How To Fail With Elizabeth Day - S14, Ep1 How To Fail: Simu Liu

Episode Date: May 18, 2022

We're back, baby! And I thought I'd open this new season with a bona fide SUPERHERO. Because that's just how we roll.My guest today is Simu Liu - the first Asian superhero in the Marvel cinematic universe and the star of the 2019 movie Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. He also appeared in season 4 of Selling Sunset, where Chrishell tried to sell him a house (arguably the real achievement, amirite?). Simu was born in China. His parents were products of Mao's Cultural Revolution and ended up emigrating to Canada. Simu was raised by his grandparents for the first four years of his life before being taken to Canada, where he couldn't speak the language. It was an early lesson in resilience - one he would never forget.Simu joins me to talk about this, as well as his failed accountancy career, a formative heartbreak and failing to get a part in Crazy Rich Asians. Along the way we discuss 'the white gaze' and marginalisation in Hollywood, the dark days of his adolescence when he rebelled against his parents restrictive (and sometimes abusive) behaviour and...well, menstruation. Plus: how he's still friends with Chrishell and what it's like filming Greta Gerwig's Barbie.I adored our conversation because Simu came so willing to own every single one of his failures. His experience of heartbreak from a straight, male perspective was fascinating to me. And he's so smart I could just listen to him for days.--Simu's memoir, We Were Dreamers, is published next week! Pre-order it here: https://www.waterstones.com/book/we-were-dreamers/simu-liu/9780008546472--How To Fail With Elizabeth Day is hosted by Elizabeth Day, produced by Naomi Mantin and Chris Sharp. To contact us, email [e-mail]---Social Media:Elizabeth Day @elizabdayHow To Fail @howtofailpod Simu Liu @simuliu Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Let's go seize the night. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Visit amex.ca slash yamex. Benefits vary by card, other conditions apply. Hello and welcome to How to Fail with Elizabeth Day, the podcast that celebrates the things that haven't gone right. This is a podcast about learning from our mistakes and understanding that why we fail ultimately makes us stronger. Because learning how to fail in life actually means learning how to succeed better. I'm your host, author and journalist Elizabeth Day, and every week I'll be asking a new interviewee what they've learned

from failure. My guest today is a failed accountant turned superhero. In 2012, he was laid off from his job at Deloitte. By 2019, he was starring in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, making him the first Asian superhero in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. He also appeared in season four of Selling Sunset, where Chris Shell tried to sell him a house, which is arguably the real achievement. As origin stories go, it's already a good one. But it gets even more impressive when you learn that Simu Liu was born in Harbin, China and raised by his grandparents, while his mother and father, who both survived Mao's Cultural Revolution, forged a life for their family in Canada. four, his father, to all intents and purposes a stranger, turned up to take him to Ontario. Liu spoke no English and struggled to settle in. It was an early lesson in resilience, one he would never forget. Liu excelled at school but was always drawn more towards performance,

much to the consternation of his disciplinarian parents. And yet their work ethic ended up serving him well. When Liu decided to turn his hand to acting, he went to every audition, no matter how small, and hustled just as they had. At the age of 30, he was rewarded with the Marvel role that would catapult him into Hollywood stardom. His memoir, We Were Dreamers, is published next week. In it, Liu writes, the unknown is always scary, but not nearly as much as waking up one morning realizing you have wasted your precious life in pursuit of someone else's idea of success. I choose the unknown every time. Simu Liu, welcome to How to Fail. It is so lovely to be here, Elizabeth. Thank you so much for having me. Oh my gosh, the pleasure is all mine. I'm so excited to have my first actual superhero on

the podcast. We've had a Nobel Prize winner before, but we've never had a superhero, so I'm very excited. Oh my God, well, just that sentence alone is is I'm determined to disappoint. Okay, well, that's great, because it's so on brand. For the podcast, I mean, not for you. But that segment that I read out from your book is such a beautiful passage. And it's that idea that embracing the unknown, embracing risk and not being fearful can actually lead to the greater opportunity. But do you think that your early experience of the unknown that I touched on on the intro helps you embrace it? Like it's almost as if you've faced a lot of your fears

already, so you don't mind taking the leap? Yeah, you know, I think it was the combination of a lot of things. Certainly, I think what you mentioned is true. The idea that, you know, not only did we make this, did I make this massive move from China to Canada at a very early age, so I got kind of used to the idea of, yeah, leaving everything that I knew behind, but we also moved around quite a bit in Canada. You know, I spent a couple of years in Kingston and then my family relocated to Etobicoke. Kingston is about two hours outside of Toronto.

