{"id":475312,"date":"2026-05-30T22:28:14","date_gmt":"2026-05-30T22:28:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/475312\/"},"modified":"2026-05-30T22:28:14","modified_gmt":"2026-05-30T22:28:14","slug":"spider-noir-li-jun-li-on-portraying-cat-hardy-interview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/475312\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Spider-Noir’ Li Jun Li On Portraying Cat Hardy \u2014 Interview"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tSPOILER ALERT:\u00a0This story reveals details of Prime Video<\/a>\u2018s Spider-Noir<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\tPrime Video\u2019s Spider-Noir set in the sultry crime world of Depression-era New York City, follows an older Spider-Man, Ben Reilly, now working as a private investigator after leaving his superhero past behind him. But, when old traumas resurface in the form of a new, unignorable case that strolls into his office, he\u2019s forced to confront the life he thought he escaped. The one that trusts him back into his old life? The beautiful and captivating femme fatale Cat Hardy, played by Li Jun Li<\/a>. A singer at a nightclub, Cat is much more than a pawn in powerful men\u2019s games. She\u2019s a woman in love with a complicated man (Jack Huston\u2019s Sandman) who wants to start over fresh and away from the local trappings of the gangster syndicate. <\/p>\n

\n\tHere, Li talks to Deadline about Cat Hardy\u2019s inspirations, working with Nicolas Cage<\/a> and how she\u2019s crafted a versatile career for herself.<\/p>\n

\n\tDEADLINE: Between Babylon, Sinners and now Spider-Noir, you\u2019ve been living in the great depression era. How are your previous works informing each other on portraying that era through your characters?\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tLi Jun Li: I always joke like, \u201cMy gosh, I think I\u2019m the go-to girl for period pieces.\u201d It\u2019s not intentional. I love it personally because I\u2019ve always loved period projects. I don\u2019t know if it\u2019s theater training or if I just think there\u2019s an elegance to it. It\u2019s romantic, timeless and atmospheric. There\u2019s a certain discipline that comes with the requirement from an actor to be in these kinds of projects that I love. So, I think that each project sets up the other, whether it\u2019s the research that I do, because I certainly have been pulling from Anna May Wong for Spider-Noir.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tDEADLINE: You used your background in theater to help you? Can you talk a bit more about that upbringing?\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tLi: I grew up in New York City. Chinese parents either like to send you to piano lessons, which they did, or some after school activity. I also did Chinese classical dance school on the weekends. That\u2019s where I caught the theater bug. I really enjoyed the energy that you get when you\u2019re on stage and the joy you bring to people. I know it sounds corny, but it\u2019s a very infectious feeling and I really loved it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Li<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tLi Jun Li<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tJonny Marlow<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen it was time to choose a high school, I didn\u2019t want to focus on academics. So, the next best option was to audition for LaGuardia High School of Performing Arts at Lincoln Center. And I got in for both dance and art. My dad is a visual artist, so I knew how to draw as well. So, there was a lot of back and forth. He said, \u201cDance will never feed you.\u201d And I said, \u201cWell, visual art might never feed me either, so might as well do something I enjoy.\u201d I went to LaGuardia for four years and from there on, they had annual musicals where they allowed all the majors in the high school to audition. I was an ensemble actress in A Chorus Line and then I played Cinderella in Into the Woods, and I loved it. Then I auditioned for college for musical theater and acting and I ended up going to Purchase Conservatory for acting.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tDEADLINE: You are certainly using all those skills and then some in Spider-Noir, especially the singing. Talk about preparing and filming for the \u201cDream a Little Dream of Me\u201d scene.<\/p>\n

\n\tLi: I knew that this role required someone who could sing. As I mentioned before I started out in musical theater and I did Miss Saigon and I toured America, then I was lucky enough to make my Broadway debut at the Lincoln Center in South Pacific about four years after that. I believe during my read for the show, I sang acapella and then a week later I was asked to get on Zoom with the rest of the creative team. I didn\u2019t have to sing then for some reason [laughs]. I think everyone understood what I was able to bring to the table. They just gave me a bunch of notes and how they wanted me to perform the scenes that were given for Cat Hardy. Then when we went on set, it was relatively fast paced because the lyrics or the music wasn\u2019t quite ready yet. And I remember [being antsy] and thinking like, \u201cPlease, I need to work on this as I haven\u2019t sung in a long time. I need to work on my vocal cords, and I don\u2019t know what we are singing.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tBut then I went to a music studio. The song was produced by Oak Felder, and I had trained with a vocal coach named Adreana Gonzalez and it was the most hectic few weeks because I had to get that perfect. I can\u2019t let my people down. My musical theater peers would have been very hard on me [laughs]. So, I got to the studio and recorded. Then when we came on the set it was ready. And you know that scene where Ben Riley sees Cat Hardy for the first time and I have this shot where it kind of morphs. I\u2019m literally on a little moving cart and I\u2019m being pushed into the camera and I\u2019m singing the song twice as fast so that they can slow down the frame. Kind of like a music video, which is hilarious because there\u2019s a part of \u201cDream a Little Dream\u201d that was written specifically for the show and it was so fast that when I sang it, I felt like I was crazy.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tDEADLINE: So, it sounds like you need to star in a musical. What\u2019s your dream project?\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tLi: I never want to boil it down to one dream role. I know a few years ago during an interview, someone asked, \u201cWhat do you want to do next?\u201d And I said, \u201cI want to play a femme fatale.\u201d And that kind of just manifested here for this. But usually, I don\u2019t like to talk about good things because once you talk about it, it doesn\u2019t tend to happen to me. So, I avoid it altogether. But I think I\u2019ve done a pretty good job in keeping my resume colorful. I want to do everything that I possibly can. I want to be versatile in a way that as an actor I am not a typecast and I can fall into different tones and be involved in all sorts of different projects because that\u2019s why I\u2019m an actor. I wouldn\u2019t want to do the same things over and over again.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Nicolas<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tNicolas Cage as Ben Reilly in Spider-Noir<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tAmazon Studios<\/p>\n

