Up-and-coming actors will sometimes claim to know a variety of skills to be considered for roles, but Olivia Liang set a boundary early in her career.

“When I started off in the industry, people would ask me why martial arts wasn’t on my resume because it was such a typecast for Asians to do martial arts roles,” said Liang. “So I made a promise to myself. I was like, ‘I’ll never learn martial arts until someone pays me to learn martial arts.'”

Liang kept that promise. She learned martial arts as the lead of The CW’s new series, ” Kung Fu ” — and she’s getting paid for it.