Simu Liu
Appearances
Fresh Air
Actor Simu Liu On Diving In The Dark
I just thought that that was how people lived. But I also, more than all of that, I remember this overwhelming feeling sense of, of safety and belonging, you know, with my, with my grandparents, um, my yeah, yeah. And my nine, I was very, very close with them. You know, we just, they were my parents for, for all intents and purposes.
Fresh Air
Actor Simu Liu On Diving In The Dark
And they had always tried to tell me that I had a mom and a dad that were, you know, abroad and that one day I would join them. But, um, I don't think these words necessarily mean anything to like, like a three or a four year old. It was very difficult for me to grasp that. And when my dad did show up one day, I was about four and a half to, you know, bring me back to Canada with him.
Fresh Air
Actor Simu Liu On Diving In The Dark
It was very uncomfortable for me and a lot for me to accept because, you know, I had my family and I loved my grandparents more than anything. And my dad at that point was a stranger. I very, very vividly remember that. watching him step through the door for the first time.
Fresh Air
Actor Simu Liu On Diving In The Dark
And, you know, when you're a kid and all these adults are looking at you like you're supposed to be reacting a certain way, I very clearly remember my grandparents looking at me and saying, this is your dad, like, go to him. And I just remember being like, I don't want to.
Fresh Air
Actor Simu Liu On Diving In The Dark
It is a couple of funny things. I remember not understanding English. Like I remember being brought to daycare my very first day and just crying my eyes out the entire time because nobody was speaking. I couldn't understand anybody. Yeah. And I remember that's what it was for the longest time. And I know I was learning English through flashcards and my parents were trying to teach me.
Fresh Air
Actor Simu Liu On Diving In The Dark
And then one day it just kind of clicked. And I'm sure that's not how it actually happened, right? Like we remember things very differently as children. But it honestly felt to me like one day I woke up and And, like, my brain had switched between thinking in Mandarin and thinking in English.
Fresh Air
Actor Simu Liu On Diving In The Dark
And I remember my parents were very confused because I think one day I just stopped speaking Chinese to them. But, you know, once I made the switch, I really kind of embraced it. And I remember those early years just that we were— very, very poor. My parents were living off of scholarship money until they graduated. My parents were doing their postgraduate studies.
Fresh Air
Actor Simu Liu On Diving In The Dark
And once they were able to get jobs, our living conditions slowly started to improve. But for the longest time, this was a very unglamorous foray into Canada. A lot of our furniture was kind of picked up off the street. And Yeah, I don't know.
Fresh Air
Actor Simu Liu On Diving In The Dark
When I look back, it really gives me, I think, a unique perspective because I do feel like I've lived pretty much every single rung of the socioeconomic ladder. And I know what it feels like not to have running water, you know. And then I know what it feels like to be, you know, to live in a place as wonderful as Canada, but, you know, starting off at the very bottom as well.
Fresh Air
Actor Simu Liu On Diving In The Dark
Yeah, I think when you have parents who... weren't necessarily present in your formative years and you're in the first five years of life. Like that's, that's when a lot of your personality is solidified, you know? And when you don't have that bond, there's bound to be a little bit of distance. And, you know, I was effectively adopted by my own biological parents, right?
Fresh Air
Actor Simu Liu On Diving In The Dark
You know, on the other side of that, for my parents and to their defense, like they also weren't necessarily in the rhythm of childcare, right? it's a never-ending job in and of itself. And so I think to have one day no kid and then overnight have a five-year-old just dropped into your life, I think, is a pretty violent change.
Fresh Air
Actor Simu Liu On Diving In The Dark
And so, yeah, I mean, I think growing up, there was definitely, you know, some tougher times for us to get along, and it really came to a head... when I was a teenager, when I went through puberty. I think I was actually pretty good in the beginning of being the perfect kind of immigrant kid and getting good grades. But then I got older and hormones happened. And of course, every kid...
Fresh Air
Actor Simu Liu On Diving In The Dark
you know, starts to get to a place where they're questioning their parents. And for me, you know, I knew that I was being pushed in a certain way.
Fresh Air
Actor Simu Liu On Diving In The Dark
And I really, like, I wanted to do sports and I wanted to, you know, have a girlfriend and do all these normal people things that my parents, you know, being from a different generation, a different culture, were like, why are you concerned about these things? You should be focused on your studies. And it really just came down to just very, very different values.
Fresh Air
Actor Simu Liu On Diving In The Dark
Yeah, for sure. You know, my parents grew up in the midst of the Cultural Revolution in China, which, you know, between 1966 and 1976 was a very, you know, a very tumultuous time for a lot of the people living in China. Yeah. It was very hard for a lot of reasons, but one of the things about the Cultural Revolution was that college studies all across the country were kind of shuttered.
Fresh Air
Actor Simu Liu On Diving In The Dark
So instead of going to college, you would kind of go to work in the fields. That was a way to teach Chinese youths about proletariat life. And so, yeah, my mom is a couple years older than my dad, which I know if she hears this, she will kill me. But she had graduated high school and had... was fully working in the fields and my dad was kind of just on the verge of graduating when um
Fresh Air
Actor Simu Liu On Diving In The Dark
when actually Mao Zedong died and his successor kind of reinstated the college pipeline and the national entrance exam. And so because of that, you know, my mom was able to go to college. You know, she was studying for the standard test called the Gaokao. But she was studying for that every day after working, you know, 12 hours in the field.
