Episode 1361 - Simu Liu
Guest:Lock the gates!
Marc:Alright, let's do this.
Marc:How are you, what the fuckers?
Marc:What the fuck, buddies?
Marc:What the fuck, Nicks?
Marc:What's happening?
Marc:I'm Marc Maron.
Marc:This is my podcast.
Marc:Welcome to it.
Marc:Today on the show, I have Simu Liu is here.
Marc:Most people know him as Shang-Chi from the Marvel movie Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.
Marc:And no, he didn't bring the rings.
Marc:I asked him if he could have, but it was not an option.
Marc:He's also from the Canadian series Kim's Convenience, and he'll be in the new Greta Gerwig Barbie movie.
Marc:He just wrote a book about the story of his family immigrating from China to Canada and his upbringing called We Were Dreamers.
Marc:And it was a great conversation.
Marc:It's always interesting for me to talk to somebody that has an entirely different origin story than me.
Marc:I'm not talking about Shang-Chi.
Marc:I'm talking about Simu Liu.
Marc:The origin story is different.
Marc:And I watched it.
Marc:I watched his Marvel movie.
Marc:I watched this one.
Marc:I watched the Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.
Marc:It was probably the first Marvel movie I'd really watched since the first or second Iron Man.
Marc:Though I've whined about Marvel movies and I've judged them and I've shook my fists at the sky where the Marvel Universe resides.
Yeah.
Marc:But I watched it and I enjoyed it.
Marc:I think it's basically a kung fu movie.
Marc:I think it's a martial arts movie.
Marc:And I enjoyed the dragon.
Marc:I enjoyed the specifically Asian good dragon in Shang-Chi.
Marc:And I also have Disney Plus now.
Marc:for research but i realize that i can start watching all the marvel movies this was an idea that was uh that i had maybe a year or so ago i discussed it with my producer brenda mcdonald that maybe it's time that i just go through the entire marvel movie thing that might radicalize me
Marc:It's like intentional radicalization.
Marc:Like to just watch it like the character in A Clockwork Orange just sit on my couch with my eyes peeled open by strange machines.
Marc:Have somebody there to squirt drops into my eyes so I don't blink and I don't dry up and just run through all the Marvel movies.
Marc:All of them in order.
Marc:And I will be born-again Marvel.
Marc:I will be a Marvel nerd.
Marc:I will be that guy.
Marc:So there's the risk of self-radicalization if I embark on this experiment.
Marc:And self-radicalization in this context really looks like me saying, they're not that bad.
Marc:Yeah, I enjoyed them.
Marc:I enjoyed this one over that one.
Marc:Didn't love that one.
Marc:Not that bad.
Marc:That would be the extent of it.
Marc:I'm not going to be like, holy shit.
Guest:You know, when is the next Avengers movie coming?
Guest:When's the next one coming out?
Guest:When's it coming out?
Guest:Because I don't know what to do with my life.
Guest:I don't know who I am without them.
Guest:I need a Marvel movie to look forward to.
Guest:I don't know what to do.
Marc:Turned in Rod Stiger at the end.
Marc:I don't know if I'm going to go that far, but we'll see.
Marc:We will see.
Marc:Listen, tickets to my HBO special taping at the Town Hall in New York City are on sale now.
Marc:It's happening on Thursday, December 8th.
Marc:Go to Ticketmaster.com or get the link on WTFPod.com slash tour.
Marc:Do that.
Marc:I'm excited about that.
Marc:I've got to figure out what I'm going to be doing exactly and how we're going to shoot it and what it's all going to look like.
Marc:That process is starting.
Marc:I got very upset.
Marc:I get very upset with the spiraling of culture under the momentum of nerd spite and boomer rage.
Marc:I just can't.
Marc:I don't watch Bill Maher and I flip by it and it's right in the middle of him.
Marc:Why does he have to pander so heavily to monsters?
Marc:Why does that guy want to be loved by monsters so badly?
Marc:It's easy to make fun of liberals.
Marc:Easy.
Marc:But he's apologizing for the religious rights view on abortion, hence women.
Marc:His argument was that they don't hate women.
Marc:They just think it's murder.
Marc:Yeah, but they want to control women and every element of their lives to appease what they believe women should be.
Marc:What exactly is hate?
Marc:What does that look like?
Marc:I got all worked up.
Marc:The boomers raging against the dying of the light.
Marc:Is that it?
Marc:Is that Dylan Thomas?
Marc:Raging against the dying of the light.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:That rage is, you know, it's going to burn it all down.
Marc:Boomer rage against the dying of the light.
Marc:And I'm speaking as the last, the tail end of the boomers.
Marc:not the great generation the selfish generation yahoo hey man so speaking of aging got an implant in my mouth i got an implant it's been a process uh i'll share it with you because by the time i get it i don't know i don't even know if i'm gonna need the fucking tooth
Marc:I don't know what that means.
Marc:But I had this molar that was a root canal, so I didn't feel it as it was rotting up near the top of it.
