Shang-Chi star Simu Liu on joining the MCU, Asian role models and filming in Australia during Covid-19

As he finally becomes the first Asian superhero in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Simu Liu reveals why he feared it might never happen.

There was a time during the filming of Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings in Australia last year when Simu Liu wondered whether his childhood dream of playing a superhero was ever going to come to fruition.

The China-born, Canada-raised actor had been having the time of his life sampling the country’s culinary delights, scuba diving on the Great Barrier Reef, and enjoying a tropical Christmas with his parents. All the while he was relishing the prospect of becoming the first Asian superhero in the hugely successful Marvel Cinematic Universe during the shoot at Fox Studios and other locations around Sydney.

But everything ground to a halt in March of last year when the Covid-19 pandemic shut down film and TV productions around the world leaving Liu and the rest of the international and local cast and crew of the $200 million blockbuster frustrated and wondering what would happen next.

“We shut down for about four months when the world was brought to its knees,” recalls Liu. “We were lucky enough to be able to finish the shooting of our movie but there was a time where we definitely thought there was a possibility that we weren’t going to be able to finish.”

Simu Liu in a scene from Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.

When production resumed in August, as the city opened up while the pandemic raged around the rest of the world, it came with a heightened awareness that jobs and lives were at stake and a determination to do the right thing with masks, social distancing and regular testing.

“I’m very proud of all of us, including our incredible Australian crew and it’s because of their hard work and their dedication that we have a movie today,” says Liu.

Liu says it’s “indescribably awesome” that his character Shang-Chi – a martial arts expert trained by his villainous father to be an assassin from a young age – gets to join the likes of Iron Man, Captain America, Thor and Black Panther in the MCU.

As a young kid growing up in Canada after emigrating from China aged four, Liu’s enduring memory was of “constantly feeling like I was a visitor” and never seeing faces like his on TV, in movies or in pop culture generally. So, to see an Asian superhero – not to mention an all-star Asian cast that includes Akwafina, Tony Leung and Michelle Yeoh – become a central part of the most successful franchise in movie history “means the world” to Liu.

“I can’t imagine what it would have been like for me as a kid to have seen this movie and what that would have meant to watch myself reflected, to have the ability to dress up as an Asian superhero for Halloween, to be able to buy an Asian action figure at the toy store. Those are options that quite frankly I never had and it can go a long way in framing a child’s sense of self-confidence and self-worth and what is possible.”

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings director Destin Daniel Cretton and star Simu Liu both looked back to their childhood dreams. Photo by Ricky Middlesworth.

Liu, whose highest profile role to date has been in the Canadian sit-com Kim’s Convenience, first threw the idea out to the universe about being a superhero as a very young actor when he wrote a speculative treatment for one of the few Asian superheroes, Sunfire, from the X-Men comics.

He never showed it to anyone, regarding it more as a mental exercise than anything, but seven years ago, tagged the studio juggernaut with a tweet that said “Hey Marvel, great job with Captain America and Thor, how about an Asian-American superhero?”. Four years later, when Shang-Chi was announced, he followed up with “OK Marvel, are we gonna talk or what?”.

He admits now that the tweets were a joke – and Marvel boss Kevin Feige confirmed that he never actually saw them – but says “I must have been all about manifesting what I wanted”.

“From when I was a lot younger I was already trying to picture myself in that role so this is in a lot of ways a really beautiful full-circle moment for me,” he says of bagging the coveted role. “I think superheroes mean so much for so many people – they represent hope and possibilities and it really is such an honour to be part of this one in particular.”

Director Destin Daniel Cretton, fight instructor Alan Tang, crew camera operator, and Simu Liu on the Sydney set of Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. Picture: Jasin Boland.

Director Destin Crettin also thought back to his childhood growing up in Hawaii with Asian heritage when the possibility arose to direct Shang-Chi. Although he’d directed MCU alumni including Brie Larson (Captain Marvel) and Michael B. Jordan (Black Panther) in dramas including The Glass Castle and Just Mercy, he didn’t feel like he was ready to take the reins of a big-budget, action and effects spectacular and specifically told his agent to not even let him entertain any such offers or inquiries.

“Ironically they announced two weeks later that Marvel was looking for directors for Shang-Chi and that just gripped me,” he says with a laugh. “I went back to my childhood self and realised that it was something I didn’t have and the thought of passing on an opportunity to be involved was haunting me, so I called my agent back and said ‘I know what I told you two weeks ago, but now can you get me a meeting with Marvel?’.”

Cretton’s colleague, Black Panther director Ryan Coogler, told him that the job would probably be the most difficult thing he’d ever done to that point, but stressed that the pressure would not come from anyone he was working for or with. Cretton also took words of comfort about the prospect of shooting on the other side of the world from his hand-picked director of photography, the revered Bill Pope, who had made the Matrix movies in Sydney more than 20 years ago.

Michelle Yeoh, Simu Liu and Sandra Oh at the Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings UK Gala Screening at Curzon Cinema Mayfair in London last week. Picture: Ian Gavan/Getty Images for Disney

“I asked him what it was going to be like and he said ‘you will be so spoiled because they are the hardest working, best crews in the world’ and that is what we experienced,” confirms Cretton. “The work ethic and the pride that the people there take in the work that they do is really nothing like I have experienced and according to Bill Pope, probably will not experience again.”

The stunning fight chorography and trailblazing camerawork of the Matrix trilogy left a deep impression on Cretton, which he brought to bear in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, with the help of Pope’s know-how.

In addition to its father-son story and a man coming to terms with his heritage, it boasts some of the most spectacular martial arts fight scenes in recent years, as magical weapons and spectacular effects blend with more traditional disciplines of Kung Fu.

“The Matrix feels like a touchpoint for everything in my life,” says Cretton. “It was a big movie for me when I was in college. I remember seeing it and realising for the first time what cinema can do – it’s not purely entertainment or distraction. It is something that can soak into your bones and sit with you for weeks afterwards and can make you see the world differently and make you have a strange, out-of-body experience.

“It’s weird talking to Bill Pope about that movie and hearing from his lips that it was a big, risky movie and people didn’t know if it was going to work and everything that Bill Pope was doing, which seems so brilliant now and these camera techniques that everyone has ripped off since, were things that no one had done before and were not understood by the studio.”

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings opens in cinemas on Thursday, where open.