Marvel star Simu Liu took to Threads last week (November 23) to hit out at what he described as the “backslide” of Asian representation in Hollywood.
In his post, he included social media reports that noted how Asian actors are still struggling to find meaningful roles in Hollywood.
“Put some Asians in literally anything right now,” the actor wrote in response. “The amount of backslide in our representation onscreen is fucking appalling. Studios think we are risky.”
He then went on to list several films starring Asian actors that have gone on to achieve huge success, including Minari, Farewell, Past Lives, Everything Everywhere All At Once, Crazy Rich Asians as well as his own Marvel film, Shang-Chi And The Legend Of The Ten Rings.”
He added: “Every single one a financial success. No Asian actor has ever lost a studio even close to 100 million dollars but a white dude will lose 200 million TWICE and roll right into the next tentpole lead.
“We’re fighting a deeply prejudiced system. And most days it SUCKS.”
Speaking to NME back in 2023 about venturing into music alongside his acting, the Barbie star also opened up about representation in a wide-ranging interview.
“To be Chinese-Canadian or to be Asian growing up in the West, you’re faced with a whole different set of challenges and oftentimes you’re looking and yearning for representation that you’re not seeing,” he told us. “For representation in film, there’s been a journey over the last few years. I’ve played a small part in that and I’m very excited about the progress that we’ve made.
“But when you look at music, the representation is not the same. An Asian Canadian or Asian American singer-songwriter is not the same thing as a K-Pop star with a massive global fanbase that’s from Korea or Asia. It’s almost like we don’t have that connection to our home countries and so we often struggle to find our own audience and that makes us difficult label targets. I’m very aware that opportunities don’t grow on trees for people who look like me, musically more than anything.”
Meanwhile, back in 2022, Liu revealed that he once auditioned for multiple roles in Crazy Rich Asians but was turned away for not having “the ‘It’ factor”.
“It forced me to take a step back and realise that maybe I wanted it too badly,” the actor said at the time, sharing the story that he included in his memoir. “Like maybe I was too desperate and that desperation was showing in my work. There had to be an element of confidence in what I was doing and self-assuredness.”
In other news, Liu spoke to Variety recently about being outspoken on social media and that he “should probably be more scared” of backlashes happening.
“I just feel like there’s something about the internet that makes people just crazy,” Liu explained. “There’s something about the publicness of it and where people love being the guy to put someone else down [or] put an entire group of people down. I am so not for that energy.”