Simu Liu Met Michelle Yeoh Filming Shang-Chi. His Story Involves Expensive Wine And A Whole Bunch Of Gratitude
She is the Marvel star's own 'hero.'
Before Michelle Yeoh was among the big 2023 Oscar winners for her incredible leading performance in Everything Everywhere All At Once, the legendary actress actually joined the MCU to play the aunt of the first Asian-led superhero movie in its lineup, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. Following Yeoh getting her much-deserved flowers from the Academy, Shang-Chi actor Simu Liu is gushing about the first time he met his co-star.
Liu, who is set to play one of the many Kens in the Barbie movie this summer and will reprise his heroic role in the upcoming Marvel movies at some point, recently shared his experience meeting Michelle Yeoh for the first time on the set of Shang-Chi. In his words:
Yeoh is a beloved actress who has had an incredible career over the years, especially when it comes to action movies like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Police Story 3: Supercop. As Liu remembered it while speaking to BuzzFeed, he was nervous to meet her and decided to splurge on a bottle of wine to make a good first impression. Here is what her response was, per Liu:
As Liu recalled, he had this idea of Yeoh as a “larger-than-life” person, so when he met her, he wasn’t expecting her to extend the kind of “warmth.” It made his experience so much better knowing that she wasn’t this intimidating presence with whom he couldn’t get on the same level. It sounds like Yeoh was everything he wanted and more, from not only a “hero” of his, but a co-star on Liu’s biggest role yet at the time.
Michelle Yeoh played a supporting role in the 2021 Marvel hit as Ying Nan, Shang-Chi’s aunt, whom he meets in Ta Lo. While we know another Shang-Chi movie is on the way, the title hasn’t officially been added to the Marvel lineup. We also imagine Shang-Chi will be part of the upcoming Avengers films, especially considering his Shang-Chi director Destin Daniel Cretton is helming 2025’s Avengers: The Kang Dynasty.
In the interim of seeing Simu Liu as Shang-Chi once again, and perhaps him and Michelle Yeoh reuniting on screen, Liu just dropped his first single this week and he’ll be part of a major summer release with Barbie, coming to theaters on July 21. Yeoh’s next project is American Born Chinese, arriving to Disney+ on May 24.
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Sarah El-Mahmoud has been with CinemaBlend since 2018 after graduating from Cal State Fullerton with a degree in Journalism. In college, she was the Managing Editor of the award-winning college paper, The Daily Titan, where she specialized in writing/editing long-form features, profiles and arts & entertainment coverage, including her first run-in with movie reporting, with a phone interview with Guillermo del Toro for Best Picture winner, The Shape of Water. Now she's into covering YA television and movies, and plenty of horror. Word webslinger. All her writing should be read in Sarah Connor’s Terminator 2 voice over.