Etobicoke was more so in the city. And then eventually we kind of settled in a suburb just half an hour outside called Mississauga. So I was constantly changing schools, having to adapt to new friend groups. And I think that part may have served me well in kind of making the decision when I was 22 years old to just kind of give this whole thing a try. And again, I can't emphasize this enough, but it wasn't like, you know, one day I get laid off from my job and then I'm suddenly like, okay, I'm going to be an actor. I'm going to make it in Hollywood. Like it really just came about as it was just felt like a series of accidents almost. Like something would happen and then I would say, oh, you know, I'd be like, oh, okay, that's an interesting opportunity.

I wonder if I could just take a couple of days here and, you know, try something. And it just became so infectious and so addicting that before I knew, I kind of surprised myself. I woke up one day and I was like, am I a full-time artist? It was like totally foreign. So do you believe in destiny? Oh, well, I mean, I've watched a lot of romantic comedies back then. There's definitely a part of me that's very destiny-oriented when it comes to true love. Yeah, I don't know. That's a tricky one. I believe in making your own luck.

I believe in giving yourself permission to pursue your dreams and the power of manifestation, not in some esoteric way in which when you speak something into the universe, it will find a way to make things happen. That's not what I'm saying at all. But I think when you allow yourself the permission to speak your dreams and to state it to the world, something changes in you. And it's almost like you become more focused, which is certainly the case with me. It was obviously not easy to admit to myself that I wanted to be an actor. I was never known to be a natural performer by any means. It's just something that

captivated me endlessly. I loved movies from when I was young. And so there's just something, it did feel a little bit inevitable that it would pique my interest and I would be drawn to the field. But I don't know if that means it was destiny. When you talk about manifestation, Twitter for you is a powerful tool of manifestation because it was a tweet that led to your role in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. And it was also a tweet that led to your cameo on Selling Sunset, wasn't it?

Tell us about that. Well, okay. I think one of those statements is more true than the other. I think definitely I manifested my role. I manifested Selling Sunset through Twitter. Michelle and I had been just exchanging tweets back and forth. And then before we knew it, the producer of the show emailed me and was like, are you serious?

Are you guys being serious right now? Are you just joking around? And I was like, I am looking for a house. So I'm pretty serious if you'll have me. And they were like, great, let's do it. So that very much was a cause and effect that I can directly attribute to Twitter. The Marvel role is a little bit more complicated and I don't think had as much to do with the tweeting as people think. It's a really nice narrative that wraps up really neatly. If I'm this guy that tweets out for this role and then Marvel on the other end notices and

it's like, all right, let's give this guy a shot. But in truth, nobody in any sort of decision-making capacity at Marvel or Disney ever read that tweet. At the time, got maybe like, I don't know, 50 likes or something. First of all, it's very facetious and tongue-in-cheek. In no way, shape, or form did I actually think that I had a chance to book this role. But the movie had just been announced, and it felt like such an empowering moment as an Asian Canadian actor in the industry. We were coming off the heels of a movie called Crazy Rich Asians, which even though I wasn't a part of... Oh, we'll come on to that. Don't you worry. We'll come on to that. It still electrified me to my core. I never felt like I could be the lead character

in my own movie before. And I suppose I was just kind of voicing my excitement about that. But like I said, you know, I think the manifestation power had more to do with me than with external factors. I think it focused me. It made me more hungry for that role. And in some way, shape, or form she kind of pointed me in that direction. What did the tweet say? Remind us.

I think it was like, hey, Marvel, are we going to talk or what? And then hashtag Shang-Chi. I want to come back to what you mentioned there about the power of representation. But I just want to talk about your parents, because I loved your book, We Were Dreamers, and you tell the story of your parents' history, which in many ways is the story of the formation of modern China. And there's this brilliant bit where at the end of chapter one, I think you say, oh, if you're not interested in that, then skip to chapter seven. I was so interested in it. Tell us about your parents because they are remarkable people. Like tell us who they were before they became your parents.

Yes. Well, oh my gosh. I'm going to try to paraphrase what I think I took like 20,000 words to say in the book. You know, my parents, they were dreamers in their own right. They grew up in China at a time where going to school and getting an education was exceptionally difficult. And it was around that time that my parents were in their teenage years or about that age where they were trying to figure out what they wanted to do with their lives. Lo and behold, in 1976, there was a regime change. And suddenly the college admissions were back on, except the problem is the lineup was 10 times longer than it would have been for any year that you and I would have attended college or applied to college

