Simu Liu on Marvel’s Shang-Chi Audition, Martial Arts Training & Bringing Parents to the Premiere

our next guest was born in china raised in canada and now exists in a universe called marvel he is the star and hero of the new mcu movie shanghai and the legend of the 10 rings it opens in theater september 3rd please welcome simul liu [Music] [Applause] this is your first talk show appearance ever idiot you know sean okay okay all right it depends on what you you mean by for i was gonna say if it's your first time i'll go slow it's uh i would like you to be gentle regardless but um about four years ago when i'd like just arrived to l.a in canada it was like my first pilot season i was on a show uh called taken it was based on taken the the movie and i was asked to be on i was like 15 on the call sheet i was like a glorified extra i was asked to be on noches con platanito i know it so well which is which is a a spanish language talk show uh that the film's out of burbank with uh when the ho and the host is a a clown he's dressed in clown makeup welcome home and i was like i made it but i thought that i i take back what i said i've made it now in this yeah you know i'm not jimmy right i i know that okay great so uh but that's very sweet of you to say so wait this film you're the star of a marvel movie this is crazy isn't that amazing and so it's a giant win for the asian community yes i mean what a lot of asian people here today that's good oh it's very encouraging yes um and you were you were the star of your first ever premiere on monday right next door and it premiered next door literally next door at the el capitan who would you bring i brought uh i mean i i brought a big group it was my first one i brought like some of my high school friends from toronto some of my friends in la and and you know everybody was so wonderful and so sweet and encouraging and then i brought my parents yeah that's very sweet and they were uh they were uh they were parents yeah yeah they must have been proud of you yeah they yes they were they were i um they were piling on anxiety at every single possible opportunity yeah yeah like from the moment i put on my my you know my outfit and i walked out and everybody we were all at this you know big house that i had rented and everyone was you know so effusive like they were like oh my god you look wonderful that's what you're supposed to do by the way you don't look great you're supposed to lie right and um and right my mom takes one look at me and she's just like [Music] and i'm like don't you like it's just like um you know i'd worn this like beautiful chain that had been lent to me by a wonderful jeweler by the name of ben baller and uh and she was like but do you have like do you have to you it makes you look like a gangster like i don't know i just that's a lot okay you don't look like a wholesome like superhero figure and i was just like mom i'm trying to please go to my premiere yeah and now now what did you grow up what was your job before being a super famous marvel person so i i had many jobs i mean i went to school uh for finance and accounting at the university of western ontario yeah yeah accounting i've never i've never called for all the accountants in the audience i've actually never heard anybody applaud being an accountant before that's like i think it's great congratulations you love your job you're one of like three accountants who love their job yeah yes i'm happy for you um i i wasn't and when i made the decision to to try this acting thing out obviously i had to i had to you know struggle for a little bit i um and i and i took on a number of side jobs yeah joe jobs if you will yeah and uh you know one of them actually kind of superhero related was uh i was a dress-up spider-man for kids birthday parties oh god yeah so i did that for one summer yeah [Applause] that's wonderful as a prep for this role sure yeah it was like the same thing i'd roll up to these like you know a six-year-old parties and um i would basically just get physically assaulted by them for an hour because nobody ever believed that i was the real spider-man i i worked for a company that was a little like stingy and um i feel like if you had gotten like a movie quality suit and you showed up like some kids might actually but i had like more walmart like less walmart yeah right next to the mike myers halloween costume right exactly you know like the 1960 spider-man meme yeah they're like pointing at each other yeah it was like that and so i showed up like that and none of the kids knew what that spider-man even was because they didn't watch the cartoons they just watched the movies and so um there was it was terrible it was terrible but tell me about your parents because i think your story is really incredible that you're your whole family's from china yes and then your parents moved to america or toronto to become aerospace what aerospace engineers yes so they they um did their post-grad studies at queen's university in kingston ontario that's crazy both of them both of them yes they're very very intelligent people and they have no idea what happened to me and they but why aren't they they must be so proud of you now i mean right or they still are like hey what's going on with the accounting thing they are they're they're very it took them a while to get there let's just say that you know they like to you know