Our Flag Means Death: Ruibo Qian Shares "Magical Story" About Being Cast

The second season of Our Flag Means Death came to an end last month, and it featured the return of everyone's favorite pirates in addition to the debut of Ruibo Qian as Zheng Yi Sao, who was based on a real pirate queen. ComicBook.com recently had the chance to chat with Qian, and she talked about the Our Flag Means Death fandom and shared the "magical story" of how she was cast in the role. 

"I collect fragrances, and this beautiful, incredible indie perfumer called Marissa Zappas, she was doing a giveaway on Fragrantica, which is an online fragrance community. I never really enter these things, but she had a fragrance called 'Ching Shih,' and it was about a female pirate. I was like, 'Oh, this perfume has all my favorite notes. This sounds pretty badass.' I wrote in the comments something like, 'I'm not trying to be a pirate, but I'm Chinese, I'm turning 40, and I want to embrace that power.' And I won the perfume," Qian shared.

"So it shows up and I look up the character, and I'm like, 'This woman is f*cking badass. I would love to play the character one day. Don't know how that would happen.' And forgot about it. And then two weeks later, I'm driving into a campsite at Big Sur, and I'm losing cell phone service by the second. I get an email from my agent saying, 'Can you tape this by tomorrow morning?' And I ended up taping the audition in the tent. And then the rest is kind of history," Qian added.

"But it took me a long time to figure out that Cheng Shih and Zheng Yi Sao were the same person," she continued. "It took me way too long to figure that out. My husband was helping me tape the thing and I'm like, 'What are the chances I have this perfume about a Chinese pirate, and now I have this audition for a Chinese pirate?' Anyway. It all came together ... Yeah, it was amazing. That was the extent of the research I did, really, and from the time that I won that fragrance to the time that I was in New Zealand shooting was less than two months." 

You can watch our interview at the top of the page.

Our Flag Means Death is now streaming on Max. Stay tuned for more from our interviews with the show's cast.