or university. And so my parents, through some sheer act of will and hard work, were able to receive offers to university and studied at the same university in Beijing called the Beijing Jiao Tong University. And it was at that time that they met each other. They fell in love. They were studying electrical engineering together. And through that shared love of learning and of science, they bonded. Hopefully other things that are a little bit more sexy, but they bonded. They decided to get married and then had me. During that whole time, there was this kind of whisper about opportunities popping up in the West, opportunities to study abroad, opportunities to see the world, which if you've been working in the fields for two years like my mom is something that you would at one point in your life, you would have completely surrendered any ambition of. So once again, after all the work that they had put in to be able to work as engineers in China, they risked it all again to pursue a better education, a better life in the West, kind of what leads us to today. It's an incredible story. And it's one that you tell

with great compassion in the book. And it also, you don't shy away from the more difficult aspects of your upbringing and the fact that your parents had risked it all and worked so hard. And then through their perceptions of seeing their son, maybe not working as hard as they would have liked at school, that led to a really, really difficult time in your adolescence. And I just want to say thank you for sharing that, because I'm sure it was very, very hard. And why did you want to share it? I think I remember what it was like, the feeling of isolation, total loneliness, on top of everything that was happening. First of all, I was an only child, so I didn't really, I didn't have any siblings to commiserate with. I didn't have somebody with whom I could team up with to argue with my parents. Everything was always two against one in the household and I lost every time. My parents were exceptional people and they were least of all going to be defeated by a young child.

It wasn't a happy ending, our family reuniting in Canada and kind of starting this new life together. I think I wanted people to know that. I wanted people who were in the, you know, children of immigrant families who were maybe in the same position as me to know that they weren't alone. But I also wanted to write for the parents, you know, the perspective that I didn't have when I was younger. I wanted them to have some sort of compassion over what their children were going through. Because even though our struggles were entirely different, and it's, I think, impossible to compare in any meaningful way, that doesn't mean that our struggles are completely invalid and trivial. The kids in my generation struggled with feelings of identity,

of finding home, of finding a culture to latch onto, because we were kind of in one world at home with one set of values and norms and language. And then out in the world, it would be something completely different. You know, navigating the two is very, very difficult for a child. I wanted to write in the hopes that families like ours that were going through the same thing would not repeat our mistakes, and that children would know that they weren't alone. I mean, my heart did break for teenage Simu at several points because, you know, and I'm not saying this with any judgment, but you were beaten by your parents when you failed to get the grades. And it does sound incredibly isolating. But you wrote this book with your parents' cooperation, and I know that you interviewed them for it. So what do they think of the book? Have they read it? And what do they think

more broadly of your career now, which wasn't in their dream, but is a massive dream of so many people? Right. My parents have read the book. They were instrumental in crafting the narrative, especially in those, in my early years. And also speaking about obviously the time in which I was not yet alive, that was the result of hours and hours of research and interviews. I think as we all have, we've grown up with kind of stories of our parents' upbringing kind of piecemeal together, but it's tough to really, really visualize and put onto a timeline because all you hear are just remarks and passing. You know, my mother would say, well, when I was your age, I was working at a farm or my dad would say,

yeah, you don't know what real like hardship is. And, And it's true. I didn't. And it wasn't until I sat down with them over hours and painstakingly, year by year, really followed the trajectory of their lives that I was able to put a timeline and a narrative together. So I think I was very proud to show them the final manuscript. And they, for the most part, loved reading it. And it was in those crucial chapters in the middle of the book that I think they were at first a little mortified. And then after talking it out some more, they kind of understood. Because, you know, you have to realize as well in immigrant families, in so many immigrant families, we're taught to internalize our feelings and as a family as well to keep any sort of conflict within the family not to publicize internal strife or arguments that were happening so you know the

idea of like writing it all into a book was very a very foreign and be very frowned upon in those circles and so my parents I think initially were like why why would you want to do this and I remember being on the phone with them because I was in Sydney shooting Shang-Chi at the time. I remember being on the phone with them and being like, do you realize how many people we could help? Do you realize how many people could read our story and see themselves in what was happening? And, you know, maybe we could persuade them to take a different road.

And I think that's what really got them on board because today, you know, my parents and I are incredibly close. We love each other. You know, our relationship is stronger than it's ever been. So I was like, let's tell the world the story of how we broke apart and then came back together. Because that's the drama. And that's the incredible story. It's not some kid that grew up and got laid off and tweeted his way into Marvel super stardom. It's really the story of a family. We need to be able to tell it for what it is in its authenticity. So I know they struggle to say that they love you, although obviously they do, but are they proud of you? Yes, they are. As much as I joke about it sometimes, they're incredibly proud, I think, in a state of utter disbelief about what is happening to me. I tried

telling a couple of immigrants who are electrical engineers that one day they were going to be on the red carpet on Hollywood Boulevard and posters with their son's face on it are going to be plastered along hundreds of feet of red carpet. It's unfathomable. And they're taking it all in stride.