Fresh Air
Actor Simu Liu On Diving In The Dark
It's a very blue-collar job. It's very dangerous. It's workers that work on the bottom of the sea and the bottom of the ocean performing, you know, kind of routine maintenance and repair on pipelines, on, you know, underwater structures. It's typically extremely dark. There's not a lot of visibility. And the living conditions of these saturation divers is just so...
Fresh Air
Actor Simu Liu On Diving In The Dark
And my dad was lucky enough kind of to go straight from college from high school to college to university. And that was where they met. And, you know, from there, you know, they fell in love. They got married, started to live in Beijing together and became very enamored and very fixated on this idea of studying abroad. And then the rest is history.
Fresh Air
Actor Simu Liu On Diving In The Dark
Yeah. And also, you know, when you're immigrants coming to an entirely new country and, you know, there's culture shock and there's a new language, there's also a complete lack of support network. There's no safety net to fall back on, you know.
Fresh Air
Actor Simu Liu On Diving In The Dark
And so I think there's quite a bit of fear and anxiety that immigrants experience every day that everything they have, if they're not able to make money and put a roof over their heads and their family's heads, like that's it.
Fresh Air
Actor Simu Liu On Diving In The Dark
you're out on the street or you're going back home you're packing your bags there is no friend that you can call there's no parents it's a very stressful existence every day and when especially when you have a son like me who growing up is like trying to try out for the basketball team and doing hip-hop dancing and you're like no please be an engineer
Fresh Air
Actor Simu Liu On Diving In The Dark
My acting origin story. Yeah, for sure. I mean, I think as rebellious as I was, even I couldn't like fully disabuse myself from my parents' notion of success. Like, you know, I've been working as an accountant, just completely and utterly miserable. I start going on Craigslist because for whatever reason, I had some friends who knew some people in...
Fresh Air
Actor Simu Liu On Diving In The Dark
just tangentially related to film and television. And there was a fair amount of stuff that shot in Toronto. I had friends from the parkour community that were stuntmen, people that I knew that were kind of extras on TV and movie sets, and I just remember being so jealous of them. And I started going on Craigslist to look for these acting opportunities, just initially for fun.
Fresh Air
Actor Simu Liu On Diving In The Dark
I really had no endgame in mind. But I wound up skipping work one day to be an extra on a Guillermo del Toro movie that was shooting in Toronto. And it was called Pacific Rim.
Fresh Air
Actor Simu Liu On Diving In The Dark
And I was like, oh, I'm in trouble. I got fired very, very shortly after that, which, you know, honestly, understandable. But yeah, that was the end of my very short-lived career as an accountant. But I was very lucky to kind of book a couple of things very quickly. And then I caught the bug and I thought, look, if I could just keep doing that, you know, wouldn't that be a pretty incredible thing?
Fresh Air
Actor Simu Liu On Diving In The Dark
I was waking up every day really motivated to go out and look for work. And I was just kind of experiencing this entirely new version of myself. Because my whole life, I thought that I was just a lazy, under motivated guy. I thought that I wasn't smart. And I thought that I wasn't a great student because I wasn't a hard worker. And, you know, all of a sudden, I was kind of
Fresh Air
Actor Simu Liu On Diving In The Dark
pleasantly surprised by how motivated and hardworking I could be. And I just knew that there was something to that, that I had to keep going. And obviously kept it from my parents for a very long time, but in secret started to, you know, audition and I got an agent in Toronto and yeah, was off to the races.
Fresh Air
Actor Simu Liu On Diving In The Dark
It's unlike anything I think that is really out there in the world except for maybe like an astronaut living in space. So in order for those divers to be able to operate that far beneath sea level, you know, because of the differential and atmospheric pressure, they actually have to live in a pressurized kind of tube on board a ship for 28 days. Wow.
Fresh Air
Actor Simu Liu On Diving In The Dark
Yeah. Thank you for saying that. I really had no idea what I was doing. And it was very much a trial by fire, like make every mistake in the book. And I guess where I was lucky, too, was it was around a time where I think these kind of very preliminary conversations about diversity were starting to happen. So I was an Asian actor in Toronto, Canada. So it was already a small market.
Fresh Air
Actor Simu Liu On Diving In The Dark
I was thrown into my first few auditions right away. And my first role was a desk cop number one for this show called Nikita. And I had to speak with a Chinese accent. And in doing those kind of day player roles, I remember I did every accent in the book. I played a Japanese air traffic controller for the show called Mayday. And then it became very obvious to me that I needed to kind of
Fresh Air
Actor Simu Liu On Diving In The Dark
deepened my skill set if I wanted to progress, right? You know, I took like Second City acting classes and improv. I took every single night acting class that was available to me in Toronto.
Fresh Air
Actor Simu Liu On Diving In The Dark
Basically, any money that I made on the job, I put back into the business and then somehow wound up in a situation in 2016 where a sitcom called Kim's Convenience came along and I just happened to, you know, be in the right place at the right time.
