Simu Liu Took Stripper Classes for His Role in ‘Shang-Chi’
Bet you didn't see this one coming: Simu Liu, star of Marvel's newest movie Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, revealed that he had to take stripper classes to prepare himself for the role of the MCU's latest avenging superhero.
The actor spilled the tea during a recent appearance on E!. He revealed the fact after posing it as a trivia question that he asked several other celebrities including Thomas Rhett and Wanda Sykes during a round of the network's Celebrity Game Face. "To be a Marvel superhero, I had to train in the fine art of something," he said. "Is it stunt driving, is it parkour or is it stripping?"
Parkour seemed like the obvious answer, which is why Sykes and her wife went with it. However, there was a caveat. "So, the answer is, while there was parkour in our movie, I actually already do parkour, in my spare time," Liu revealed. "That's why it's stripping!"
Check out a clip of his big reveal below:
It's unclear what exactly stripper classes taught him for the role. Rhett mused that the lessons were possibly to help with tearing off layers of clothing to reveal a hidden super-suit. That's a believable enough answer, though official confirmation would be nice.
Clearly the hard work that went into prepping for the film paid off. Variety reports that Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings earned $90 million in the first four days of release with a $75.5 million total for three days over Labor Day weekend. Those numbers shattered a previously held record set by Halloween in 2007. In comparison, the slasher drew in $30.6 million in the same amount of time.
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings also boasts the second-largest opening weekend during the pandemic. The only film ahead of it is another entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe: Black Widow. Fronted by Scarlett Johansson, that superhero flick opened with $80 million.
The film's success likely doubly rewarding for Liu, who expressed interest in the role of Shang-Chi on Twitter back in 2018. He told the Washington Post that the desire could be traced back significantly further. “I’ve been manifesting this kind of superhero role for myself for a long time since before that tweet,” he said. “In my mind I had been chasing that role my entire life.”