Simu Liu is calling out the Hollywood industry for the lack of visibility of Asian actors in cinema.
In a social media post, the star of Marvel’s Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings shared his thoughts on the lack of representation of his community.
“Put some asians in literally anything right now. the amount of backslide in our representation onscreen is f**king appalling,” Liu shared on Threads. “Studios think we’re risky.”
Liu shared his view on the industry after reading a post calling for more Asian men to be cast in romantic lead roles. The actor pointed to titles like Minari, Farewell, Everything Everywhere All at Once, Crazy Rich Asians and his own Marvel movie as examples of films that did well in the box office.
“Every single one a financial success,” Liu added. “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.”
This is not the first time Liu has called out the lack of representation of Asian actors in Hollywood. In 2023, he replied to an article that noted he was getting “the bulk of Asian make roles.”
Liu replied to the Facebook post saying, “Way to attempt to put us against one another. What ‘bulk’ of roles are you referring to? Are there movies I’m in that I’m not aware of? Do you really think that there is a quota of ‘Asian male roles’ that is a zero sum game? Every thing I have taken post Shang-Chi was not written Asian. We’ve been able to reshape stories to get more representation onscreen. Get your facts straight.”