Marc:Had it come out.
Marc:So I got it pulled out and I got some bone grafting goo squirted up in the hole, stitched up five months later.
Marc:New gum, there was just a back mower sitting there by itself with a big gap between it and the next tooth in a row.
Marc:I got used to sticking my tongue up there in that empty space.
Marc:It was fun, but I couldn't chew my food properly.
Marc:So phase two of this process is to put the... To screw the molly into the drywall in my head.
Marc:Got to put a molly in there.
Marc:An implant, they call them.
Marc:But I think it's basically the same thing as a molly.
Marc:Is that what you call them?
Marc:Where you put that casing where you can put a screw in?
Marc:Usually it's because you fucking strip the hole.
Marc:Well, this was... They just cut it open up there and drilled away.
Marc:I'm local.
Marc:So I heard the... I got the whole experience.
Marc:The vibrating skull.
Marc:The different bits.
And...
Marc:And they screwed that fucking molly up in there, that implant, and then they put a plug on it, like a cap.
Marc:So I got this little cap up there, a couple of stitches, and I gotta wait around for a few months.
Marc:Then I gotta go to my regular dentist, this was the oral surgeon guy, and have him craft me a tooth.
Marc:I need a tooth crafted so I can chew properly.
Marc:And it will not rot with the rest of my mouth.
Marc:It'll be the last tooth standing.
Marc:So that was exciting to be there at the dentist's office.
Marc:The fuck was playing.
Marc:There was real oldies playing.
Guest:And then disco music.
Guest:You can ring my bell.
Guest:Ring my bell.
Guest:You can ring my bell.
Guest:Ring my bell.
Guest:My bell.
Guest:Ring-a-ling-a-ling.
Guest:Ring-a-ling-a-ling.
Guest:Ring-a-ling-a-ling.
Guest:Ring-a-ling-a-ling.
Guest:Ring-a-ling-a-ling.
Guest:Ring-a-ling-a-ling.
Guest:Ring-a-ling-a-ling.
Guest:Ring-a-ling-a-ling.
Guest:Ring-a-ling-a-ling.
Guest:Ring-a-ling-a-ling.
Guest:Ring-a-ling-a-ling.
Guest:Ring-a-ling-a-ling.
Guest:Ring-a-ling-a-ling.
Guest:Ring-a-ling-a-ling.
Guest:Ring-a-ling.
Guest:Ring-a-ling-a-ling.
Guest:Ring-a-ling.
Guest:Ring-a-ling.
Guest:Ring-a-ling.
Guest:Ring-a-ling.
Guest:Ring-a-ling.
Guest:Ring-a-ling.
Guest:Ring-a-ling.
Guest:Ring-a-ling.
Ring-a
Guest:Ring my bell.
Marc:Good times.
Marc:But it's up there.
Marc:Long process, though.
Marc:I'll learn about time.
Marc:Because I will avoid things in the sense that, like, well, not avoid it, but I just don't think, like, getting things done that take a year.
Marc:I'm sort of like, ah, fuck.
Marc:What's the point?
Marc:But, you know, time goes by, man.
Marc:It flies by as you get older, which I'm feeling.
Marc:Not in a bad way.
Marc:Okay, listen to me.
Marc:Simu Liu has a new book out.
Marc:It's called We Were Dreamers, an immigrant superhero origin story.
Marc:It's available now wherever you get books.
Marc:And we had a nice broad-ranging conversation.
Marc:It was nice to meet him.
Marc:And it was fun to watch the movie.
Marc:And I'm being honest.
Marc:So this is me talking to Simu.
Marc:So you're living the life, I think.
Marc:I haven't seen someone drive up in a convertible in a long time.
Guest:Oh, man.
Guest:Yeah, I can't take credit for it.
Guest:You can't?
Guest:It's a loner.
Guest:It's, you know, sometimes when you're in these positions.
Guest:Which position?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, you're a guy?
Guest:You have a hit movie or you're a person.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Some car companies reach out and they're like, well, if you ever need anything.
Guest:And I was like, well, I've always wanted to drive a convertible.
Guest:And they're like, great.
Guest:So I don't know when I'm going to have to give it back, but I think I will eventually.
Guest:What is it?
Guest:It's a BMW M8.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And they just called you and said, do you want one of those?
Marc:Kind of, yeah.
Marc:And I thoroughly enjoy it.
Marc:It looks pretty good.
Marc:I was sitting out there on the porch cutting up boxes, and then I just hear some music, and I'm like, is he the kind of guy that's going to...
Marc:Drive up pounding music, and there you are in the convertible.
Marc:It's better than a convertible.
Marc:I'm having a midlife crisis at 33.
Marc:No, maybe you're just enjoying your success, as they say.
Marc:Maybe that's it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:How long have you lived out here?
Guest:You know, I started coming out for pilot seasons as early as maybe 2016.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:As I told you on the way in, I just recently bought a house.
Guest:So it's really less than a year that I've really had firm roots here.