Fresh Air
Actor Simu Liu On Diving In The Dark
Yeah, I wouldn't say it was a good job. I would say it was a job. I just kind of was doing everything that I could to pursue my dream and to fuel my passion. So one of those things was to be a stock photo model. And I'm sure I didn't realize the full consequences of my actions at the time. Of your hundred bucks.
Fresh Air
Actor Simu Liu On Diving In The Dark
of my $100, but I remember I paid $100 for a day of work, and I show up, and I've got all these different changes. I actually showed up with all of my work outfits. So these were outfits that I actually wore to my job at Deloitte that obviously I wasn't wearing anymore because I wasn't an accountant.
Fresh Air
Actor Simu Liu On Diving In The Dark
But I was like, oh, I think I could accurately portray this office environment, having lived it for a short time. So I showed up with all my work outfits. We did all these different poses in the boardroom. I put on a suit. I pointed at computers and smiled at people. And then I thought that would be it.
Fresh Air
Actor Simu Liu On Diving In The Dark
Little did I know the photos would actually do really well, and I've seen myself on billboards. I've seen myself on corporate websites, and I've seen myself on the cover of accounting textbooks. Accounting books. So when you're a stock photo model, you basically sign away your rights to the images in perpetuity.
Fresh Air
Actor Simu Liu On Diving In The Dark
And the stock photo company can basically take those images and just sell them over and over and over and over again. So, you know, I probably made that company like hundreds of thousands of dollars and have not seen a single penny. Because, again, when you're a stock photo model, I think it's actually pretty exploitative. But, you know, you get paid your hundred bucks and then that's it.
Fresh Air
Actor Simu Liu On Diving In The Dark
You sign a waiver and then... You know that you relinquish any and all rights to to those to those images. So let that be a warning to anybody who's considering pursuing a career in stock imagery. Be warned. Watch out. You will end up in random places and your friends will make fun of you endlessly for it.
Fresh Air
Actor Simu Liu On Diving In The Dark
And during that time, typically it's three divers that go into sat together in one chamber. But they're living kind of on top of each other. The chamber is very, very small. You know, you're typically going to the bathroom like less than... three feet away from where you're sleeping. For a month. For a month straight, yeah, with the same two other guys.
Fresh Air
Actor Simu Liu On Diving In The Dark
I did. Yeah. Yeah. I was very chronically online as a young adult. Yeah. And, you know, I would have these moments at 3 a.m. where I'd get intensely frustrated about my career. And, you know, I... was starting to have all these kind of rudimentary thoughts about representation. But of course, yeah, I was watching Marvel movies. I loved Marvel movies.
Fresh Air
Actor Simu Liu On Diving In The Dark
And I was just like, when are we going to have ours? When are we going to have an Asian version of Thor or Captain America? When are we going to have our... superhero, Avenger guy that we could look up to, you know, or girl. By the way, I have to say, you did a fantastic job setting up the story of Shang-Chi.
Fresh Air
Actor Simu Liu On Diving In The Dark
I really... I was blown away by how succinctly you captured the story of the Wenwu and the Shang-Chi of it all. And then the clip that you played, I really... It's so funny, listening to it without the picture... It just reminded me just how talented of an improviser Nora Aquafina is. A really, really good friend of mine today still. And just brought back a lot of amazing memories.
Fresh Air
Actor Simu Liu On Diving In The Dark
When it's time to go to work, you all go into this little sphere, this bell structure, but it's lowered down to depth, at which point the divers then come out. They're hooked up to the bell and then, you know, to the surface of the ship through an umbilical that feeds them all of their gas and their heat and their power.
Fresh Air
Actor Simu Liu On Diving In The Dark
I mean, yeah, look, I would have done this movie for free. I would have paid to do this movie. Let's just be clear. But no, I remember auditioning over the course of auditioning for this movie, you know, and, you know, in my mind, I immediately go to, oh, are they going to cast somebody from Asia? Are they going to cast, you know, a national champion martial artist or something?
Fresh Air
Actor Simu Liu On Diving In The Dark
You know, what is the story that they want to tell here? It didn't necessarily feel like, you know, immediately apparent that it was going to be the kind of story that it was. But then, you know, Destin Daniel Cretton being attached as director, I think, informed a lot of the direction that I think the studio wanted to go with it, which, you Because I do think that the movie is for everyone.
Fresh Air
Actor Simu Liu On Diving In The Dark
But, you know, it's just really incredible that Destin was able to find a way in and to, you know, tell the story about a flawed but ultimately human character who, you know, is running away from who he is and running away from his parents and eventually chooses to embrace it but on his terms. Yeah.
Fresh Air
Actor Simu Liu On Diving In The Dark
I remember being kind of 23 years old and deciding that I was going to be an actor. I mean, that catalyzed a moment of extreme tension with my parents and so We would not speak to each other for long periods of time. I think it was very, very difficult for my parents to understand that choice.
Fresh Air
Actor Simu Liu On Diving In The Dark
And then they'll conduct these operations on the bottom of the sea for eight-hour shifts at a time. So it's like a really—there's nothing glamorous about this job whatsoever. And yet, you know, there were many sat divers that were available to us over the course of shooting this movie, and some of them were the actual characters that we played in the movie.
