SIMU LIU IS MORE THAN A SUPERHERO
YOUR REFLECTION can be lonely. It shouldn’t be that way, especially not for a kid. Yet if you watch enough screens, whether phones or laptops or TVs, at some point you start to believe those screens reflect the world. And if you never see anyone who looks like you reflected back on those screens, you just might question how you fit into that world. You start to believe that the infinite possibilities you see onscreen aren’t for you.
“I was asked to present at the AACTA Awards, the Australian Academy Awards, and not only was the pronunciation of my name completely butchered, but I was also incorrectly identified as ‘a Hong Kong acting legend’, when in fact I’d never been to Hong Kong.”
This is what it’s like to be “other” – and it sucks. And Simu Liu knows this feeling well. We’re speaking about it right now in a Zoom interview while he’s sitting in his Los Angeles hotel room. Liu is clad in a slightly baggy long-sleeved tee that hides a chiselled physique, and he’s sipping boba tea, a decidedly Asian-American blend of green or black tea, milk and tapioca pearls. “I had to get some food in my stomach. Otherwise, you’d be dealing with a very cranky interview subject.”
In September, the 32-year-old will star as the titular character in the first Marvel Cinematic Universe film with an Asian lead. This matters. It comes in the midst of a moment for Asian Americans, who’ve grown more and more conscious of (and vocal about) the racism and lack of representation that have long defined their American experience. It is not a new feeling for many Asian Americans, but it is a new discussion, one with new hope. As the son of a Chinese mother and an Indian father, I understand this intimately. It’s been more than two decades since a New Jersey neighbour, angry at my mum, told her to “go back to where you came from”. I’ve never spoken of it until now, because I believed that somehow my family was at fault – and because I never understood that I could speak about it. “There is