Guest:And even then, it's like nothing ever really shoots here.
Guest:So I'm always away from it.
Guest:The whole thing concerns me.
Marc:Outside of the water running out, it's like, why are we all here still?
Marc:It's nothing shoots here.
Marc:I don't know who lives here and who doesn't.
Marc:I think there's still a community of people, but it seems like most people are splitting.
Marc:Right, right.
Marc:Right?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:The moon of like Vegas.
Guest:Some people I know are moving to Hawaii.
Guest:Hawaii.
Marc:Vegas I don't get, but Hawaii I can understand.
Marc:Yeah, maybe it's a land thing.
Marc:I guess, but there's not going to be any water in Vegas either.
Guest:It's really going to come down to water.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It's like you're going to have to move.
Marc:We're all going to have to go to some red states.
Guest:That is very suspect.
Guest:I mean, I'm from Toronto in Canada.
Guest:You know, Toronto's obviously right next to, it borders Lake Ontario.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And, you know, just like I grew up around the Great Lakes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So it is very ironic that I moved here.
Marc:I love Toronto.
Marc:Yeah, I don't know why.
Marc:I just applied for permanent residency.
Marc:Seriously?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:A lot of people talk about it, but that's... No, I did it.
Marc:It takes forever to process.
Marc:Because I don't think people understand that that program, permanent residency, is more like a green card.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:So I'm like, why the fuck not?
Marc:It could take two to three years to process a thing.
Marc:And by then, the requirement is to spend two out of five years up there, not in a row.
Marc:And I'm like, I'll be ready.
Marc:You know, if everything works well, be like, you know, 61.
Marc:And like, why not?
Marc:Where would you go, do you think?
Marc:Where would you spend your two years?
Marc:To be honest with you, I don't have a problem with Toronto.
Marc:I don't have a problem with any place that I've been other than Edmonton and Winnipeg.
Marc:Like, I like Vancouver.
Marc:I don't think I could live in Winnipeg.
Guest:What about a Winnipeg shade?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:I did like two months in Winnipeg in the middle of winter.
Guest:I was doing theater.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:I was premiering a play called Viet Ghosn in Winnipeg.
Guest:And yeah, I hear you.
Guest:I hear you.
Guest:I hear the summers are great, but it's like two months.
Marc:Yeah, I mean, I don't have any problem with the people of Winnipeg.
Marc:It's actually a fairly progressive, arty little place.
Marc:But the weather's a little rough.
Marc:It's a little rough.
Marc:It's not great.
Marc:It's not great.
Marc:So wait, when was that play?
Guest:What is it, Viet Cong?
Guest:Viet Cong, yeah.
Guest:That was the last theater that I did, actually.
Guest:It was in 2018.
Guest:And I read this play that I was intensely passionate about, and it was about Vietnamese refugees.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:But it was such an interesting take on it because, you know, I feel like a lot of Americans' exposure to the Vietnam War is from obviously a very American-centric perspective.
Guest:Yeah, we lost and no one's happy about it.
Guest:Yeah, and then it's all about the GI that comes into the exotic foreign place.
Guest:Right, gets strung out on heroin.
Guest:Sure, sure.
Guest:And maybe, you know, and so then the Vietnamese people, the Asian people are treated kind of like a backdrop.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so Viet Cong is a story about Vietnamese refugees.
Guest:And what I really appreciated about it, too, is like this really interesting reversal where all the main characters who are Vietnamese spoke English, but then all the Americans spoke like gibberish.
Guest:So if someone was speaking English...
Guest:On stage, they would be saying like, yeah, like cheeseburger hot dog.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:And then we'd be like, what is he saying?
Guest:We have no idea.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So really human, really humanizes the Vietnamese refugees.
Guest:That's kind of funny.
Guest:It was a lot of fun.
Marc:Well, I thought that was what was great about the Ken Burns doc on Vietnam, that long, you know, multi.
Marc:I don't remember how many episodes, but he really went and got the other side of the war.
Marc:I mean, he talked to all the surviving Viet Cong generals and soldiers.
Marc:I mean, he.
Marc:It was completely balanced.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Did you watch the entire thing?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Because I've watched parts of it, but I haven't.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:I watched the whole thing.
Marc:I think I got it.
Marc:I think I have it.
Marc:I think I own it for whatever reason.
Marc:They must have sent it to me.
Marc:But I thought it was fascinating that, you know, that side of the story had, you know, I mean, obviously historians and progressive journalists captured it, but he like went and found them.
Marc:And, you know, and some of them are still in power.
Guest:The thing that's wild to me is, I mean, I have many Vietnamese American and Vietnamese Canadian friends whose parents, I mean, you think of like, you know, the way that my parents grew up, you know, my parents are in their 60s.
Guest:Think about the way that, you know, many people who are my age and their parents who grew up, it's like, you know...
Guest:My parents, for example, immigrated from China, but some of my Vietnamese friends, their parents' stories of how they escaped war, how they escaped the country, how they got here.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Absolutely harrowing, and just the most incredible, but also the most brutal and awful stories I've ever heard.