Fresh Air
Actor Simu Liu On Diving In The Dark
So, yeah, when Kim's Convenience came along, it was originally a play, actually, and I'd watched the stage play before auditioning for the show. But...
Fresh Air
Actor Simu Liu On Diving In The Dark
The play left me in tears because really the first time that I had seen that parent-child dynamic play out on stage and was so true to life, it was so relatable to what I had been through and what I was going through even in that moment that I was just overwhelmed. I remember sitting in my seat crying and crying. And realizing that that's what it felt like to have art that you could connect with.
Fresh Air
Actor Simu Liu On Diving In The Dark
And getting to play Zhang and getting to act out his dynamic with his Amma and his Appa, I think, helped me make a lot of sense of... What my parents are going through, right? And I think that actually set the stage for our reconciliation quite nicely. Not only in that it gave me consistent work as an actor and so kind of made my parents actually kind of realize that I was going to do this.
Fresh Air
Actor Simu Liu On Diving In The Dark
Sure, yeah, yeah, yeah. It was quite a big deal in Canada before it was kind of blown up to a global audience with Netflix. But the other part of it was, I think, through the characters, we were learning about each other. You know, I was learning about
Fresh Air
Actor Simu Liu On Diving In The Dark
What my parents were going through, through the Amma and Appa character, and they were learning about what I was going through and what I wanted through the Jung character. And it kind of brought us closer together, which I will always be so endlessly grateful for, among other things.
Fresh Air
Actor Simu Liu On Diving In The Dark
Feeling pretty good. They're both retired. My dad retired at age 60. He retired during the pandemic. He didn't necessarily feel like he would have to spend, you know, time supporting me. And he was like, I think I'm going to be okay. So he was able to retire. My mother retired.
Fresh Air
Actor Simu Liu On Diving In The Dark
retired uh very very shortly after that and now they kind of just travel the world and they don't they don't uh experience any more anxiety about having to uh you know subsidize my life or support me so um it's uh it's it's a wonderful kind of happy ending for them i think they're Every time I talk to them, they've always kind of just come back from a cruise or are just about to go on a cruise.
Fresh Air
Actor Simu Liu On Diving In The Dark
I think they're due to like be in the Caribbean like next week or something. And, you know, it's some cruel reversal of roles being on set on a 16-hour night shoot and, you know, having your parents send you photos of them on vacation, right? on your phone. It is a really ironic kind of role reversal situation, but I'm very, very glad.
Fresh Air
Actor Simu Liu On Diving In The Dark
But the one thing that we found in common with all of them is just how much they loved it, which was very confusing to us.
Fresh Air
Actor Simu Liu On Diving In The Dark
to have someone have done something as extraordinary as Dave did. And he doesn't care for any of the accolades. He doesn't care for any of the recognition when, you know, he's like the closest thing to a real superhero that there is. He threw himself into the bottom of the sea to rescue his coworker who had been trapped there.
Fresh Air
Actor Simu Liu On Diving In The Dark
So he, you know, wound up finding an unconscious Chris Lemons on the bottom of the North Sea, clipped Chris onto him, and then climbed his umbilical back up to the bell, which is about, you know, it was like more than 50-foot climb, you know, in the swell, in the sea, which was very turbulent at the time, and successfully recovered him and then, you know, revived him. Like, that's incredible.
Fresh Air
Actor Simu Liu On Diving In The Dark
Yeah, that's right. And sad equipment, you know, it's not light. You know, you've got like a 50 pound helmet, right, that you have to that you're wearing. And then you've got, you know, your bailout oxygen, which is at least another you know, 30 pounds. And then you've got weights in your shoes because, you know, of course they're not fins. You're not like recreationally diving.
Fresh Air
Actor Simu Liu On Diving In The Dark
You have to have, you know, be boots on the ground and to be able to conduct your work. So yeah, just it's a lot of weight.
Fresh Air
Actor Simu Liu On Diving In The Dark
It was pretty evident, you know, reading the script the first time that it wasn't going to be a cakewalk. You know, we knew that we were going to have to do a significant portion of this film underwater and or in these really, really tight spaces.
Fresh Air
Actor Simu Liu On Diving In The Dark
It was like three, four weeks of kind of diving every day, pretty much starting from square one, learning kind of not only the basics of scuba and then getting quite proficient at that, but then also at some point unlearning a lot of the recreational scuba diving kind of mantras and philosophies and then relearning them in a sat capacity. Because again, the equipment is very different.
Fresh Air
Actor Simu Liu On Diving In The Dark
What you're trying to do is very different. And then, you know... We had an incredible dive team around us that supported us and really kind of made us feel safe every day. But that being said, we had a tank in Malta that was about 40 feet deep. And for every night, we'd go down into the water and we'd communicate ahead of time exactly the shots that we wanted to get.
Fresh Air
Actor Simu Liu On Diving In The Dark
And in a way, obviously challenging, but in a way it was really... It was really nice to be able to immerse ourselves to that degree, especially in a world where I feel like in this industry, it's become increasingly easy to lie to the audience. You know, you've got green screen, you've got VFX, you've now got AI.