Very proud. So beautiful. Let's get onto your failures. Your first failure is the one that I mentioned at the very top of this episode getting fired from my job at Deloitte now we're all so grateful that you did but tell us tell us that story tell us how you ended up as an accountant in the first place yeah well oh my gosh if I'm honest with myself there are fields of study that maybe you know with a little bit of self-awareness, we could have avoided at a young age, maybe life decisions that we could have steered clear of. And I was this artistic, extroverted, not detail-oriented at all kid coming out of business school, you know, recruiting for a job. First of all, I was not a top student by any means. And that meant that management consulting

and investment banking and all of those sexy professions where people made a lot of money, those were immediately out of the question and out of my scope. I had to kind of just make use of what I had and do what I could. And that brought us to accounting. It was, I think, something that my parents were pushing for. Not that I was doing everything to rebel against my parents at the time, but even then it was like, for my brain, I didn't know any other version of success. I'd never taken the time to define that for myself. And so the idea of working for a professional services firm like Deloitte was very tantalizing to me and very attractive to me because I was like, okay, well, this is what I'm supposed to do. This is the next step on that path. And so I took the job.

And to me, it really felt like laying down a house of cards because it was, you know, for me, it was like one fraud or one lie after another, right? I mean, the whole idea of going to business school to begin with was just like, oh, I feel like I had to do this because I was, it was the next step in the prescribed path. And so just one by one, I was just like laying down card by card and not really being intentional or purposeful about any of it. I wasn't a great student in college and I certainly wasn't a good employee. In fact, I remember weeks on end, I would wake up in the morning and just have to drag myself out of bed because I was so depressed. And I remember joining this zombie walk. Everybody in Toronto who works on Bay Street

would know what I'm talking about. But that walk in the beginning of the day where everyone's going to work on Bay Street, it's just like thousands of people pouring onto the streets, just caffeine addicted, bleary eyed. I was a part of it. And I just hated every second of it. bleary-eyed I was a part of it and I just hated every second of it I was not a good employee I made errors constantly all the time because I just wasn't a detail-oriented person and I didn't know what it was like to actually go to work and do a job that made you feel fulfilled and happy so I just had no reference point do you think were, you mentioned that you were depressed? Yes. But do you think you struggled to identify that at the time because of what you just said?

Because you had no frame of reference. You just thought that was life. Absolutely. Again, first of all, you know, mental health doesn't exist in a lot of immigrant households. That's not something that's normalized or talked about. Yeah. Again, I didn't have any point of reference. So I just thought, okay, this is what people have to do. They do work that sometimes they hate, and they make money so that they can buy things that make them happy. To a 22-year-old, that's perfect math. That makes sense. one day and I was told that I was no longer going to work at the company effective immediately.

And I remember it very, very clearly because I remember walking into the office and I remember there being, it was like my partner that sat across, my boss basically that sat across from me. And then there was like two other people. There was a woman from HR and a security guard. And once they let me know that I was let go, they went through the whole, well, you have so and so amount of time to go and get your things. We'll escort you down to the floor. Deloitte's offices were entirely open concept. So basically the entire company saw me walking onto the floor, shoulders slumped down with the lady from HR and the security guard escorting me and watched as I collected my things. And I could just remember the deafening silence as that was happening. Not a single person looked up to acknowledge what was going on. I think they were all aware, but they were just so,

you know, it was obviously an awkward situation. They were just so dead set on not noticing me. And so nobody made eye contact with me. Nobody said a word. I just in complete deafening silence collected my things and went home. And at the time I was devastated. I mean, I was like, this is the worst thing that's ever happened to me. You know, this house of cards that I was laying out

had finally collapsed. And I remember just thinking about all that my parents had invested in me, their whole journey on top of all of the time and money that they invested into my education, I felt like a tremendous failure. And then I woke up the next morning and I felt better. So I don't want to trivialize how dark that must have been for you. And I'm also so in awe of your resilience, of that kind of tiggerish ability to bounce back.

Because what you did do after that was you lent into that tiny glimmer of passion you had for performing and acting. And you worked so hard as a jobbing actor. And I think this is really important for people to hear that actually you weren't this overnight success. You put in the hours. Tell us about that, just about how hard you worked to make your name. The incredible thing, Elizabeth, is that it didn't feel like it was hard work. At the time, I felt like I was working a lot less than I had ever done as an accountant. When you're grinding away at that job that you hate and every single keystroke and every second at the office is work, you feel like you're working so hard. And of course, having very little output and to very little results. But when I checked

