In the four years since starring in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings helped his Hollywood stock rise dramatically, Simu Liu has danced with Ryan Gosling in Barbie, fought with Jennifer Lopez in Atlas and gone to the bottom of the ocean with Woody Harrelson in Last Breath. It’s been a great run, though he’s yet to get back to the top of the call sheet.
That changes Dec. 27, with the premiere of Peacock‘s The Copenhagen Test. Part dystopian tech drama, part espionage thriller, Liu stars as Alexander Hale — a government analyst who is essentially hacked by an unknown party. Spy hijinks ensue. This gap between lead roles, Liu says, is not for a lack of trying. The Chinese-Canadian actor is aware that one major factor in the offers he gets is the fact that he’s not white. During a recent appearance on The Hollywood Reporter podcast I’m Having an Episode (Spotify, Amazon Music, Apple), Liu spoke candidly about his frustrations with how he feels he’s seen in Hollywood, what he’s doing to move past it all and why his new show scratches an itch that he doesn’t think he’ll likely be able to do in features.
You are entering a rich text here with espionage thrillers. Do you have a favorite in the genre?
Bourne, definitely. I love the grittiness and realism of it. I thought Paul Greengrass did a fantastic job of developing this very unique visual language that felt real and frenetic. I love Bond. I am such a sucker for the genre in general. And it’s not lost on me that it’s rare to see someone like me getting to play that role. It’s been very meaningful for me to get to do my version of that.
You mention Bond. In all of the casting speculation about who will replace Daniel Craig, I’d say people often ask the question of whether they’d ever cast a Black actor. It doesn’t seem like anyone is asking the same question for Asian actors.
No, we’re a couple rungs down the ladder. Fighting for representation for all marginalized communities is important, but it can sometimes suck if you’re not a part of that conversation. Knowing that I would never get an opportunity to play a role like Bond, something like the Alexander Hale character is such a blessing because his cultural identity is really baked into his character. You feel it in the pilot episode, with his superiors not trusting the fact that he comes from a first-generation immigrant family. These are things that the James Bonds and the Ethan Hunts of the world wouldn’t have had to deal with. I think it adds an interesting layer to this story that’s already about perceived loyalty and patriotism.
You boarded this early, as an actor and a producer. There are moments when your character is talking about his upbringing and it doesn’t sound wildly different from your own. How much did you being part of this inform that?
Getting let in at such an early stage is something that has never happened to me before. I’ve been very fortunate in my career to be a part of a lot of great things, but this was the first time that I really got to see how the sausage is made. [Creators] Jen [Yale] and Thomas [Brandon] were so generous. Just because you have the executive producer title, I think that particular title gets thrown around a lot in our industry…
You don’t say!
Yeah, a lot of it is vanity based. (Laughs.) A lot of it is people not actually doing the work. I wanted to experience the full spectrum of what that would entail. And they were so great in letting me into the writer’s room, allowing me to bring my own ideas and really talking through some characters. Back in my time in Canada, I was staffed in writing rooms. So I knew a little bit about how I could show up. I didn’t want to be overbearing in any way, but I didn’t want to disappear.
Your profile rose so quickly over the last few years. What do you know now that you wish you’d known before Shang-Chi hit?
That it’s a marathon and that and success is defined by longevity more than just the bigness of a single moment. And then with the caveat that it’s gonna be a lot harder for you than if you were white. Maybe that’s a controversial thing to say or a hot take. But I’ve watched a lot of actors’ careers over the past few years since I’ve had my moments. Seeing firsthand just why a system is made and why a system helps a certain type of actor that, once they get their moment, it becomes infinitely easier for them to get their next and then their next. That has not been the case for me at all. I still very much feel like I have an uphill battle every single day. The things that come across my desk, I don’t know if this is the best stuff for me. I wish it were better.
What do the things that come across your desk look like?
Tiny, tiny budget [projects], playing third or fourth lead. Maybe a villain. But never the main character, never the proxy for the audience. Only somebody who gets to be a piece of it. And a substantial piece, don’t get me wrong. I’m not ungrateful. But once Shang-Chi came out and had the moment that it did, I was a little surprised by how few No. 1 roles came across my desk. Whereas, if it had happened to somebody else, a different actor who looked differently, I think those offers would’ve come a lot quicker and more abundantly.