Fresh Air
Actor Simu Liu On Diving In The Dark
You know, making it very easy for actors to not really have to do anything or to exist in very comfortable situations. And I think in that environment, it was really nice for us to actually go out and do it.
Fresh Air
Actor Simu Liu On Diving In The Dark
Oh, man. Yeah. I mean, it's a look, it's a number and a character that that begs, you know, 100 percent commitment and not a not a drop less. It was I mean, obviously, it'll it'll go with me for the rest of my life as one of my core memories. And I'll never forget that feeling.
Fresh Air
Actor Simu Liu On Diving In The Dark
It was, I will say, a bit of a a bit of a cluster in the in the lead up to the to the performance, you know, for myself and, you know, Shruti Ghatwa and Kingsley Ben-Adir and Scott Evans, who were kind of the.
Fresh Air
Actor Simu Liu On Diving In The Dark
Yeah, yeah. I would say the main Kens behind, yes, the main backup Kens. We were kind of brought on relatively late in the process. And our first rehearsal was the Thursday before. The Oscars are on Sunday. So our first rehearsal was the Thursday before. And then we show up to the Dolby Center on Friday to do kind of like a blocking rehearsal.
Fresh Air
Actor Simu Liu On Diving In The Dark
And we realized that the choreography has completely changed. And we're like, okay. All right, this is completely different. We've relearned the entire thing now. But as long as nothing changes, we should be okay. So then, of course, we show up Saturday for the dress rehearsal. And the choreography is completely changed again. That was supposed to be the last time that we did it before the show.
Fresh Air
Actor Simu Liu On Diving In The Dark
And we do it. And I don't know if I'm blowing up any of my coworkers or anything. But, you know, there's 75 Kens on stage. And they're all moving around, and I remember, like, the rehearsal was, like, it didn't go poorly so much as it just didn't go. So we kind of get back into the dressing room, and everyone's kind of feeling like, okay, what's going to happen here?
Fresh Air
Actor Simu Liu On Diving In The Dark
And then one of the stagehands kind of comes in and is like, yeah, so you're going to need to come in again early morning on the Sunday. The day of. The day of the Oscars and do, like, one last rehearsal because we're not ready. Yeah. So we all met at the hotel connected to the Dolby Center in the early morning Sunday. And we ran through it one last time.
Fresh Air
Actor Simu Liu On Diving In The Dark
And it was in that last run through that we finally stuck it. And then I had something like seven minutes to get ready for the red carpet. But it didn't even matter at that point. I was just like...
Fresh Air
Actor Simu Liu On Diving In The Dark
the entire time thinking about the choreography and thinking about just like not messing up on, not only on live television, but also like in front of Chris Nolan and Downey and Killian Murphy and, you know, Greta and Margo, you know, just like the amount of, you think about the audience and who was sitting there and the amount of pressure that, that was, um, but, um, but no, thankfully it went, it went really well.
Fresh Air
Actor Simu Liu On Diving In The Dark
And Ryan, I mean, just such a credit to him. Um, delivered one of the all-time greatest performances I think that the Oscars has ever seen and ever will see.
Fresh Air
Actor Simu Liu On Diving In The Dark
Oh, looks like this beach was a little too much beach for you, Ken.
Fresh Air
Actor Simu Liu On Diving In The Dark
I did a tape. I met up with Greta. And I kind of talked a little bit about my, like, dance background. Because Greta has kind of an obsession with dance and, you know, musical theater. And really just, like, spectacle and production. Especially as it pertains to men doing it. I think it was something that she really liked.
Fresh Air
Actor Simu Liu On Diving In The Dark
wanted in the movie was, you know, Ken's that kind of were always felt like they were performing to an audience that weren't there. And, you know, I told her about some of my dance background. I was like on my university hip hop competitive dance team or whatever. And she seemed to really love that.
Fresh Air
Actor Simu Liu On Diving In The Dark
And, you know, in our first few rehearsals, I think Greta came up to me and was like, I think you are going to be like Ryan's main rival, Ken. And I was like, that's insane. And she's like, yeah, you're going to ride into battle against him on a beach of pink sand. And you're going to fight using lacrosse sticks and, you know, pool floaties and things.
Fresh Air
Actor Simu Liu On Diving In The Dark
Yeah. So, you know, freshman year of college, a lot of people are worrying about their studies or their partying or whatever. And for me, I was like, meeting up three times a week with the hip-hop western dance team and doing choreo. That was my number one passion at the time. I wanted to be a professional dancer. We had competitions that we would prep for.
Fresh Air
Actor Simu Liu On Diving In The Dark
Competing against other universities. And it was, you know, I have to, you know, I got to paint a picture, right? It was the heyday of, like, dance competitions. This was, like, 2008, 2009. So, you know, So You Think You Can Dance, America's Best Dance Crew hosted by Mario Lopez. Like, you know.
Fresh Air
Actor Simu Liu On Diving In The Dark
The Jabberwockies. Thank you for understanding that reference. Yeah. We're everywhere. And so we were, you know, basically just watching the videos every single day, stealing all the moves, trying to add our own spin to it and pop and unlock in and, you know, using everything that we had in our tool set, which wasn't much, but we just loved it so much.
