Sometimes, even a Marvel hero can’t catch a break.
Simu Liu, who reprises his role as Shang-Chi in the upcoming Avengers: Doomsday film, recalls he once brought shame to the family and paid dearly for it.
“The level of shame in Asian standards would be like if I was addicted to meth and on the street,” he told Seth Meyers on Late Night recently. “They’re the same. I’m trying to level this out for you guys what it was like in our household. It was bad.”
What had he done to upset the family harmony?
He started acting.
Liu related that he recently visited China with his family for the first time in 15 years and was able to visit a grandmother he hadn’t seen in a very long time.
“I felt really guilty about not coming back sooner,” Liu said. “Although, in my defense, when I lost my job as an accountant and then started to act and audition, I did become kind of like a black sheep in the family. And I was disinvited from these family trips for a really long time.”
Jasin Boland/Marvel Studios
Simu Liu in ‘Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings’ (2021)
The situation was so bad, no one even wanted to talk about him. Then, some time after he stopped being invited, the China-born actor became busy and didn’t have time to go back anyway.
But the star of Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings finally decided that he had to do it, and had “the best time.”
When Meyers asked if the international celebrity was approached by fans, Liu said that he had, although he hadn’t expected to be.
“Just cause, for whatever reason, our Marvel movie never came out in China,” Liu said. “So I really just thought that nobody would care.”
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But they did. After he posted a photo of himself at his hotel, about 40 fans showed up in the lobby.
“It was really overwhelming and also kind of sweet,” the Barbie and Kim’s Convenience actor said. “And my parents were absolutely no help at all.”
Christos Kalohoridis/PEACOCK
Simu Liu stars as Alexander in ‘The Copenhagen Test’ on Peacock
Meyers joked that they were thinking this wouldn’t have happened if he had stayed an accountant.
Previously, the actor has noted that, before he was cast on the comedy Kim’s Convenience, he was also struggling financially.
“I had been in credit card debt for years before. I just kind of had convinced myself that was going to— that was going to be my life, and I had made peace with it. I was okay with the life of a starving artist,” Liu said on the Where Everybody Knows Your Name podcast in October 2024, per Newsweek.
He said he’d cried when he learned he was hired.
Liu’s latest project is spy drama The Copenhagen Test, which he starred in and executive-produced. The action series is now streaming on Peacock.
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