In the brand-new crime comedy I Love Boosters, director Boots Riley presents a vision of rebellion against the capitalist scheme that’s not only highly principled in its execution, but dripping with fantastically fashionable, faux-fur-trimmed, Technicolor glamour, too.

As Jianhu—a former Chinese factory worker who flees to the Bay Area to join a crew of professional shoplifters—Poppy Liu (whom you may also recognize from Hacks) is known for speaking out about the political issues that matter most to her, and in I Love Boosters, she joins a stacked cast to bring to life a script that confronts those issues head-on.

“None of us did this movie to make money,” Liu says, “but I think it’s my favorite job I’ve ever done.” Here, she tells Vogue all about it.

Vogue: How did you prepare to portray Jianhu in I Love Boosters?

Poppy Liu: I respect Boots [Riley] so much as an artist and a creative for how he uses his voice and artistry for social commentary, and I feel a lot of alignment with him politically, so we really got into it. The movie covers so much; not just the critique of capitalism, but also the class solidarity piece and the relational global solidarity piece between the US and China, which I think is really huge. I think the thesis that he’s making with the film is kind of a “Workers of the world unite” thing, where we’re kind of held apart by the same forces and systems of power, but for the character herself, she isn’t really thinking about any of this. She’s just a girl in China who works in a factory and likes to mess around and fuck off and be a young kid, and you kind of see her get radicalized in real time because she’s seeing what’s happening to her family and loved ones and feels the need to do something about it.

Tell me about Jianhu’s political evolution throughout the film.

Even by the end of the film, I don’t think Jianhu is someone who necessarily self-identifies as an activist or an organizer or a revolutionary, but all of her actions are that, because I think at the heart of all of those identities is someone who dares to imagine the world to be better than it is, and takes action in that direction, however big or small. The minute she appears, she has this laser focus on wanting to get labor rights for her people at the factory in China by any means necessary, and she’s tremendously brave. Still, I don’t think she’s thinking about herself in that way; she’s just like, “We want longer breaks, better working hours, better pay, and stop making us use chemicals that give us diseases and cancer.” They’re all tangible things, not classroom-revolutionary stuff where you’re sort of theorizing about it. That’s important too, but I think Jianhu is very much someone who’s just out here and doing the thing. She’s very action-oriented, and I really love her a lot as a character.

Do you have a favorite outfit of Jianhu’s from the film?

I mean, so many outfits! I loved the process of working with Shirley Kurata and Lindsey Hartman, who ran the costume department, so much that Lindsey is my stylist now. Lindsey styled me for the I Love Boosters press tour, and they’re like fairy godmothers to me; we’re always texting photos to Shirley being like, “Okay, which one do you like more? Black thong or nude thong with this see-through thing?” They’re so incredible and I love them so much.

It’s hard to pick a favorite look because I think all the looks are by themselves so strong, but I think what they achieved was really cohesive storytelling—the hyper-maximalist, very colorful, over-the-top magical realism that’s adjacent to our real-world vision that Boots created and Shirley and Lindsey really brought to life through our outfits. My favorite clothing moment is probably the montage; we did all of it in half a day, because we had to shoot something else in the morning, so we would shoot, go off, take photos, quick change, hair, makeup, wardrobe, go do it again, and all of the departments were really firing on all cylinders. It was so cool to see everyone go from ’60s to avant-garde floral and just be the masters of their craft.

Shoplifting has been in the news lately, but what bigger conversation do you think we’re missing when we talk about small-scale theft?

I think when we talk about shoplifting, we’re talking about a criminal activity, but the actual criminals in the scheme of capitalism are not petty shoplifters on the civilian level; it’s the CEOs and the billionaires who are profiting off of people’s growing debt. I think we know that, and we get collectively mad about it, but it’s almost like they’ve made themselves so powerful and seemingly untouchable that it then becomes people fighting against each other about petty shoplifting bullshit. Like, Whole Foods is a multi-billion-dollar company! Whole Foods is okay! Nobody is being hurt by you shoplifting from Whole Foods. Corporations aren’t people, corporations don’t feel pain—it’s the people that work there who feel pain. It’s different from shoplifting from a mom-and-pop store, where you’re stealing from a person.

These corporations have more legal rights than an actual human being does because they have so much protection, and I feel like at the end of the day, capitalism isn’t protecting people; it’s protecting corporations. Companies can never serve people because companies benefit from exploitation and they benefit from higher margins and smaller costs, so it’s in a company’s best interest to use the cheapest labor possible, utilize AI, and lay off their workers. That’s something that’s created by the system, and if you’re fighting against it, then you’re not even doing capitalism, right? You’re doing socialism.

You certainly are!

I think part of what I love about I Love Boosters is just seeing that there is another way of being. I was emotional last night because we just did our New York screening. I lived in New York for many years, I love this city so much, and this is the first time I’ve been back since Mamdani has been mayor, and that’s so exciting. Seeing what Mamdani is doing in New York is like, yes, it is possible to get our city out of debt and not cut social services. If you want to provide universal pre-K, you can do it! It’s about who you’re valuing, and I think at the heart of it, capital doesn’t value people, it values these intangible things like margin and growth and corporations and franchising, and none of that is a human life.

This interview has been edited and condensed.