I can definitely see a world in which the industry might have written off the success of that movie to the project and not the individuals associated with it.
And I don’t mean to say that I was the reason why the project succeeded. Yes, it was a Marvel movie, but it was a completely unknown hero within that universe and had very little to do with the other characters. It’s a self-contained origin story. And to have it come out at a time, during COVID, when people weren’t even allowed to sit in adjacent seats in a movie theater, and to still, you know, do what it did. And, again, it’s something that I had a small amount to do with. But I think, in a world where nothing is a surefire bet, [someone] would at least be like, “Oh, let’s put this guy in something else. Let’s, let’s see what he’s got.” And, it’s not that I haven’t worked. I’m grateful for a lot of the projects that I’ve done. But, to be clear, The Copenhagen Test is my first lead role since Shang-Chi.
That movie made $432.2 million globally in 2021, and I’ve always felt like the box office from that early in the pandemic should be adjusted by its own kind of inflation.
Right? I just remember there was so much uncertainty around that release. Our industry is so obsessed with tracking and estimates, and we were getting such low estimates. [Bob] Chapek was going on investor calls and being like, “It’s an experiment.”
You speak out about representation a lot, and you got a lot of attention a couple of weeks ago for some comments on social media about what I would describe as the absolute cratering of opportunities for Asians and Asian Americans in Hollywood. Things seemed to be moving in the right direction and then… not. What have your conversations with that peer group been like?
Not to just bring it back to our show…
You’ve got to promo the show!
Gotta promo the show. And I think this is really relevant. There’s a line where my character gets passed up for a promotion, and the guy shows up at his desk and is like, “Listen, you’re a good analyst. The fact that you come from a first-generation immigrant background just adds a little more risk.” He doesn’t mean it maliciously. It’s a very matter-of-fact way. And I feel like we’re in a place where Hollywood where nobody is able to say that out loud. What’s happening is this perception of what is risky and what is not risky. I don’t wanna make this like a bigger soundbite or moment than it needs to be, you know?
But shouldn’t it be if people aren’t talking about it?
I just don’t want to be the only one that’s talking. But this idea of what is risky and what is a safe bet, you have actors that are leading movies that are failing tremendously at the box office and those failures are not attributed to the actors. And, by the way, they shouldn’t be. But to what degree, when you evaluate these actors on a spectrum, and you say, “This actor isn’t risky but that risky is,” I think a lot of times that answer is rooted in inherent bias. There’s elements of prejudice. And I think symptomatic of the key decision makers in Hollywood not really being in touch with what people actually want. If you read what I put on social media, it was a response to someone who was celebrating one actor in particular. Manny Jacinto, coming off of this Star Wars show, then got to play a love interest in Freakier Friday. He’s somebody who’s poised to make an exceptional leap in this industry. And I think the general sense of the internet being like, we wanna see more of this guy. Why isn’t there more of this guy? And the answer is, well, it’s because the people who are actually green lighting and making decisions can’t understand that this is who people want to see. They’re not likely to give that opportunity to someone who looks like Manny or me because, you know, we’re perceived as more risky.
You mentioned the scripts you’re getting that you don’t want to do. What are the roles you want to see?
I feel like there’s so much that I haven’t done. I want to do it all. I want to work for all of the directors that I grew up really admiring and idolizing. It’s been bittersweet, as someone who is not white, not Black, coming to the reality that a lot of these directors will never hire me. It’s a sobering thought. Once I kind of made peace with it, the next step for me was to go, “Are we gonna be in our circles and talk about how frustrated we are? Or are we going to do something?” I’m really grateful for having developed kind of skills here that I think will help me in getting my own projects made, thinking more strategically and entrepreneurially. Look at Dev Patel or a lot of Asian actors that have come before and around me. A lot of them have been forced to wear multiple hats because that’s the way you’ve gotta do it. You can’t just sit around and wait for a director to choose you who’s never gonna choose you. You gotta choose yourself.
I realize that you can’t talk much about Marvel, but what is your status there? Are you on call or strictly freelance at this point?
I don’t know. They do call, I have no idea when they’re gonna call, and then we work it out. I loved what we did. People remind me of it every single day. When things succeed in this industry, no matter who’s the lead, I generally like to think that Hollywood is smart enough to do more of that.
Original Article on Hollywood Reporter