that, and ultimately, it’s not a movie about separation, it’s a movie about unity. And I don’t think people have to think [too hard] about this movie when it comes out…once you watch it, you understand. It’s not about separation and division. It’s actually reiterating that it’s all about unity. And so no matter what color, culture you come from, we all have to be one, move as one, because that’s the only way to stay alive. And so I don’t know, all these subjects were super important. And I think that… the people that he cast, all the women, are women of a voice. They’re not just girls excited to be in a project that’s like ditzy and colorful. It’s women with real strong points of view. Like Keke is one of the most vocal women out there, Naomi, Taylour, you [points at Poppy]. I mean, really LaKeith, people that stand 10 toes down and I think that is purposeful and it’s a choice.
PL: Our wardrobe department, Shirley Kurata and Lindsey Hartman, crushed it so hard with this. Even just like the fashion show sequence, seeing how many bodies they had to dress is insane. But for example, with the character, we had so much fun figuring out what her day-to-day clothes were because once she’s with the girls, they have all their fashion moments and stuff. But a lot of the clothes, I think they just went to LA Chinatown and went to the Auntie Markets and got a bunch just like… If you notice the tracksuit that I’m wearing, it just says sport on it, which is so Asia, where they just put English words that don’t… They just put letters on stuff. None of it makes sense. It’s like “Nutrition Facts” or something, but they dressed it up. And it’s trendy now too.
EG: Yeah, I find it too.
PL: But it’s cool to trace back where the origins of the thing comes from. Or I think they had a sweater that was… from far away, it’s the font of Miu Miu, but it’s actually Min Min, or shoes that are like “BalenciGaga” and it’s like “ha ha.” Yes, it’s a bootleg version, but also with the themes of the film, you really trace back to be like, “Okay, well, where are these clothes actually being made?” And there’s a whole market now of people being like, “We’re just going to go to China and buy wholesale the stuff that’s already made here, for that to be resold by like 10 times more.” And sort of just like the labor pipeline of where the stuff that we wear comes from, I feel like is really told in… Well, we thought about that a lot in terms of what my character was wearing. I’m wearing clothes that were made in China that were inspired by American fashion sensibilities that came from other clothes that were also made in China.
DD: China, yeah.
PL: China. So yeah, it’s like-
EG: Very meta.
PL: Yeah. It’s very meta, but I tried on so many things like, “Teddy, Teddy Bear, so cute, my darling [text shirts].”
DD: Tying to what you were saying about just the way in which Boots thinks about it and just the thematic connections, like both of your characters are the main voices of reason regarding collective action in the film. In your case about the factory workers, in your case about how retail workers are treated, and I was wondering how did those parallels impact a lot of the dynamics with the other characters and how you went about just treating those subjects, I guess?
EG: Well, I think for me is putting myself in those shoes for the first time because I’m living such a different reality, and I’m aware that I’m very privileged in the reality that I’m living as a Mexican woman. That is not the norm. That’s not the experience for most Mexican women or Mexicans in general and the Latino community. So it was interesting because it’s sort of, even in those scenes, and it’s obviously make believe, but you’re sort of experiencing this sort of “shut up and keep working” energy and it really stuck with me whereas this woman is consistently like…
And they’re obviously not doing it in a mean way. They have a purpose in it, but everyone is sort of like, “Shut up and keep moving,” to her. And I thought, “Wow, that must be the experience of a labor worker within these parameters.” It must be this sort of like, this woman who constantly is like, “We need better opportunities. We need better pay. We need better thus… we’re being overworked.” And she’s voicing it over and over and over again and not being heard. And that stuck with me and struck a chord and made me realize how incredibly privileged I am and how obviously there needs to be change and it’s obviously important subjects that are being addressed again in the film. So that really, really stayed with me.
PL: I was talking to someone earlier about how it’s interesting, Jianhu is so inherently in her bones, like, anti-capitalist. I don’t think she would even self-identify that way, but she has a teleporter and can literally do any crime she wants to on earth, but her only thought is like, “I want to get labor rights for the workers of the factory and stuff,” which is so pure of heart of her.
EG: They’re very telling.
PL: Yeah. And also, this was really special. My whole family’s from China. My nuclear family were the first and only ones that left China in the ’90s and stuff. And I think in the course of my lifetime, we’ve moved through different classes, but both of my parents were the first in their family to go to college. My dad grew up in a really, really rural village in Northern China. My grandma was the first that unbound her own feet and left her village. I feel really proud of the people that I come from, not just China, but my specific family too, that I feel like everyone in their generation did this sort of boundary pushing thing to try to lift up the people that come after them.
And I feel so blessed and grateful and it is surreal that I get to live the life and have the job that I get to have now. But I feel like I am always holding on to that. I mean, I’m very Chinese in the sense that I’m very filial, so I’m always like, “What do the ancestors want of me right now? What would make the ancestors proud? What stories should I tell that would make them proud?”
NEON will release I Love Boosters only in theaters on May 22.
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