Craigslist for the first time and I set foot on a movie set, it just electrified me. Every single neuron in my body just fired up. And I feel like I changed fundamentally in just such a profound way. I was never known to be a hard worker at school. I was never known to be the keen one. I was always the guy that was trying to get by the minimum amount of effort. And I found that in this world of acting and performance and artistry, I woke up every day, just so excited to get to work. And so it just felt like this whole different new version of me was emerging and coming out of the shell of this perpetual slacker. And so I was like, I owe it to myself. I have to keep going because I don't know if I'm ever going to find anything like this again, where I'm just so engaged. And I think that's why, you know, when, when you're in a position where you're engaged and you're purposeful and knowing that you are where you are meant to be

in life. I guess that does mean I believe in destiny to some degree. Well, I think you can believe in both. I think you can believe in ultimate destiny, but as you say, you can also believe in working hard to make your own luck. And one of my favorite anecdotes from this period of your life is when you took your accountancy and business school skills and you put them to use by producing a kind of pitch document for yourself where you predicted your investment on return have I got that right as an actor yeah it was first of all in business school we would do these like case studies all the time and often we'd be asked to like write up the business plans and so yeah when I was first making contact with my manager, Chris, in LA, who's now still

my manager to this day, but this was like all the way back in 2014 and nobody knew who I was. I was like, well, I have to think of myself as an entrepreneur. I have to think of myself as someone who is selling his wares. And so I did, I put together this kind of like pamphlet, like a brochure, had all my headshots and my resume. Yeah, it was just like a business plan of like, why should you, why should you represent CMU? I guess you're right. And in a lot of ways, it was like a return on investment.

It was a business plan, basically. Peyton, it's happening. You're finally being recognized for being very online. We'll see you next time. and a lover of pop culture second. Then join me, Hunter Harris. And me, Peyton Dix, the host of Wondery's newest podcast, Let Me Say This. As beacons of truth and connoisseurs of mess, we are scouring the depths of the internet so you don't have to. We're obviously talking about the biggest gossip and celebrity news.

Like, it's not a question of if Drake got his body done, but when. You are so messy for that, but we will be giving you the B-sides. Don't you worry. The deep cuts, the niche, the obscure. Like that one photo of Nicole Kidman after she finalized her divorce from Tom Cruise. Mother.

A mother to many. Follow Let Me Say This on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Watch new episodes on YouTube or listen to Let Me Say This ad-free by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Hi, I'm Matt Lewis, historian and host of a new chapter of Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hit. Join me and world-leading experts every week as we explore the incredible real-life history that inspires the locations, the characters,

and the storylines of Assassin's Creed. Listen and follow Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. So that accountancy job that you were laid off from, do you think you would ever have quit it yourself? That's tough. I don't think so because it was very all encompassing. A nine to five is underselling how much work

working in public accounting is, especially during the busy season. So I think it would have allowed for very little time for me to pursue anything like acting. I had done the one gig for Pacific Rim and I had to skip work to do it and nearly lost my job right then and there. And then of course it did shortly after.

You were an extra in Pacific Rim, weren't you? You and your friend, Jason, yeah. Yes, me and my friend, Jason, who's actually sleeping in the bedroom right over there and visiting me in London right now. But- Hi, Jason, sorry to interrupt your sleep. He's a deep sleeper. But to have the courage to leave a job, I think you need some sort of validation of success in your other field, your side hustle, I guess you could call it.

I just don't think I would have gotten there, you know? And so really, truly, I think they did me a favor. It was best thing that ever clearly the best thing I think that it is so important for people to hear that sometimes when a job ends you will end up being grateful for that and you can apply that to so many relationships that even if you're heartbroken or devastated or humiliated at the time it turns out quite often to open up more opportunities. So thank you so much. I mean, we can't all be- Yeah, no, of course.

Yeah, I just think about these moments of like these perceived rock bottom moments. And really you could think of them as devastating, but you can also think of them as opportunities. You know, and I remember this is one of my favorite passages in the book that I wrote, but it was like out of the ashes of this life that for all intents and purposes, I didn't want, I could now build from the ground up a life that

I did want. Something that was uniquely mine and wasn't in service of my parents' expectations of me or their definition of success. It was really like, I needed all of that to kind of crash and burn before I had the courage to, I guess, build up something on my own. Thank you, Simu. Your second failure is getting your heart broken by your college sweetheart. Yes, my heart was broken. Okay, as a young graduate from college, it was the worst thing that ever happened to

me at the time. And I was just a crippling mess, crying in parking lots, and it was not a good time. So this was after you'd graduated from business school? Yes. I had a girlfriend that was a little bit younger than me, so she was still in school. I remember it was September, so the year was about to start. And I remember I got in a car and I drove two hours out to London, Ontario, not the UK, London, Ontario, much smaller city. And I was like, so excited to see her.