Fresh Air
Actor Simu Liu On Diving In The Dark
And I think it was where I kind of found my love of performing, especially, you know, I think growing up, you know, I went to a very academically inclined high school and really, you know, had to navigate my parents' expectations for most of my childhood. And they were definitely pushing me to be, you know, they were both electrical engineers, definitely wanted me to follow in their footsteps.
Fresh Air
Actor Simu Liu On Diving In The Dark
And if not that, then definitely, you know, medicine, STEM, engineering. Didn't want any of that for myself. You know, I wanted to kind of, I guess, be out there and be seen and dance to the music and to the beat.
Fresh Air
Actor Simu Liu On Diving In The Dark
You know, I remember flashes and feelings, but I do remember... We had this tiny little ramshackle apartment in Harbin. There wasn't running water for many parts of the day. The water wasn't drinkable, so we had to boil everything that we drank. And there was no hot water, so anytime anyone had to take a bath, it was always kind of a bit of a thing. Although for me, I had no reference point.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Comic Bill Burr / Actor Simu Liu
It's a very blue-collar job. It's very dangerous. It's workers that work on the bottom of the sea and the bottom of the ocean performing, you know, kind of routine maintenance and repair on pipelines, on, you know, underwater structures. It's typically extremely dark. There's not a lot of visibility. And the living conditions of these saturation divers is just so...
Fresh Air
Best Of: Comic Bill Burr / Actor Simu Liu
It's unlike anything I think that is really out there in the world except for maybe like an astronaut living in space. So in order for those divers to be able to operate that far beneath sea level, you know, because of the differential and atmospheric pressure, they actually have to live in a pressurized kind of tube onboard a ship for 28 days.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Comic Bill Burr / Actor Simu Liu
And during that time, typically it's three divers that go into sat together in one chamber, but they're living kind of on top of each other. The chamber is very, very small. You know, you're typically going to the bathroom like less than six, three feet away from where you're sleeping.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Comic Bill Burr / Actor Simu Liu
For a month straight, yeah, with the same two other guys. And when it's time to go to work, you all go into this little sphere, this bell structure, but it's lowered down to depth, at which point the divers then come out. They're hooked up to the bell and then to the surface of the ship through an umbilical that feeds them all of their gas and their heat and their power.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Comic Bill Burr / Actor Simu Liu
And then they'll conduct these operations on the bottom of the sea for eight hour shifts at a time. So it's like a really, there's nothing glamorous about this job. And yet, there were many sat divers that were available to us over the course of shooting this movie. And some of them were the actual characters that we played in the movie.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Comic Bill Burr / Actor Simu Liu
But the one thing that we found in common with all of them is just how much they loved it, which was very confusing to us.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Comic Bill Burr / Actor Simu Liu
to have someone have done something as extraordinary as Dave did. And he doesn't care for any of the accolades. He doesn't care for any of the recognition when he's like the closest thing to a real superhero that there is. He threw himself into the bottom of the sea to rescue his coworker who had been trapped there.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Comic Bill Burr / Actor Simu Liu
So he wound up finding an unconscious Chris Lemons on the bottom of the North Sea, clipped Chris onto him, and then climbed his umbilical back up to the bell, which is about, you know, it was like more than 50-foot climb, you know, in the swell, in the sea, which was very turbulent at the time, and successfully recovered him and then, you know, revived him. Like, that's incredible.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Comic Bill Burr / Actor Simu Liu
Yeah, that's right. And sat equipment, you know, it's not light. You know, you've got like a 50 pound helmet that you're wearing and then you've got, you know, your bailout oxygen, which is at least another you know, 30 pounds. And then you've got weights in your shoes because, you know, of course they're not fins. You're not like recreationally diving.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Comic Bill Burr / Actor Simu Liu
You have to have, you know, be boots on the ground and to be able to conduct your work. So yeah, just it's a lot of weight.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Comic Bill Burr / Actor Simu Liu
It was pretty evident, you know, reading the script the first time that it wasn't going to be a cakewalk. You know, we knew that we were going to have to do a significant portion of this film underwater and or in these really, really tight spaces.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Comic Bill Burr / Actor Simu Liu
It was like three, four weeks of, of kind of diving every day, pretty much starting from square one, um, learning kind of not only the basics of scuba and then getting quite proficient at that, but then also at some point unlearning a lot of the recreational scuba diving kind of mantras and philosophies, and then relearning them in a sat capacity. Cause again, the equipment is very different.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Comic Bill Burr / Actor Simu Liu
What you're trying to do is very different. And, uh, We had an incredible dive team around us that supported us and really kind of made us feel safe every day. But that being said, we had a tank in Malta that was about 40 feet deep. And for, you know, every night we'd go down into the water and we'd communicate ahead of time exactly the shots that we wanted to get.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Comic Bill Burr / Actor Simu Liu
And in a way, you know, obviously challenging, but in a way it was really nice to be able to immerse ourselves to that degree, especially in a world where I feel like, in this industry, it's become increasingly easy to lie to the audience.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Comic Bill Burr / Actor Simu Liu
You know, you've got green screen, you've got VFX, you've now got AI, you know, making it very easy for actors to not really have to do anything or to exist in very comfortable situations. And I think in that environment, it was really nice for us to actually go out and do it.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Comic Bill Burr / Actor Simu Liu
Oh, looks like this beach was a little too much beach for you, Ken.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Comic Bill Burr / Actor Simu Liu
Anyone who wants to beach him off has to beach me off first. I will beach both of you off at the same time. How are you going to beach both of us off?
