In 2012, three deep-sea divers were on a routine dive in the North Sea when one of the divers became trapped underwater. The harrowing story of that rescue is the plot of the movie Last Breath. Actor Simu Liu had to scuba dive in dark depths for his role, which was largely shot underwater. He spoke with producer and interview contributor Ann Marie Baldonado about playing a Ken in Barbie, his early childhood in China, and the perils of being a stock photo model. Sign up for our free weekly newsletter to get special behind-the-scenes content, producer recommendations, and gems from the archive. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
Chapter 1: Who is Simu Liu and what are his notable roles?
This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. Our guest today is actor Simu Liu. He's best known for his breakout role as Shang-Chi, Marvel's first Asian superhero, in the film Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. Now he stars with Woody Harrelson in the new film Last Breath. He spoke with Fresh Air's Anne-Marie Boldenaro.
Actor Simu Liu has taken on some roles that are pretty physically challenging. He does killer fight sequences in the film Shang-Chi and The Legend of the Ten Rings. And who can forget him dancing as one of the Kens in the movie Barbie? His latest film may be even more extreme, the action thriller Last Breath. is based on the true story of deep-sea divers in peril at the bottom of the North Sea.
In 2012, three divers were embarking on a routine dive when rough weather and computer errors caused one diver's umbilical cable to get stuck, leaving him trapped.
What happens now? Your umbilical, it's going to snap. You'll get pulled out of the structure. Now I will come back for you. But you have to do something for me, okay? You have to get yourself back to the top of the manifold. I can't rescue you if I can't find you. Understand?
That's Simu Liu, with Finn Cole as the diver who stuck with only minutes of reserve oxygen left. Simu Liu's character with another diver, played by Woody Harrelson, desperately tried to bring the trapped diver back to safety. Simu Liu's first big break was in the CBC Netflix comedy Kim's Convenience, which ran for five seasons.
He says being fired from his accounting job is what helped him take the leap into acting. Simu Liu, welcome to Fresh Air.
Thank you so much for having me.
This new movie, Last Breath, is about saturation divers. Can you explain what saturation divers do?
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...
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Chapter 2: What is the plot of the movie Last Breath?
What was this shoot like? Were you shooting in extreme conditions? Because you play one of these divers who's at the bottom of the North Sea. As you've described, you know, you're in this little tin can, kind of isolated. Even when there isn't a crisis, it's this isolated environment. Did you shoot that way?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I want to ask about the movie Barbie. And I was kind of shocked when I realized that it's only been a year since you performed the song I'm Just Ken with Ryan Gosling and the other Kens at the Oscar ceremony. That was just a year ago. And I just want to remind people to go back and watch it if they want to experience joy. But what was it like performing the song for the Oscar audience?
You guys were so committed to it.
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.
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