Ling Woo is a fictional character in the US comedy-drama Ally McBeal, portrayed by Chinese-American actress Lucy Liu. A Mandarin-speaking Chinese-American lawyer, Ling has been described as cold and ferocious. At the time, she was cited as the most famous and only significant representative of Asian women on US television (besides news anchors and reporters). Thus, her characterization has attracted much scholarly attention in the US. Background Ally McBeal is an American television series created by David E. Kelley which ran on the Fox network from 1997 to 2002. Set in the fictional Boston law firm of Cage, Fish and Associates, the series explores the relationships among various lawyers working at the firm, often as they relate to gender-specific issues raised in court cases. Ling Woo was a character written by Kelley specifically for actress Lucy Liu after she failed to secure the role of Nelle Porter in the show. Woo appeared for the first time in the second season as a client suing a Howard Stern-like talk show host named Wick. She was suing because Wick's programs contributed to sexual harassment in her workplace. Wick claimed Woo brought suit because she had a "slutty little Asian thing going", and Woo said that she wanted to sleep with Wick because if she did, she would kill him. The character proved to be a hit, and Liu was signed on as a regular for the series. Ling became a lawyer with the firm by pressuring Richard Fish, the firm's senior partner, to hire her services as counsel. She remained a regular on the show until 2001, when her role was reduced to four episodes in the upcoming season. Ling's employment history changed that season when the Governor of Massachusetts offers Ling a job as judge after Ling complimented her twin babies. Woo is a graduate of Cornell Law School where she was editor of the Law Review. Asian women were rarely given prominent roles on American television. In 1994 Margaret Cho had a brief prime-time show called All American Girl, which was not popular with audiences and did not last a full season. When the show aired, there had not been another Asian-American-centered show or an Asian main character at the time the Ling character was created. Unlike the 1970s depictions of docile East Asian women on TV, Ling's character was the opposite, but still a classic stereotype, that of the