Guest:And those kids are one generation removed from that.
Marc:But I think a lot of the people that come from war, their parents don't even talk about it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So, you know, they have to live with that.
Marc:Like, you know, why is dad sad?
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:You know?
Marc:Yeah, I can't talk about it.
Marc:But, yeah, I mean, when I hear about Jews who, like, escape Nazi Germany and stuff.
Marc:But I was just thinking...
Marc:Even your parents come out of a China that's already very established, kind of... Would you call it totalitarian?
Guest:That's tough.
Guest:I would shy away from...
Guest:from that for self-preservation.
Guest:And also because when I hear my parents talk about it, this is the thing that I've really had to figure out lately.
Guest:I published a book earlier this year.
Guest:And the thing that I realized is that in a lot of ways, even though I was born in China and I spent my first four and a half years in China, my impression of a lot of China has been colored by
Guest:Obviously, Western media and Western narratives.
Guest:I'm not saying those narratives don't have validity to them.
Guest:But when I talk to my parents about China, they have such a profoundly different viewpoint.
Guest:And they don't view it as totalitarian.
Guest:I think they view it as complex.
Guest:I think they view it as nuanced.
Guest:And I think in no way, shape, or form do they believe that their home country is perfect.
Guest:But at the same time, I think they have such a love of their home.
Guest:Right.
Guest:In the way that I love growing up in the suburbs of Mississauga, you know, nothing will ever.
Guest:I do.
Guest:I think that Mississauga is like the greatest city on earth, you know, objectively.
Guest:No.
Guest:But but at the same time, I I loved so, so much of my childhood is there.
Guest:All of my, you know, so many of my core, you know, you know, foundational memories are there.
Marc:So I can tell you like fairly objectively that it's not the greatest city in the world.
Marc:Mississauga?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Have you ever been to Mississauga?
Marc:I have.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:I was just there.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:But I can't say that I saw the place.
Marc:I shot at a studio in Mississauga.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:There's some studio space.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:But I don't know that I would know where the city was or what that town looks like.
Guest:I mean, it's about half an hour outside of the city of Toronto.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:Which is kind of like, you know, it's a hub.
Guest:It's very New York-esque.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But it's...
Guest:The best way I could describe it is, like, if you took, like, a million people's worth of, like, just, of, like, McMansions and, like, those model home developments.
Guest:And it's just, like, it's just all it is for rows and rows and rows.
Guest:That's what it is?
Guest:And then, like, an Applebee's.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And a Mandarin buffet.
Guest:It was a Chinese buffet that gets absolutely slammed on the weekends and you have to wait two hours.
Marc:That's one thing I noticed about Canada is that Asian population is huge.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I think I grew up being the, I think, the predominant minority population.
Guest:Whereas I think here in the state, it's just different.
Guest:It felt different, but we're fourth.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Here.
Guest:Here.
Guest:Sorry.
Guest:Keep trying.
Guest:You can be number one.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You know, work harder.
Marc:But what I was thinking, though, in terms of growing up as your parents must have, I mean, obviously, China's history is vast and older than most.
Marc:And there's that whole history.
Marc:But the idea of adapting to a revolutionary and restrictive political environment is something that is happening here.
Marc:And so, like, you know, to me, it's sort of like when you talk about your parents sort of like, well, that was the China they lived in.
Marc:It was complex.
Marc:Is that eventually, as things unfold politically, like there are people that live in these states that are fascist, but they're like in blue cities and they're like, it's OK.
Marc:You know, it doesn't really apply to me.
Marc:You know, it's kind of interesting the way the brain works and what you can adapt to and the scope of your life.
Guest:I hear that.
Guest:I 100% hear that.
Guest:I think it's too, it's very different when you criticize your own home versus when you hear somebody else criticizing you.
Guest:I think it's like when you have ownership over something, you feel like you have a right to say, this is everything that's wrong with our country.
Guest:This is everything that's wrong with society.
Guest:And when somebody else comes in, you're like, whoa, hang on a second.
Guest:That's America you're talking about.
Guest:That's Canada you're talking about.
Guest:Don't make fun of our fucked up country.
Guest:We'll do that.
Guest:We'll do that.
Marc:So you were four years old when you left Canada?
Guest:Yeah, I was four and a half.
Guest:Shortly after I was born, my parents actually left me in the care of my grandparents to go and study in Queen's University in Canada.
Guest:So I was raised by my yeah yeah and my na na until I was four and a half.
Guest:And one day, literally, my dad shows up at the door and is like, hello, I'm your dad.
Guest:First of all, he had to introduce himself to me because he was a total stranger.
Guest:And then he said, I'm here to bring you to Canada.
Guest:It's time.
Guest:It's time.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it was it was so hard for me because I was being sold on this vision of like this utopic paradise.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Of, you know, everything is better in Canada.
Guest:You know, you have such a great time in Canada.
