The Chinese-Canadian actor broke new ground as Marvel’s first Asian superhero, Shang-Chi. Now he is confronting parental pressure and anti-Asian prejudice in an unflinching new memoir
Almost exactly 10 years ago, Simu Liu was called into an office at Deloitte where he worked, and was laid off. “One of those moments that are seared into your life for ever – we all have them,” he says, remembering walking back to his desk in the open-plan office to collect his things, trailed by someone from HR and security, “like I was some sort of criminal”. The absolute silence as his colleagues, eyes glued to their screens of numbers, pretended not to notice.
Despite the fact he was in his 20s, he didn’t have the courage to tell his parents, and for a while afterwards kept up the pretence that he still had a job as an accountant. His working life had felt like the culmination of his mother and father’s extraordinary drive and determination to leave China for Canada, the relentless hard work they had put in to pay for his private school education and the at times unbearable pressure they had put on him to succeed. “I felt very guilty and very worthless.” But also, he says with a laugh, he woke up the next morning, realised he didn’t have to go to work, “and that made me really happy”.