And then I remember getting to her door and knocking. And then when she opened the door, it was like there was a look on her face. It was like the fire had just gone. And I could tell and tried to kind of power through it as we always do. I think when we feel these things, we're like, oftentimes we're just in denial. So we just think, okay, maybe if I just try really, really hard, I can, I can save this thing. But that lasted all of about 18 minutes. And, you know, eventually she was like, I'm confused about the way I feel about you. And then it happened. And then we broke up. And at the time I was like, yeah, yeah, sure. I was angry. And I was like,

fine, fine. I'm done. And I left not thinking I don't need closure. I don't need anything like that. I just, I didn't need help. What actually happened was I became like very, very depressed for a very long period of time. I had no closure. And I tried to kind of get back into contact with her. I tried to get some sort of closure. And of course, we were two hours away. So it was hard to meet in person. And I started working at Deloitte at this time. So I knew that she was coming back for the Christmas break. And I was like, okay, I'm going to get her a Christmas present and surprise her at her place. And hopefully we'll get to talk some of this out. And of course, a part of me was like, I'm still

in love with her. I want to, you know, I want to get her back and all those toxic male things that we think about when we watch too many romantic comedies and we think that we can just make people love us, you know? So I drove to her house and I had my Christmas present with me. And I remember like knocking on the door and nobody's home. So I'm like, okay, I just go back into my car and I'm like trying to think about what to do next. Maybe I'll go home. And literally like five minutes passed. And then she pulls up in the driveway. Like she's with her mom. It's a family house.

We're 20 years old. And she clocks me. And I just remember the look on her face. That was like just absolute terror. It was like in that moment, I saw what I was to her, this unwelcome guest. And that froze me and shook me to my core. I just felt awful, awful and so low in that moment. I can feel it.

I can feel like how powerful the emotions were. I can feel that through the screen. Oh, thank you. The big lesson I think that I took out of it, I can't stress enough, like when your internalization and conception of romance is informed by these romantic comedies and things that aren't real,

you start to think really dangerous things. Like if somebody doesn't feel about me the way that I want them to, I can make them feel that way. If I'm going to make a grand gesture and that should in some way entitled me to a sort of reaction. I think it was that dissonance from reality that kind of led me to do what I did. And yeah, of course, you know, it was completely innocent at the time. And, you know, I didn't feel like I was doing anything wrong, but that look on her face just told me everything that I needed to know. So obviously for a lot of reasons, I was, I think, suffering from some form of depression, but I think it really forced me to take a long, hard look at the person, the man that I wanted to be and how I had to behave in relationships

moving forward. Wow. I mean, there's no grief like heartbreak. There really isn't. It's a very peculiar and specific kind of feeling. Are you in a relationship now? I wouldn't normally ask that question, but because of what we've been talking about, like, have you been able to take those lessons and apply them to future relationships in a way that feels healthy? those lessons and apply them to future relationships in a way that feels healthy? Well, I can say I was in relationships kind of all throughout my 20s. And they've been, you know, incredible experiences, you know, that have since come to an end, but ones that I'm incredibly grateful for, because they've continued to teach me so much about about myself and about the kind of partner, first of all, the kind of partner that I want, or that I feel like I'm

compatible with. But also, you know, it's taught me so much about the kind of partner, first of all, the kind of partner that I want or that I feel like I'm compatible with, but also, you know, it's taught me so much about the kind of partner that I want to be. It's been a lot of work to, I guess, continue to deconstruct those like toxic male things. And the example that I gave is just like one of them, but there's other like, just like little things when you're living with someone for the first time and you're living with a woman for the first time and you have to deal with, I don't know why I'm thinking of this example. I really don't. But when you, when you have to deal with like menstrual stuff in the beginning, it's like every guy is like, Oh, like, Oh gross, get that. You know? And it's through these, honestly, it was like through these relationships that I was like, Oh my God. Like, first of all, this is the thing

that affects every single woman on earth. So you can't be grossed out at it. And second, like it's bitch to go through. And so, you know, I'm there like watching my partners go through it and I'm feeling like, okay, so you're pre menstrual for like a week and then you're menstruating for a week and then you're post, like, I'm like, so when are you not feeling like crap? And you know, she was like, oh, well between Tuesday and Thursday, like the first Tuesday and Thursday or something like, wow, that's, that's just crazy. So I think it's, it's just taught me to be more empathetic rather than just being like, I don't know, just like a dumb dude. It's so interesting because I really want to ask you about representation on screen, which we'll come on to. But obviously, so many women have been

marginalized by the predominant male gaze, to the extent that we don't often see menstruation on screen, but we see a shed load of blood that is attached to male violence, and that's okay. And in the same way, you suffered from the white gaze, the fact that there, you know, when you were growing up, there weren't representations of Asian brilliance and superheroism on screen in the way that you might have liked. And it's really interesting to me that those journeys for you and for me, they're kind of parallel, aren't they? I mean, I've never menstruated in my life, but yes. That's going to be my scoop from this interview. When you conceptualize it that way, yes, it does feel very parallel.