Guest:And I kept I was just like, but I want I just want to be here with your grandmother.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Who are my only parental figures at the time.
Guest:And I loved quite a bit.
Guest:How's your Chinese still good?
Guest:It's eroding every single day.
Guest:It is.
Guest:Yeah, I would go back in the summer times when I was a teenager for like three or four weeks because I wanted to spend every possible moment with my grandparents as I could and my family in China.
Guest:And I'd always come back from those trips with full fluency, being able to hold a conversation, talk about so many different things.
Guest:And then I stopped going back for a multitude of reasons.
Guest:I think maybe most prominent of all being I was laid off from my job and then decided to become an actor.
Guest:And so for, I think, a very long time, I was kind of like the black sheep of the family that nobody wanted to acknowledge.
Guest:So that stopped you from going back to China?
Guest:Well, yeah.
Guest:My parents would go back and would see family and it would just be such a sore spot.
Guest:I mean, my relationship with them wasn't good.
Guest:So then it was like, we shouldn't.
Guest:So it was shame?
Guest:Shame driven?
Guest:Oh, absolutely.
Guest:I mean, my parents are academics.
Guest:They're electrical engineers.
Guest:Everyone from our side of the family in China was like, this is the... My parents were the ones that left to pursue these amazing opportunities, raised a son who...
Marc:you know in canada who was supposed to be like yeah the prodigal yeah the prodigal heir and then all of a sudden they're like he what he got fired from his job and now he wants to be an actor like what you know that's so like i mean i i'm crazy i've talked to sort of first generation uh uh you know of children you know of immigrants who get this pressure you know that pressure is is insane
Marc:I've talked to a few different people who had to really fight the fight to aggressively disappoint their parents to find personal success.
Guest:Yeah, it's definitely hard.
Guest:I mean, now that I've grown up and I look back, it's nowhere near as hard as the journey that my parents went through to be able to immigrate.
Guest:But it's tough, too.
Guest:Yeah, it's tough balancing the expectations of your parents.
Guest:It's tough growing up in a...
Guest:in a multi-generational and multicultural household where the world that you're participating in is very different from the world that is at home.
Guest:And so sometimes your parents, you know, my parents certainly, their thoughts, their worldviews, their norms were very much at odds with what I was being taught out in the world.
Marc:Well, here out in the world, I'm sorry to interrupt you, but it's to realize yourself.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Oh, absolutely.
Marc:Which is a Western idea.
Marc:Very much so.
Marc:I think when you come from an education-driven practical culture- That's exactly it.
Marc:Yeah, where you're expected to just work within the system and prosper.
Guest:It's a whole different mindset.
Guest:And, you know, it wasn't like artists didn't exist in China, right?
Guest:My parents certainly weren't it.
Guest:My parents, you know, have been validated.
Guest:Their success has been validated by academic achievement and study and, you know, and working hard in a very specific and structured way.
Guest:So, of course, that was their worldview.
Guest:That was their one thing that they could pass on to their kids.
Guest:So you have empathy now?
Guest:Yes, I do.
Guest:Yes, yes, I do.
Guest:We've worked through it.
Guest:No, no, certainly not always.
Guest:Certainly not always.
Marc:So you come here when you're four and a half, and then at some point they literally stop taking you to see your grandma?
Guest:I mean, that came a lot later.
Guest:That came at, like, age 22.
Guest:But, yeah, it was, I mean... It was like, we don't want... Yeah, it was like, we're going to go to China, and you just stay here.
Guest:We've lost you.
Guest:Kind of, yeah.
Marc:So, when you first get to Canada, was there...
Guest:community that they were dug into was there a Chinese community there was a bit yeah there were you know they were my father was doing his PhD in electrical engineering my mom was doing her master's yeah and they lived in like this you know rent fixed apartment in Kingston Ontario uh-huh
Guest:And kind of like an enclave of Chinese immigrants who are kind of going through the same thing.
Guest:They're studying.
Guest:They had come from abroad.
Guest:And so that was kind of the environment that I spent my first few years in.
Marc:Do you think, just going back for a second, do you think that if you were to misspeak about China that you'd get flack?
Guest:I think it's a very sensitive situation, and I do not want either which way for my name to somehow come up in the middle of a geopolitical conflict that I, quite frankly, don't feel qualified to even begin.
Marc:It happened to me and Seth Rogen when we were talking about Israel.
Marc:It just blew up.
Marc:It was like some sort of global event that Seth said what he said about Israeli Jews.
Marc:Thank God I wasn't famous enough to really be part of the global conversation.
Guest:Got it, got it.
Guest:But he got that because he was the bigger.
Marc:So I understand that self-censoring.
Marc:I understand that.
Marc:Who needs that clickbait?
Marc:Certainly not me.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You don't want to be the target.
Marc:So you're in Ontario, in an enclave, living in some sort of subsidized housing from the school.
Marc:Now, with the process of them becoming citizens, was that ever an issue?
Marc:Did they ever... I mean, I don't know how that works.