i'm sure they're they're taking credit for all of it with all of their friends and stuff but i you know i remember i was on the i was in the car we were turning onto hollywood boulevard for the first time and they were with me and it was just such an incredible moment because you know the whole street had been cordoned off and it was all red carpet and there was hundreds of fans that were waiting outside for us just such an incredible moment and my parents were like caught up in it and i just like i was like you know you didn't you didn't want me to do this right like know that right yeah take that and i love the mental gymnastics that my parents have done and continue to do because they you know my dad turns to me and he's like you know what we did made you stronger was we made you truly fight for what you wanted so you're welcome that's hilarious wait i i think the way you went about i don't know if this is true or not but the way you went about getting the role for chongqi is you were it started with tweets or something or is that really true yeah so like anybody can get a part in a marvel movie if only it were that easy right i mean i mean the tweet resurfaced after i got cast and it is it does really feel like i'm nostradamus or something because it's really just like when the movie was first announced i you know tweeted to my 17 followers or whatever hey are we going to talk or what marvel like you know as if somebody like kevin feige was like on the on his phone being like yes that's that's you yeah kevin kevin is the director yeah kevin feige the uh president yeah yeah i know nothing so uh i'm like mickey mouse the president of disney yeah um wait so so that started okay so keep going so i mean it makes sense it makes sense connecting the dots going backward but that's obviously not how it happened i mean i sent the tweet out i forgot about it nobody ever read it and then uh six months later i auditioned for it didn't you have to do like a goodwill hunting i did yes something from like a speech from that or something so so when you audition for marvel the the you know they're so secretive about all of the scripts and everything so the first audition that i did i you know we didn't know the character name didn't know the project it was just two scenes from from goodwill hunting which was one of my favorite movies yeah but which was good and bad because i knew all the scenes i knew the characters but i also like knew exactly the way that the lines were delivered yeah so i like i remember very clearly i sent in two scenes of me doing goodwill hunting but me doing matt damon from goodwill hunting with the accent with like the full bostonian accent have you you've seen goodwill hunting before so so i mean the scene of with him and minnie driver in the racetrack where he's talking about his brothers right he's like but marty ricky bobby joey jerry like but how do you how do you not do that in a bostonian accent and so marty ricky bobby could you imagine if sean cheese like spoke like that yeah yeah i got my 10 rings ma well you had it you had to go through tons of training too right to do all the kicks and the fighting and everything i mean that and you didn't you've never done that before i mean i had i had uh done backflips in my backyard and almost broken my neck numerous times that was the kind of extent of my martial arts stunt training i'd done a couple of stunt jobs in toronto but um i mean this was this was like the real deal yeah so yeah i mean yeah like endless hours of just training and shooting and like we did the whole thing and and the stretching and the stretching that was by far the most painful this is just stretching oh my god yeah that that's how you know i learned very quickly that's how you tell a real martial artist from a fake one is by the stretching by how flexible they are because if you don't like you could be the strongest guy in the world but if you don't stretch and you don't have that flexibility your kick will like you're never going to be able to get that leg right there you know right like you got to go you know you saw the split kick in the trailer like that took yeah well that took some time and yeah that that is after we have we have an awesome clip from the movie that shows a little bit of what you're talking about take a look at [Applause] you this [Music] yo what up y'all it's your boy cliff coming at you live on the bus i actually did take a little bit of martial arts as a youth so i'm gonna try and grade this fight as we're going [Music] that's amazing that is amazing right that's incredible you can almost feel it yeah oh yeah i don't know that i want to feel it uh thank you for being here it's gonna i'm not nostradamus but i think it's going to be a gigantic hit i'm pretty sure september 3rd we'll be right back with music from yolanda [Applause]

Channel: Jimmy Kimmel Live

Views: 2,532,904

Keywords: jimmy, jimmy kimmel, jimmy kimmel live, late night, talk show, funny, comedic, comedy, clip, comedian, mean tweets, Live Audience, Hollywood, Guest Host, Summer Guest Hosts, Interview, Sean Hayes, Will and Grace, Simu Liu, MCU, Marvel, Shang-Chi, Legend of the ten rings, Disney, Canada, Pilot Season, Asian American, Premiere, Parents, Actor, Accounting, Tweets, Good will Hunting

Id: BL21hwsBUng

Length: 11min 0sec (660 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 19 2021