EXCLUSIVE | 'Warrior' Season 2 Finale: Andrew Koji compares Ah Sahm, Leary fight to Bruce Lee vs Chuck Norris
Ah Sahm and Leary finally had a go at each other in 'Warrior' Season 2, and the ensuing fight is brutal. It is just what Ah Sahm needed in episode 10, which is also the show's finale (if the powers that be decide to cancel the show). This scene is pivotal in season 2's finale and in an exclusive interview with MEAWW, Andrew Koji breaks the scene down for us and explains the preparation that had to be done in light of this scene.
In the episode, Ah Sahm had just been forced to confront his best friend about a truth that he had kept from him all this while and he may have just lost Young Jun's trust in the process so what Ah Sahm needs more than anything at the moment is a good fight. Which is how we see Ah Sahm enter Leary's pub all by himself and ask for a drink and of course a fight!
Leary accommodates both his requests and the fight that ensues between Ah Sahm and Leary is possibly the best of the season and the second-best in the entire show. It shows two desperate men attempting to make living safe for their countrymen in a country that had promised them a better life. They had come in search of the big shiny American Dream, but what they had got instead, at least Ah Sahm and his fellow men was a chance to serve the white population of the society. Jacob, Penny's manservant, is the perfect example of this. Then there are men who fought and clawed their way through to a position of power, something that is still below the strata of a society ruled by the white population but this is still power. Then there is the conflict with other immigrants -- like Leary who is Irish. It is interesting how, right before they get to their bloody punches and powerful jabs, Ah Sahm asks an important question.
He asks Leary how he is any different from Ah Sahm and Leary says that "his people bled for this country" while Ah Sahm's is only sucking it dry. This angers Ah Sahm enough to tide him through the fight. He lands a harsh blow that ends the fight for Leary, who realizes that Ah Sahm is not someone to be trifled with. Even as Leary is lying on the ground bleeding and trying his best to get to his feet, Ah Sahm warns the Irish that had crowded around the fighters and had cheered. The scene is a morbid reflection of when Jacob had been strung up to hang outside Leary's bar, but only this time, they experience fear. Speaking of this showdown and how all of it came about, Koji explained that both he and Dean Jagger has been expecting this from when they worked on season 1. Koji explained, "Leary's character is fighting for the same thing. He's just on the other, but he wants the same thing. He wants his people to be respected and be well off. To no longer struggle."
Koji added further that Ah Sahm had met Leary at this point in time and after that, the two of them went on their way and did their own thing and this lasts pretty much until episode 8. It is after this that the events that occurred accelerated the conflict between Ah Sahm and Leary. Speaking of the fight itself, Koji revealed that parallels can be drawn between Ah Sahm and Leary's fight with that of Chuck Norris and Bruce Lee's ('Way of the Dragon'). He said, "The conflict between those two (Ah Sahm and Leary) is, I think, it's saying there's room for both of us. The fight... we knew there were some parallels between the Chuck Norris, Bruce Lee fight, and we want to ground it and make it more visceral and real for the modern-day kind of TV-style."
Koji also revealed that he did pretty much collapse on the first day of the shoot for the fight and said, "The filming of it was incredibly tough because of the scheduling of it. The show is very ambitious for what the budget is and I almost, I pretty much did collapse on the first day of filming. We knew that we had to do our absolute best for this fight. As TV shows go on, you never know if there's going to be another season. So we thought we'll do this justice. It could be our final shot. It may be the final time that they (audience) see these characters fight. If you don't get picked up further once. So we just knew we had to do our best."
Koji also thanked everyone involved in shooting this sequence for being able to pull it off in the limited time that they had including the extras who were involved in the shooting of this scene. He also spoke of the emotion that lay behind the scene and said, "The story behind the fight scene was about these two alpha guys at the top of their chain and it's about 'let's calm down, let's have it, let's fight like gentlemen, let's fight like men and let's sort this out'. I think that was the key thing behind that fight scene."
'Warrior' season 2 finale airs on December 4 on Cinemax at 9 pm ET.