And by the way, Asian women, I think, suffer, I would say, the most from this predominantly white, predominantly male gaze because they're fetishized, they're exoticized into objects of desire more than being treated as human beings. And every single one of my Asian female friends can attest to having felt like a fetish at some point in their lives. That's very much prevalent in its duality. But also, yeah, for me separately, growing up as an Asian man, I definitely felt that. First of all, there was just a representational issue, like there was just a lack of it. So when I turned on the TV, I just never saw any sort of aspirational model of what I could grow up to be.

Apart from Bruce Lee, the Jackie Chan, of course, but those were different still than my background and my upbringing, because they were from the East. They'd grown up in the East. They rarely spoke English. They were fish out of water. Whereas for me, I felt like even though I could relate to the face on a superficial level, there was nothing about the characters or the people themselves that I could like really grab onto. And then, you know, I think as an Asian man, it's like the media has a way of emasculating us and portraying us as these kind of like, oftentimes we're not seen as desirable. We're, you know, nerdy or we're, you know, the sidekick. We just don't have, you know, I guess what the kids call that main character energy. And I think that had a profound impact on the self-confidence of a lot

of Asian men growing up around my generation. So it was tough, you know, I basically grew up thinking, oh, I'm on the bottom of, I didn't know what, but some sort of hierarchy. I was like, I, you know, I never thought of myself as desirable. Not that you should think of yourself as desirable all the time, but it wasn't even a possibility for me. We're going to get onto your crazy rich Asian story, which is your third failure. Failure number three. I know. I love it. I'm so happy you've chosen this. You really, really have chosen excellent failures. They're not humblebrags. They are genuine failures. But I wanted to ask whether you'd experienced racism or stereotyping within the industry that

you now find yourself in. Yeah, I think, you know, what I experienced was just a product of the system, right, that was in place at that time. I started auditioning in 2012, so 10 years ago. And at that time, writers rooms rooms looked very, very different. Casting offices looked very, very different. The decision makers who worked at major networks and movie studios were very, very different. And so that white gaze that we spoke about, or the predominantly white male gaze, that was the gaze. That was the only gaze. that was the gaze. That was the only gaze. And so the parts that existed for people of color,

and certainly for Asian people like myself, were stereotyped, were these kind of dumbed down, watered down, untrue, inauthentic versions of ourselves. Because an Asian person had not written that. At worst, we were just auxiliary characters. I played desk cop number one, bartender number three, or paramedic number four for the first two and a half years of my career. At its best, it's like these characters that have names and feel like they should be three dimensional, but they weren't constructed with any sort of real cultural sensitivity. And so they were just like facsimiles of Asian people. So we saw that quite a bit on

screen. And so that was the system that we all kind of came up in, people in generations prior to me and also for myself. And it wasn't until later on that those conversations about diversity started to really come out to the fore and things started to shift meaningfully in the industry. And Crazy Rich Asians was one of the first times that that happened at the major Hollywood studio level. It was, you know, I think the first studio film with a predominantly Asian cast in 25 years before Joy Luck Club in the early 90s. I mean, it was an extraordinary film. I don't want to rub it in, but it really did. It felt so kinetic to watch it. And your third failure is not getting cast in that movie.

So tell us what happened. So the background is I was starting to come out to LA, which in itself was a massive risk. In 2017 or early 2016, there was kind of rumblings in the community that there was going to be a Crazy Rich Asians movie. And I being Asian was very, very excited. I was like, look, if there's one shot that I have, it's going to be Crazy Rich Asians. Like how often are we going to see these movies? They're just not going to fall off of a tree. And if I can't get on Crazy Rich Asians, I think that might be it for me because this is my one window. And I remember going to my first audition and getting really positive feedback so you know as an actor you just like when you're strung along you're like so hopeful and they're like

great well you know we just found our lead this incredibly handsome man by the name of Henry Golding but maybe you could read for the best friend for Colin and I was like okay no problem and I sent in a tape for Colin and they they're like, OK, great, great. Oh, really, really good. We found our Colin. But maybe you could play one of the other guys, who's the husband of Astrid. And I was like, OK, yeah, sure, no problem. And I put that on tape. And they're like, OK, great. We love it.

