Bruce Lee's Daughter Says Tarantino Needs to 'Shut Up' After His Response to Family Criticism

The drama between Quentin Tarantino and Bruce Lee's daughter Shannon is not over yet.

On Wednesday, the family of the "Enter the Dragon" star hit back at Tarantino's response to their criticism of Lee's portrayal in "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood."

When asked by Variety how Tarantino can put an end to the controversy, Shannon said: "He could shut up about it."

"That would be really nice," Shannon continued, "Or he could apologize or he could say, 'I don't really know what Bruce Lee was like. I just wrote it for my movie. But that shouldn't be taken as how he really was.'"

Shannon's response came a few days after Tarantino defended Lee's depiction in his latest film during a recent press tour in Moscow, Russia. The Oscar-winning screenwriter claimed Lee was "kind of an arrogant guy."

"The way he was talking ... I didn't just make a lot of that up," Tarantino said. "I heard him say things like that, to that effect. Even the thing with people saying, 'Well he never said he could beat up Muhammad Ali,' well yeah, he did. Not only did he say that, but his wife, Linda Lee, said that in her first biography I ever read ... She absolutely said it."

The "Inglorious Bastards" director added more fuel to the fire when he suggested Brad Pitt's character in the "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" could win in a fight against Lee.

When speaking of the fight scene between Pitt's Cliff Booth and Lee (played by Mike Moh) in the film, Tarantino said: "Could Cliff beat up Bruce Lee? Okay, Brad would not be able to beat up Bruce Lee, but Cliff maybe could."

"If you ask me the question, 'Okay who would win in a fight: Bruce Lee or Dracula?' It's the same question. It's a fictional character. If I say Cliff can beat Bruce Lee up, he's a fictional character then he could beat Bruce Lee up."

The filmmaker's defense followed when Shannon first slammed Tarantino portrayal of her father in the film, telling The Wrap it was "disheartening" seeing Lee depicted as an "arrogant asshole."

"He comes across as an arrogant asshole who was full of hot air," Shannon said of the scene. "And not someone who had to fight triple as hard as any of those people did to accomplish what was naturally given to so many others."

She added, "Here, he's the one with all the puffery and he's the one challenging Brad Pitt. Which is not how he was."

Shannon admitted she didn't have a problem with Moh playing her father, however, said it seemed he "was directed to be a caricature."

Although Shannon said she understands Tarantino's reasoning for her father's portrayal, it didn't make it any easier for her to watch, especially due to what her father had to go through as an Asian-American actor in the 1960s.

"I can understand all the reasoning behind what is portrayed in the movie," she said. "I understand that the two characters are antiheroes and this is sort of like a rage fantasy of what would happen...and they're portraying a period of time that clearly had a lot of racism and exclusion."

"I understand they want to make the Brad Pitt character this super bad-ass who could beat up Bruce Lee," she continued. "But they didn't need to treat him in the way that white Hollywood did when he was alive."

Shannon added, "It was really uncomfortable to sit in the theater and listen to people laugh at my father."

"Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" is in theaters now.

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