Guest:Do you?
Guest:No.
Guest:My father has a very distinct story, though, of when he first landed and the customs officer was asking him if he was a refugee or an immigrant.
Guest:And I remember, I think he had said, you know...
Guest:This is a trick question.
Guest:This is a big thing in the community.
Guest:Yeah, I think they were, my dad is convinced that they were trying to trick him because he arrived first without my mom.
Guest:And he was very clear.
Guest:He was like, I am not a refugee.
Guest:And they're like, are you sure?
Guest:Because everybody coming from China is a refugee.
Guest:And he's like, I'm not escaping.
Guest:I'm here to study.
Guest:And he was very, very clear about that.
Guest:And I think what he realized later on was as a refugee, you had very different rights.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:And he was very adamant that he wasn't.
Guest:He was like, I'm a student.
Guest:Oh, so that was a pride thing, too, in a way.
Marc:I think so.
Marc:Because, like, I guess a refugee is seen as somewhat a charitable... Like, we have to help these people.
Marc:Sure, sure, sure.
Guest:And, of course, like, you know...
Guest:I think I've been very proud of the way that specifically the country of Canada has handled refugees from all over the world.
Guest:So I'm not saying in any which way.
Guest:But it's just interesting that your father wouldn't see himself that way.
Guest:And I think it was more the connotation of kind of what you said.
Guest:Refugee has shades of you're escaping a regime or you're a victim of war.
Guest:And he was like, no, that's not it.
Guest:That's not it.
Guest:I had a dream.
Guest:I'm going for it.
Guest:I'm here to study.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, I talked about in terms of Canada and just having some sort of exit plan, or at least the possibility one was like, I don't want it to get to the point where I show up as a refugee in Canada.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:I want to get the jump on that.
Guest:I understand.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I support you in your journey to become a permanent resident in Canada.
Marc:I fucking love Canada now.
Marc:I mean, I used to think it was a little boring and I'm not saying it isn't, but maybe I'm ready for that.
Guest:Right.
Guest:No, I hear you.
Guest:I hear you.
Guest:It's a, it's a specific vibe and a speed.
Guest:I, um, I had to pay for healthcare for the first time last month.
Guest:Oh yeah.
Guest:Here.
Guest:I had to do a, and, and, and I, and I have health insurance through SAG, but I was getting a checkup cause I, my, my back is hurting.
Guest:I think I have like lower discs.
Marc:I have it too right now.
Marc:Did you go to Bob Hope?
Marc:Where'd you go?
Guest:I went, I don't know, I think it's somewhere in the SAG system.
Guest:I just told my manager to set something up.
Marc:Oh, wow, your manager did that.
Marc:That's nice.
Guest:Yeah, it was very nice of him.
Guest:But I went in and I did the thing.
Guest:And they're like, that'll be X amount of dollars, please.
Guest:And I was like, oh, I thought I had health insurance.
Guest:They're like, oh, no, it's a copay.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I was like, so I'm paying a deductible.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Get a check.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I was like, that's wild.
Guest:And I pulled out my wallet for the very first time in a clinic.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because I can't stress this enough to all the American listeners out there.
Guest:You don't do that in Canada.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, it must be sort of jarring.
Marc:Welcome to America.
Guest:Don't get too sick.
Guest:It was very jarring, and it kind of colored for me the way that, I mean, it indicated to me the way that healthcare is just viewed here.
Guest:You try to push it as much as you can before...
Guest:And I'm not saying that our healthcare system is perfect by any means, but it's like, it's certainly regular, regular checkups are like a thing because you're like, even if, even if you feel fine, like you need to go in.
Marc:Go.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, that's a, well, that's, I look, I mean, I don't know.
Marc:I mean, I've heard it characterized negatively by Canadians and Americans in that, like, well, you got to wait, you got to do this.
Marc:Like, who cares?
Marc:I mean, like, I, I mean, on some level, I mean, I think that,
Marc:informs the entire culture of Canada in a way.
Marc:Just to have that taken care of, even if it's not great, is what a load off.
Marc:To just know you can go to a doctor.
Guest:And to be, and you know, it's not all medication, but certainly like life-saving medication, cancer treatment medication.
Guest:I mean, that's not anything that you,
Guest:It's not even a thought that occurs of like how am I gonna pay for this right?
Guest:It's like how many how many American?
Guest:Crime TV dramas.
Guest:Yeah about the father that has to that has to turn to a life of crime because he can't pay for his sick family members Hospital bills like how many of those would never exist in Canada?
Guest:Yeah, it's like we watch we watch Breaking Bad and we're like, okay, that's a great show.
Guest:Yeah objectively, but like what?
Guest:The core premise of that show just would not exist.
Marc:What civilized country would let that happen?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Here.
Marc:So when you start growing up there, how quick did the expectations start to manifest?
Guest:I would say as soon as school started.
Guest:As soon as school started, I would say I stopped feeling like a child that was allowed to just kind of be free and play and discover.
Guest:And I became almost like an athlete.
