Olivia Cheng

Olivia Cheng (, pinyin Zhèng Qǐhuì) is a Canadian actress, broadcast journalist, and former correspondent for Entertainment Tonight Canada. Some of her roles include concubine Mei Lin in Marco Polo, sinister Master Gao in Deadly Class, Ah Toy (a madam in San Francisco's Chinatown) in the 1870s set martial arts crime drama series Warrior, Dr. Sylvia Wen (Boulder Free Zone's main doctor) in the 2021 adaptation of Stephen King's The Stand and warrior Charlotte in the dystopian series See. Early life Cheng was born in Edmonton, Alberta to parents who immigrated from Guangdong. They were part of a co-founding group of Chinese parents that created the Edmonton Mandarin Bilingual program within the city's public school system. Her father worked in software and her mother was a health aide. Cheng enrolled in her first acting class at age six, and booked her first commercial at age nineteen. She attended NAIT's Radio and Television Arts program the following year. After finishing school, she became a videographer for Global TV Lethbridge, before moving back to Edmonton to work as a broadcast and print journalist. She went on to freelance as a correspondent for ET Canada. Career In the mid-2000s, AMC was launching its original content division and came to Alberta with a Walter Hill-helmed mini-series executive produced by Robert Duvall. They were looking for five Chinese actresses, and were willing to consider amateurs. Duvall saw Cheng's audition and asked to bring her back. She was subsequently cast in Broken Trail (2006), which was nominated for 16 Primetime Emmy Awards and won four, including the Emmy for Outstanding Mini Series.