Simu Liu's First Act in the MCU Was To Defy Kevin Feige’s Orders

Getting cast in the Marvel Cinematic Universe is a big deal. Newcomer Iman Vellani nearly dropped her phone when Kevin Feige told her she was cast as Kamala Khan/Ms. Marvel. And for Simu Liu, it was a dream come true when he was cast as Shang-Chi, the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s first Asian superhero. He initially tweeted his interest in playing Shang-Chi in 2018.

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Simu Liu is currently promoting his new film Barbie, costarring the new Doctor on BBC’s Doctor Who  (Ncuti Gatwa), Issa Rae, and Margo Robbie. So he recently sat down with Variety, which asked him about how he got cast in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021). Simu Liu revealed that after he got the call from Kevin Feige, he could not wait to share the news, even though the Marvel Studios president told him not to.

“I’m not a great secrets guy, when it comes to this stuff. [Kevin] was like, ‘We’re gonna fly you to Comic-Con in San Diego in four days, just keep your mouth shut until then. We want to be able to surprise the whole world when we announce you at Comic-Con, like, don’t ruin the moment.’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, yeah, sure.’ He was like, ‘No seriously, don’t tell your parents, don’t tell your friends. Don’t tell anyone.’ I was like, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah.’ And then I immediately called my best friend. It’s too big of news to keep with you.”

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Working in the Marvel Cinematic Universe can sometimes feel like working for a spy agency like SHIELD or MI-6, which Shang-Chi worked for in Marvel Comics. Marvel has its own “secret police” that monitor for leaks, but they have been struggling in Phase Four to keep quiet details of films like Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021) and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022).

Some actors are better than others. Robert Downey Jr. kept the death of Tony Stark/Iron Man in Avengers: Endgame (2019) secret for over a year, meanwhile Tom Holland (Peter Parker/Spider-Man) was told he was filming Tony Stark and Pepper Pott’s (Gwyneth Paltrow) wedding because he has proven himself incapable of keeping secrets and had to be babysat by Benedict Cumberbatch (Doctor Strange) during the promotion of his latest film.

Simu Liu acknowledged that most of his Marvel costars take Kevin Feige’s demand for secrecy very seriously:

“The more contemporaries that I meet, the more I realised, ‘Oh, like some of these people are really good at keeping secrets. Maybe not Tom Holland. Shout-out to Tom Holland – he’s maybe not the best [at keeping secrets]. But there are definitely stories out there of people who kept things a secret for [ages].”

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The Kim’s Convenience star will return in Shang-Chi 2 with Awkwafina (Katy) and director Destin Daniel Crettin. But it is not clear when this will get released.

Let us know in the comments if you want more updates on Shang-Chi 2?

You can stream Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow and the six series in Marvel’s Phase Four so far — Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany’s WandaVision, Anthony Mackie and Sebastian Stan’s The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Tom Hiddleston’s Loki, Marvel’s What If…?, Jeremy Renner’s Hawkeye, and Oscar Isaac’s Moon Knight — on Disney+ anytime.