Trivia / Kung Fu (1972)

• Actor-Shared Background: Caine is a vegetarian, like David Carradine.
• Cast the Runner-Up: John Saxon was offered the role of Caine, but was unable to do it. Instead, he appeared in the first episode, "King of the Mountain". William Smith filmed a screen-test where he wore prosthetic eyepieces to make him appear Chinese. He was ultimately rejected as being "too beefy and menacing" for the role, but he would later appear in a villainous role in season two's "The Chalice".
• Fake Mixed Race: Caine is half Chinese. David Carradine was not.
• Fake Nationality:
  • In addition to David Carradine, the two-part episode "Besieged" featured his partner at the time Barbara Hershey (then billed as Barbara Seagull) as a Chinese girl called Nan Ching.
  • While many of the Masters were of Chinese descent, Philip Ahn was Korean-American.
• Irony as She Is Cast: David Carradine had no formal martial arts training of any sort. He had received some training as a dancer when he was younger and made do with his skill in dance, sword fighting, street fighting, and boxing. His fight scenes were choreographed by David Chow and Kam Yuen, the latter of whom became Carradine's trainer.
• On-Set Injury: The reason the show ended after three years was because David Carradine sustained too many injuries.
• Real-Life Relative: In several episodes, a younger Kwai Chang Caine was played by Keith Carradine, David Carradine's younger brother. Their other brother Robert Carradine and their father John Carradine also appeared in episodes (as Sonny Jim and Serenity Johnson, respectively).
• Recycled Set: The set for the Shaolin Temple was originally a set used for Camelot that was inexpensively and effectively converted for the Chinese setting.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Bruce Lee auditioned for the role of Caine right after wrapping up his film The Big Boss, but the networks were unsure about casting a real Asian actor in the lead, believing that that an American TV audience wasn't quite ready for an Asian actor in the lead role (an objection Lee accepted, stating he didn't believe a white actor would work in a Chinese TV series either). His heavy accent and intense personality were also cited as unfit for the character.
  • Lee's involvement with the series has its own urban legend, as his widow Linda Lee Cadwell claims he originated the entire concept of the series (under the name The Warrior) and it got basically stolen from him, a notion which was popularized by the generally loose biopic Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story. Most other biographers of Lee and the producers of the series have denied this, stating that, while Lee did pitch a series with a similar plot around the time Kung Fu was developing, it had nothing to do with the latter, and he abandoned it himself because he didn't believe it would be ever greenlit.
  • The casting for the leading role when the project was still a feature film had considered (among others) James Coburn, who was preferred by Ed Spielman. When the script became an ABC Movie of the Week, the casting process considered Mako and George Takei.

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