Fresh Air
Best Of: Comic Bill Burr / Actor Simu Liu
I did a tape, I met up with Greta, and I kind of talked a little bit about my dance background, because Greta has kind of an obsession with dance and musical theater and really just spectacle and production, especially as it pertains to men doing it.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Comic Bill Burr / Actor Simu Liu
I think it was something that she really wanted in the movie was, you know, Kens that kind of were always, felt like they were performing to an audience that weren't there. And, you know, I told her about some of my dance background. I was like on my university hip hop competitive dance team or something. And she seemed to really love that.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Comic Bill Burr / Actor Simu Liu
And, you know, in our first few rehearsals, I think Greta came up to me and was like, I think you are going to be like Ryan's main rival, Ken. And I was like, that's insane. And she's like, yeah, you're going to ride into battle against him on a beach of pink sand, and you're going to fight using lacrosse sticks and pool floaties and things. And I was like, what is this movie, Greta Gerwig?
Fresh Air
Best Of: Comic Bill Burr / Actor Simu Liu
Yeah. So, you know, freshman year of college, a lot of people are worrying about their studies or their partying or whatever. And for me, I was like meeting up three times a week with the hip hop Western dance team. And I think it was where I kind of found my love of of performing, especially, you know, I think growing up, you know,
Fresh Air
Best Of: Comic Bill Burr / Actor Simu Liu
I went to a very academically inclined high school and really, you know, had to navigate my parents' expectations for most of my childhood. And they were definitely pushing me to be, you know, they were both electrical engineers, definitely wanted me to follow in their footsteps. And if not that, then definitely, you know, medicine, STEM, engineering. Didn't want any of that for myself.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Comic Bill Burr / Actor Simu Liu
You know, I wanted to kind of, I guess, be out there and be seen and dance to the music and to the beat.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Comic Bill Burr / Actor Simu Liu
You know, I remember flashes and feelings, but I do remember... We had this tiny little ramshackle apartment in Harbin. There wasn't running water for many parts of the day. The water wasn't drinkable, so we had to boil everything that we drank. And there was no hot water, so anytime anyone had to take a bath, it was always kind of a bit of a thing. Although for me, I had no reference point.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Comic Bill Burr / Actor Simu Liu
I just thought that that was how people lived. But I also, more than all of that, I remember this overwhelming feeling sense of safety and belonging, you know, with my grandparents, my ye-ye and my nai-nai. I was very, very close with them you know, we just, they were my parents for, for all intents and purposes.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Comic Bill Burr / Actor Simu Liu
And they had always tried to tell me that I had a mom and a dad that were, you know, abroad and that one day I would join them. But, um, I don't think these words necessarily mean anything to like, like a three or a four year old. It was very difficult for me to grasp that. And when my dad did show up one day, I was about four and a half to, you know, bring me back to Canada with him. Um,
Fresh Air
Best Of: Comic Bill Burr / Actor Simu Liu
It was very uncomfortable for me and a lot for me to accept because, you know, I had my family and I loved my grandparents more than anything. And my dad at that point was a stranger. I very, very vividly remember watching him step through the door for the first time.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Comic Bill Burr / Actor Simu Liu
And, you know, when you're a kid and all these adults are looking at you like you're supposed to be reacting a certain way, I very clearly remember my grandparents looking at me and saying, this is your dad. Like, go to him. And I just remember being like, I don't want to.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Comic Bill Burr / Actor Simu Liu
It is a couple of funny things. I remember not understanding English. Like I remember being brought to daycare my very first day and just crying my eyes out the entire time because nobody was speaking. I couldn't understand anybody. Yeah. And I remember that's what it was for the longest time. And I know I was learning English through flashcards and my parents were trying to teach me.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Comic Bill Burr / Actor Simu Liu
And then one day it just kind of clicked. And I'm sure that's not how it actually happened, right? Like we remember things very differently as children. But it honestly felt to me like one day I woke up and And, like, my brain had switched between thinking in Mandarin and thinking in English.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Comic Bill Burr / Actor Simu Liu
And I remember my parents were very confused because I think one day I just stopped speaking Chinese to them. But, you know, once I made the switch, I really kind of embraced it. And I remember those early years just that we were— Very, very poor. You know, my parents were living off of scholarship money until they graduated. My parents were doing their post-graduate studies.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Comic Bill Burr / Actor Simu Liu
And once they were able to get jobs, you know, our living conditions slowly started to improve. But for the longest time, like this was a very unglamorous foray into Canada. You know, a lot of our furniture was kind of picked up off the street. Right. Yeah, I don't know.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Comic Bill Burr / Actor Simu Liu
When I look back, it really gives me, I think, a unique perspective because I do feel like I've lived pretty much every single rung of the socioeconomic ladder. And I know what it feels like not to have running water, you know. And then I know what it feels like to be, you know, to live in a place as wonderful as Canada, but, you know, starting off at the very bottom as well.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Comic Bill Burr / Actor Simu Liu