Guest:I was being pushed, except instead of basketball and t-ball, it's like math.
Guest:How were you with those things?
Guest:I would say I got off to a pretty solid start.
Guest:I think by first grade, I was doing long division, long multiplication.
Guest:I was always the kid that was doing the work that was a couple of grades ahead.
Marc:Because your parents were doing it at home with you?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:They were doing it at home.
Guest:They were bringing homework.
Guest:You know, I was doing, yeah, basically I was training extra hours.
Guest:And then, you know, a funny thing happened.
Guest:You know, I think I was very happy to please them, but a funny thing happened is that my balls dropped and I went through puberty.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I started to, you know, I started to realize, I think about like around the time, like fourth or fifth grade, people just like social hierarchies start to form.
Guest:Like if you think about first grade, second grade classes, like everyone's just kind of together.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But once you like start to form hierarchies, you start to have some sort of recognition of like who the cool kids are.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I just knew that I wasn't it.
Guest:And so I was like, well, I kind of want that.
Guest:I kind of want someone to tell me about social norms and hierarchies and how to just be cool and make friends.
Guest:And that's where you have to be friends with a cool kid.
Guest:You have to be friends with a cool kid and you got to like...
Guest:you know, you're going to be able to hang.
Guest:I don't think my parents fostered those skills in me.
Guest:The hanging skills?
Guest:Every time I asked them about it, they'd be like, why do you need, why do you need, you know, just your job is to study.
Guest:Don't waste time with, don't waste time with that.
Guest:With friends?
Guest:With friends, with, you know, and I was going through, I was, you know, having crushes on girls.
Guest:I was like, I had nobody to help me navigate these things.
Guest:So I started to really pull away from them and really reject their worldview because I was like, I don't, I don't want that.
Guest:I don't want that.
Guest:And that, that was kind of the cause of a lot of conflict that arose in the,
Guest:Interesting, because do you think that's fundamentally Western?
Marc:The idea of going through puberty or?
Marc:No, the idea of seeking out that, you know, that lifestyle.
Marc:It just seems like that's got to be, you know, it just that seems like a standard, just strict parent thing.
Guest:Yeah, I don't, I mean, look, I haven't been in school anywhere else.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, right, right, right.
Marc:Well, I'm just wondering, like, yeah, I imagine that in China there's definitely cool kids and, you know.
Marc:I would think so.
Marc:And parents, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:But just being with those parents that are hanging the future of their name
Marc:Yeah, that's very true.
Marc:And what they feel culturally is important is an extra added pressure.
Marc:It's not just having strict parents.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Do you have brothers and sisters?
Guest:Nope, only child.
Guest:Oh my God.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Very much.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:The disappointment possible.
Guest:The most amount.
Guest:If you if you imagine.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The moment that I kind of came out to them as an actor.
Guest:Oh, one of the one of the probably one of the worst moments of my parents lives.
Marc:All right.
Marc:So when you start pushing back, though, you're not you're not.
Marc:But you're not you're a good kid.
Marc:You're not doing drugs or anything.
Guest:Yeah, no, I guess not.
Guest:I guess not.
Marc:The rebellion was limited to like, you know.
Marc:It was like video games and sports.
Marc:Sports is a rebellion.
Guest:For whatever reason, I was never like too interested in experimenting with drugs.
Guest:And now I'm kind of.
Guest:Now I kind of like, I don't want to say I regret it, but I sometimes wish that I had like dropped acid once or twice as a younger teen or as an early college guy.
Marc:You can actually do that now and a lot of new hipsters are doing it for just to, they think it's good for your brain once or twice a year.
Marc:Right, right, once or twice a year.
Marc:Scrub it out, do a little micro dosing.
Marc:I always do like one time.
Marc:Yeah, you can do it.
Guest:Just make sure you're hanging out with my friends.
Marc:Yeah, with the right people.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Marc:You got friends who'll help you out.
Guest:you're comfortable with.
Guest:I'm sure my publicist did not expect this conversation to turn into.
Marc:That's all right.
Marc:It's a human conversation.
Marc:So when do you start to drift for real?
Marc:When do the fights start?
Guest:It would definitely be high school.
Guest:So, I mean, I had tested into this private, you know, academically oriented high school, University of Toronto Schools.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so serious about its academia that it's literally called the University of Toronto Schools.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like the best of the best.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And so, you know, my parents were now paying for my education.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I think that came with even more expectation.
Guest:But I really relished that because I had to take a train and a subway to get there.
Guest:It was a little far away.
Guest:I actually really relished the freedom.
Guest:So I took that as an opportunity to make friends, hang out, be social, whatever.
Guest:You're away.
Guest:And for my parents, they're like, oh, what the hell did we spend all this money on?
Guest:So I think that the urgency and the anxiety of that really manifested at that time.
Guest:And that's when things got violent.
Guest:That's when they were physical.
Guest:Violent?
