MCU star Simu Liu’s journey to be a leading Marvel superhero has been remarkable. Before joining Marvel, the actor made his name appearing in a few television series, most prominently, the CBC sitcom Kim’s Convenience.
But the dream of appearing on the big screen remained on the bucket list and being a leading Asian man in Hollywood is not a piece of cake. The actor has his fair share of struggle until he made his MCU debut with Destin Daniel Cretton’s 2021 movie Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.
Simu Liu Used to Dress Up as Spider-Man for $75 An Hour
Before coming into prominence, Simu Liu had a pretty rough job as he dressed up as MCU’s titular superhero, Spider-Man showing up at kid’s parties for $75 an hour. Despite his struggle, Liu was a huge superhero fan in his heart. “Big superhero. I mean, I mean, you know, my, my vision board in the very beginning of like imaginary vision board,” Liu said on Peacock’s Hart to Heart. “But my, my goal at the very beginning was like Oh I wanna I would love to be a superhero one,” he continued.
“That was the I didn’t think it would. I mean, not like that but um that was a way to, uh, because I had gotten laid off from the job. I’d also made the decision to, like give this acting thing a go but yeah, I just didn’t have the capital.”
Liu was kind of desperate to appear in a Marvel movie, so, he took to Twitter (now X) calling out Marvel Studios with the idea of starting a movie with Asian superheroes after the success of Thor and Captain America.
“It was like 2014 or 2015 I tweeted uh I tweeted like hey Marvel great great job with uh you know Captain America and Thor,” Liu wrote. “Two white guys, um, how about an Asian superhero? how about an Asian American superhero? It’s actually what I said,” he added.
Although the actor forgot about it, MCU finally cast him as Shang-Chi offering $6 million for his role and when he was at Comic-con somebody pointed out the tweet.
Simu Liu Shared His Experience of Being the First Asian Superhero
Playing the role of an Asian superhero for the first time in the mainstream was really fascinating for the actor. Liu revealed that he was often asked the question about how he experienced the moments of being the first Asian superhero. “It happens all the time and it’s not the first time I found myself in that conversation,” Liu said. “Because before I did the Marvel thing, I was on a, I was on a sitcom called Kim’s Convenience. We did, we did comedy for like five years and, um, at the time too, that was like, the groundbreaking thing with the, you know, an all-Asian cast and barriers were being broken and all that,” he added.
“I think it’s easy to get cynical when this stuff happens and you’re answering these questions for like the 500th time and all that. But I just, I think back to, you know, when I was first starting out the world that I believed was available to me. I was an extra and I would look at the only other Asian guys that I saw were the stunt guys and because those are the only ones that could really have a future because if you were an Asian actor and you didn’t know martial arts, well, then how you’re playing you’re playing geek number three you’re playing a, at best a best friend of some main character, you know, it was unfathomable that we could actually have a story that was about being Asian in a place like America or Canada.”
The Barbie actor further revealed that he was just “f*cking around” at the time and would be happy being a stuntman or something as long as there’s a camera around and we’re on a set.
As per reports, Liu will appear in MCU’s Shang-Chi 2 and Avengers: Secret Wars.
Source: YouTube.