Yeah, I think when you have parents who... weren't necessarily present in your formative years and you're in the first five years of life. Like that's when a lot of your personality is solidified, you know, and when you don't have that bond, there's bound to be a little bit of distance.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Comic Bill Burr / Actor Simu Liu
And, you know, I was effectively adopted by my own biological parents, you know, on the other side of that for my parents and to their defense, like they also weren't necessarily in the rhythm of childcare or, It's a never-ending job in and of itself. And so I think to have one day no kid and then overnight have a five-year-old just dropped into your life I think is a pretty violent change.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Comic Bill Burr / Actor Simu Liu
And so, yeah, I mean, I think growing up there was definitely, you know, some tougher times for us to get along. And it really came to a head – when I was a teenager, when I went through puberty. I think I was actually pretty good in the beginning of being the perfect kind of immigrant kid and getting good grades. But then I got... older and hormones happened.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Comic Bill Burr / Actor Simu Liu
And, and of course, every kid, you know, starts to get to a place where they're questioning their parents. And for me, you know, I knew that I was being pushed in a certain way. And, um, I really like, I wanted to do sports and I wanted to, you know, have a girlfriend and, and do all these normal people things that my parents, you
Fresh Air
Best Of: Comic Bill Burr / Actor Simu Liu
You know, being from a different generation, a different culture, we're like, why are you concerned about these things? You should be focused on your studies. And it really just came down to just very, very different values.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Comic Bill Burr / Actor Simu Liu
Yeah, for sure. You know, my parents grew up in the midst of the Cultural Revolution in China, which, you know, between 1966 and 1976 was a very, you know, a very tumultuous time for a lot of the people living in China. Yeah. It was very hard for a lot of reasons, but one of the things about the Cultural Revolution was that college studies all across the country were kind of shuttered.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Comic Bill Burr / Actor Simu Liu
So instead of going to college, you would kind of go to work in the fields. That was a way to teach Chinese youths about proletariat life. And so, yeah, my mom is a couple years older than my dad, which I know if she hears this, she will kill me. But she had graduated high school and had... was fully working in the fields. And my dad was kind of just on the verge of graduating when
Fresh Air
Best Of: Comic Bill Burr / Actor Simu Liu
When actually Mao Zedong died and his successor kind of reinstated the college pipeline and the national entrance exam. And so because of that, you know, my mom was able to go to college. You know, she was studying for the standard test called the Gaokao. But she was studying for that every day after working, you know, 12 hours in the field.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Comic Bill Burr / Actor Simu Liu
And my dad was lucky enough kind of to go straight from college. from high school to college, to university. And that was where they met. And, you know, from there, you know, they fell in love, they got married, started to live in Beijing together, and became very enamored and very fixated on this idea of studying abroad. And then the rest is history.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Comic Bill Burr / Actor Simu Liu
I should also probably mention that my name's not technically Sean.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Comic Bill Burr / Actor Simu Liu
It's Sean G. Sean G. Sean G. Sean G. Sean. Sean. Sean. Sean. S-H-A-N-G. Sean.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Comic Bill Burr / Actor Simu Liu
I did. Yeah. Yeah. I was very chronically online as a young adult. Yeah. And, you know, I would have these moments at 3 a.m. where I'd get intensely frustrated about my career. And, you know, I... was starting to have all these kind of rudimentary thoughts about representation. But of course, yeah, I was watching Marvel movies. I loved Marvel movies.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Comic Bill Burr / Actor Simu Liu
And I was just like, when are we going to have ours? When are we going to have an Asian version of Thor or Captain America? When are we going to have our... superhero, Avenger guy that we could look up to, you know, or girl. By the way, I have to say, you did a fantastic job setting up the story of Shang-Chi.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Comic Bill Burr / Actor Simu Liu
I really... I was blown away by how succinctly you captured the story of the Wenwu and the Shang-Chi of it all. And then the clip that you played, I really... It's so funny, listening to it without the picture... It just reminded me just how talented of an improviser Nora Awkwafina is. A really, really good friend of mine today still. And just brought back a lot of amazing memories.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Comic Bill Burr / Actor Simu Liu
I mean, yeah. Look, I would have done this movie for free. I would have paid to do this movie. Let's just be clear. But no, I remember auditioning over the course of auditioning for this movie, you know, and, you know, in my mind, I immediately go to, oh, are they going to cast somebody? From Asia, are they going to cast, you know, a national champion martial artist or something?
Fresh Air
Best Of: Comic Bill Burr / Actor Simu Liu
You know, what is the story that they want to tell here? It didn't necessarily feel like, you know, immediately apparent that it was going to be the kind of story that it was. But then, you know, Destin Daniel Cretton being attached as director, I think, informed a lot of the direction that I think the studio wanted to go with it, which, you know, I'm not going to say was an Asian-American story.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Comic Bill Burr / Actor Simu Liu
Because I do think that the movie is for everyone. But, you know, it's just really incredible that Destin was able to find a way in and to, you know, tell the story about a flawed, but ultimately human character who, you know, is running away from who he is and running away from his parents and eventually chooses to embrace it, but on his terms.