It was just that constant navigation. I think by the end, I must have auditioned for that movie like four times. And then at the very end, they're like, oh, sorry. We found all of our parts. It's not going to go away. And I just remember being devastated at the very end, like, oh, sorry, we found all of our parts. It's not going to go away. And I just remember being devastated at the time. You know, I was putting so much on the line coming out to L.A. And I think I kind of expected things to happen faster than they actually did. And so all this lost moment for me was a tough reckoning because I feel like I'd already come so far and I wanted so badly to succeed.

I just I didn't know if anything else was going to come if anything else was going to be around the corner I'm very very happy and proud of the success of that movie I when it came out there was no feel and usually there are believe me but there was no feeling of like jealousy on my part it was just I was truly truly so happy that it existed and when you failed to get the part didn't you get some feedback that was fed back from the director via your agent that really stuck with you I think because the director John Chu and I are now I would say we're pretty good friends today so I remember distinctly I was like asking my agent well why you know my manager agent was like why did this

happen what could I have done why any sort of feedback whatsoever because i felt like everything was good i kept getting you know positive notes and just tell me what it was and through some sort of broken telephone whether it had gone through a studio exec or a casting director before it got to our side we got well simu doesn't have the x factor or the it factor. And that was just such a crushing blow for me because I, again, I felt like I had already worked so hard and I'd come so far and I trained as an actor and taken countless hours of class. It's like, what is the it factor? Like, it just felt like someone was telling me that I just wasn't good enough. I wasn't likable.

I didn't have that thing that made people want to watch me. So I think it was at a time where it was very difficult for me. I was trying to figure out whether I could be the lead character or whether I could only be a supporting character for my entire career. And I, yeah, it was tough, but I'm so grateful, even though John is very adamant that he never said that. I was about to say, yeah, he said he didn't say it. Yeah, but I'm so grateful to have heard it because I feel like it really forced me to kind of take a step back and realize maybe this is going to sound weird,

but maybe I wanted it too badly. Like maybe I was too desperate and that desperation was showing in my work. There had to be an element of confidence to what I was doing, of self-assuredness. You know, I had to trust that I was talented and I was watchable and I was yeah I was good so I think it changed the way that I approached my work after getting that piece of feedback that John never actually gave me I mean as you can see like in the later years I really started to work a lot more

I need to let you go but before I I do, tell us a bit about Barbie, because you're shooting that at the moment, aren't you? The Greta Gerwig directed version of Barbie, which I'm so excited about. How's it going? It's unfairly fun, you know, especially because the way that these movies go is that you shoot hours and hours and hours of footage. And we can only show an audience about 120 minutes, you know, before they start getting bored and demanding the lead. And we can only show an audience about 120 minutes, you know, before they start getting bored and demanding the lead. So in effect, like we're having 20 times the fun that the audience will experience when they see this movie. And it really is such a joy to go into work every day. I think Warner Brothers actually just released an image. So I can kind

of at least talk about that in some way, shape or form, but it's very pink. There's a lot of pink, which is honestly just kind of a lot of fun to come to work every day. Right. And there's been multiple times on this production that we've kind of looked at each other, whether it's like cast or crew or even Greta and been like, how are we getting paid to do this? This is insane, which I think is always a good sign. Every day feels like we're just going to play. And I can't wait for people to see it because rightfully, I think a lot of people are confused about what this movie is. And I wouldn't want to spoil the fun by revealing its best experience with no expectation whatsoever. Final question. Have you bought a house in LA, even though you didn't buy one through Chrishell on Selling Sunset?

house in LA, even though you didn't buy one through Chrishell on Selling Sunset? I have. I've settled down in LA. Was it through the Oppenheim group that you bought it? It wasn't with the Oppenheim group. We worked together briefly for the run of that episode, but then I figured, I was like, you guys are probably pretty busy shooting this show. I'm going to go off and do my own thing. And they were, of course, just so wonderful about all of it. And Chrishell is a great friend of mine to this day. But I am very happy with the house that we did find. And yeah, I did recently, if you've seen the episode, you'll know that I asked for a house in the basketball court, which of course in the Hollywood Hills is impossible. But I did recently

just put up my basketball net. So I have a nice driveway with hopefully a three point line painted in at some point. I'm so happy for you. And I really am. And I can't thank you enough, Simu, for coming on this podcast because I firmly believe that true success can only come as a result of knowing yourself. And that only comes as a result of learning from failures and mistakes. And all of this just makes you into an even bigger superhero in my eyes. And I'm just so grateful for your honesty and your emotional articulacy. Thank you so much for coming on How to Fail. Oh my God, it's my pleasure, Elizabeth. Thank you so much for having me. If you enjoyed this episode of how to fail with elizabeth day i would so appreciate it if you could rate review and subscribe apparently it helps other people know that we exist