In 2012, three deep-sea divers were on a routine dive in the North Sea when one of the divers became trapped underwater. The harrowing story of that rescue is the plot of the movie Last Breath. Actor Simu Liu had to scuba dive in dark depths for his role, which was largely shot underwater. He spoke with producer and interview contributor Ann Marie Baldonado about playing a Ken in Barbie, his early childhood in China, and the perils of being a stock photo model. Sign up for our free weekly newsletter to get special behind-the-scenes content, producer recommendations, and gems from the archive. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
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This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. Our guest today is actor Simu Liu. He's best known for his breakout role as Shang-Chi, Marvel's first Asian superhero, in the film Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. Now he stars with Woody Harrelson in the new film Last Breath. He spoke with Fresh Air's Anne-Marie Boldenaro.
Actor Simu Liu has taken on some roles that are pretty physically challenging. He does killer fight sequences in the film Shang-Chi and The Legend of the Ten Rings. And who can forget him dancing as one of the Kens in the movie Barbie? His latest film may be even more extreme, the action thriller Last Breath. is based on the true story of deep-sea divers in peril at the bottom of the North Sea.
In 2012, three divers were embarking on a routine dive when rough weather and computer errors caused one diver's umbilical cable to get stuck, leaving him trapped.
What happens now? Your umbilical, it's going to snap. You'll get pulled out of the structure. Now I will come back for you. But you have to do something for me, okay? You have to get yourself back to the top of the manifold. I can't rescue you if I can't find you. Understand?
That's Simu Liu, with Finn Cole as the diver who stuck with only minutes of reserve oxygen left. Simu Liu's character with another diver, played by Woody Harrelson, desperately tried to bring the trapped diver back to safety. Simu Liu's first big break was in the CBC Netflix comedy Kim's Convenience, which ran for five seasons.
He says being fired from his accounting job is what helped him take the leap into acting. Simu Liu, welcome to Fresh Air.
Thank you so much for having me.
This new movie, Last Breath, is about saturation divers. Can you explain what saturation divers do?
It's a very blue-collar job. It's very dangerous. It's workers that work on the bottom of the sea and the bottom of the ocean performing, you know, kind of routine maintenance and repair on pipelines, on, you know, underwater structures. It's typically extremely dark. There's not a lot of visibility. And the living conditions of these saturation divers is just so...
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