While Ryan Gosling has been serving major Ken-ergy through his fashion and hilarious quotes about playing Ken in the Barbie movie, Simu Liu has also been giving off some serious Ken-ergy too. As the trailers for the movie have dropped it’s become clear that dancing plays a role in Greta Gerwig’s exciting project, and Liu posted a fun video chronicling the process of learning said dance moves, proving that he also has what it takes to be an iconic Ken.
Posting the clip of him learning the moves to Instagram, Liu noted that working on the highly anticipated movie on the 2023 film schedule brought him “back to his roots” as he used to be in a dance crew in college. It looks like he picks up dance moves just as well as he picked up fight choreography while working on Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, as you can see here:
Along with posting the video about the Barbie movie on Instagram, Liu also took to Twitter to show off the BTS clip. However, he switched up the caption, writing in part:
Subject is beginning to show glimpses of Kenergy. Results are optimistic but further study is required.
I’d say this isn’t just a “glimpse” of Ken-ergy, it’s major Ken-ergy. Like Gosling, Simu Liu has been enthusiastic about Baribe’s release and has really committed to the bit of being a Ken. For example, he shared shitless vacation photos with his girlfriend from Sicily, noting that “Ken took his Barbie” on a trip. Also, the Marvel actor has been open about how he waxed his body to play Ken, truly committing to that doll-like look. So, when you take all this plus his fun BTS video learning some sick moves into account, I’d say this actor is living his best life as a Ken.
When it comes to these dance moves, and how they apply to Barbie, we don’t know exactly how they play into the plot, but we have seen glimpses of the dance numbers throughout the film’s trailers.
In the first teaser for Barbie, we got a brief look at Simu Liu rocking an all-black look and busting a move. Then in the second trailer for Barbie, we find out that there are at least two dance numbers in the movie as we see Barbie hitting the dance floor for one second, and then we see the Kens in what I’d assume is a dance battle. Considering their apparent rivalry and their need to “beach off” each other, it would make sense that the Kens fight it out through dance.
Following these two teasers, Barbie’s main trailer showed off its bonkers plot and a smidge of the “giant blowout party, with all the Barbies and planned choreography and a bespoke song.” This snippet included the cast of Barbie doing moves that I assume Liu is learning in this video, and it looks epic.
Overall, Simu Liu 100% has the Ken-ergy and knows how to own it. While this fun BTS video showed off a few of his dance moves that help prove this point, we’ll have to wait a bit to actually see the actor as Ken on the big screen as Barbie is set to hit theaters on July 21.