\n\tDEADLINE: What kind of attributes did you want to specifically play up on the camera in your portrayal as Cat Hardy?\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tLi: There are certain roles that I connect with immediately. Instinctively, I understood her on a deeper level. I didn\u2019t really have to force my way into trying to figure out who she was. I understood the theatricality, also the pain that she might carry underneath and her whole history that we built. It was important to me that we built a real and grounded background for Cat. I spent a good day with Harry Bradbeer, our director and Oren Uziel<\/a>, our creator.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tDEADLINE: How would you explain the relationship dynamic between Ben and Cat? By the end of the series, Ben has that harsh line to her where he\u2019s like, \u201cI\u2019ll save you a set in hell.\u201d Or something like that. Their cat and mouse game is fascinating to watch.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tLi: I love their relationship. I think Ben and Cat, when they first meet each other, it was the first time they are meeting their match. Whether on an emotional IQ level or a sense of humor, they both have very similar wit and they\u2019re both incredibly sharp. When they talk to each other they are playing speech chess with each other. I think that\u2019s why they\u2019re attracted to each other because they\u2019re kind of seeing a version of themselves in each other. When I prepared the role, Oren\u2019s iteration was inspired by Rita Hayworth, Ida Lupino, Kim Basinger from L.A. Confidential and Lauren Bacall.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tWe took little bits and pieces of inspiration and put it together. We also drew from the comic book biography of Felicia Hardy and built an entire background about her familiarity with crime because her father was a world-renowned cat burglar, but then we also wanted to bring it down or ground it and say, \u201cNo, no, no. I think he was a petty thief. He was imprisoned.\u201d She had to make a life for herself where she then performed and that was her survival instinct to be dependent on her ability to perform, charm and seduce. She\u2019s very familiar with how she can navigate through those things because she meets Silvermane.<\/p>\n

\n\tWorking with Nic, it was a whole different layer of surprise when we sat down at the table reading. When we started to hear all the words come off the page, then I thought I was just going to go in like a cool cat, no pun intended, then Nic was so dialed-in, and laser focused on his portrayal of the character. It forced me to instantly click into the moment. I think that\u2019s when we just started. That was the birth of Ben and Cat\u2019s banter. So, every time they\u2019re together, they\u2019re just constantly playing this quick little verbal ping-pong game.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Li<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tLi Jun Li as Cat Hardy in Spider-Noir<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tAmazon Studios<\/p>\n

\n\tDEADLINE: Cat gets some great outfits. What was it like working with Trayce Gigi Field for costume fittings? Do you have a favorite outfit?\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tLi: It\u2019s really hard to boil it down to one outfit, but I can certainly tell you one of the dresses that we couldn\u2019t stop talking about was the green dress in Episode 3 where you see Flint reappear and they have their little noir scene. It\u2019s a very romantic scene. The dress is green, but if you turned, it was iridescent and it would turn yellow and blue and orange. It was so gorgeous that we really fought for it to be on stage, but then we ended up going with the other ones. She was so brilliant at the costumes.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tAlso, I want to tie this to just how difficult it was to film color and black and white at the same time. It is not like filming color and then later color correcting it to black and white. It is this constant conversation of how does this color look in color and how will it look in black and white? So, they\u2019re constantly toggling in the pictures, the monitors. If I were wearing red lipstick in black and white, it would read black. So, there were different shades and colors that we didn\u2019t know [would be appropriate] when we were given the option to stream the show in color initially.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tSo, when I walked on set, I was blown away by the set design and the costumes and textures and just thought, \u201cWhat a shame that people won\u2019t be able to enjoy this [color] version as well because this is so beautiful.\u201d So obviously when we found out that it was going to be aired in both versions, I was over the moon. If you pay attention to the costumes, there\u2019s a lot of stories behind the colors that Cat wears based on who she\u2019s with. I\u2019ll tell you that Flint\u2019s favorite color is green and then there\u2019s lots of burgundies and blues and it\u2019s just so stunning. Everything is so rich and Tracye deserves her flowers.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SPOILER ALERT:\u00a0This story reveals details of Prime Video\u2018s Spider-Noir. Prime Video\u2019s Spider-Noir set in the sultry crime world…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":475313,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[45056,79209,93,61,60,159022,270,8705,205003,12867,146275,205004],"class_list":["post-475312","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-amazon-studios","tag-awardsdialogue","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-li-jun-li","tag-movies","tag-nicolas-cage","tag-oren-uziel","tag-prime-video","tag-spider-noir","tag-tracye-gigi-field"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475312","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=475312"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475312\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/475313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=475312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=475312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=475312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}