Guest:yeah yeah i mean i mean you know with your dad name me both both and i think most immigrant kids will have some sort of idea of what that what that feels like but but like what like with uh cooking instruments hands cooking instruments hands um and you know the absolute worst thing was was was trying to take a day off school like trying to be sick it was like you know now it's inconceivable in the age of the pandemic yeah but
Guest:It's like, if you're sick, stay home.
Guest:But yeah, I was burning like a 99 or 100 degree fever.
Guest:And they'd be like, get your ass to school.
Guest:You're fine.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know, go infect all the other kids.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You got to go.
Guest:You got to go study.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:So does it reach a boiling point?
Guest:I feel like it did at many points, but then, you know, then we still had to keep going.
Guest:You know, there was a time in my junior year where I had to, I ran away from home for a week, but I like did the, it was like the dorkiest running away ever because I stayed at different friends' houses every day, but I still showed up at school and I still did my homework.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It wasn't like I ended up in an underpass with a syringe attached to me or anything.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:You were still honoring their desires.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:I think what it was is even in my deepest rebellious phase, I still couldn't ever...
Guest:Divorce myself from their vision of success because that was the only vision of success that I had their expectations Yeah, and I didn't have any model of anything different Like I didn't know any young actors all of my friends were like along that path So I was like well, I guess that's the only thing I could do so did you follow through?
Guest:Did I sorry did you follow through with it?
Guest:I went to school at the University of Western Ontario.
Guest:I studied finance and accounting.
Guest:And then out of graduation, I got a job at Deloitte and Touche, which is one of the top four accounting firms in the world.
Guest:And your parents were excited?
Guest:They were, I think, excited slash relieved just because they obviously had been such an acrimonious few years.
Guest:And so I think they were just really, they were like, oh, finally, the job is done.
Guest:You finally made it.
Guest:You did it.
Guest:We can rest now.
Guest:We delivered a kid.
Guest:We delivered a kid that became a contributing member to society.
Guest:So you were doing no acting during high school?
Guest:No nothing?
Guest:No, no.
Guest:I wasn't like a theater geek.
Guest:I mean, I loved movies.
Guest:I loved going to the movies, but I guess I just never felt like, innately, I never felt like I either I could, I never maybe gave myself permission to participate in that space.
Guest:But when were you starting to do the athletics?
Guest:Um...
Guest:Pretty much as soon as I could.
Guest:Pretty much as soon as I could.
Guest:Once I started being able to stay out late from school and realizing that my parents couldn't do anything about it.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And but when did you like, you know, like martial arts and stuff, right?
Guest:Yeah, I know a little bit.
Guest:I know a little bit.
Guest:But that wasn't a childhood thing?
Guest:No, no.
Guest:I definitely begged my parents to put me in karate when I was a kid, and they were like, no, that's stupid.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Don't do that.
Marc:They couldn't even see the importance of learning healthy competition in a physical way?
Guest:To be fair, we compromised with soccer.
Guest:I think they weren't feeling the martial arts, but I obviously, growing up as an Asian kid, loved Jackie Chan movies, and so I was like, I want to be that.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Never quite got the chance.
Guest:In high school, I started break dancing, which, again, completely different thing, but it's like a body awareness thing, so I think there are transferable skills.
Guest:You still got it?
Guest:A little bit, a little bit.
Marc:We got the bad back, you know?
Marc:What's going on with yours?
Marc:Because mine's fucked up, and I don't even know how I fucked it up.
Guest:Mine is like, I used to be like a jumper, so I used to play a ton of basketball, volleyball, and I don't know, I just feel like the lower discs have just kind of gotten a little swollen or they're rubbing up against each other.
Guest:You got a hernia?
Guest:I don't think so.
Guest:I had an x-ray done again at that time where I had to pull out my wallet and pay for healthcare for the first time in my life.
Guest:Um, but I had some x-rays done and I don't think, um, like a herniated disc was detected.
Guest:It wasn't like crazy serious.
Guest:It wasn't like an operation thing, but it's, it's just whenever I play sports now, maybe about half an hour, 45 minutes in, I'll start to feel it.
Guest:And then it just gets kind of progressively worse.
Guest:Uh, how old are you?
Guest:Uh, 33.
Marc:Oh, you're right.
So.
Marc:Like, I got this thing that, I don't know, I think I did it sleeping.
Marc:Right, right, right, right.
Marc:And I don't know what the, it just happened.
Marc:That's the worst, is when you hurt yourself doing nothing.
Marc:Nothing at all.
Marc:And I'm physical, and I'm just like, and now I'm just sort of like, how long am I going to have to wait to start climbing and doing shit?
Marc:Sure.
Marc:Because I'm on the road, you got no control over your bed.
Marc:You know what I mean?
Marc:You take the bed that's given you.
Marc:You take the bed that's given to you, yes.
Marc:By the best Western or best available.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:So, all right, so you're in accounting.
Marc:What is it, a gray building?
Marc:Is it horrible?
Guest:Yeah, I'm working on Bay Street, which is the Canadian Wall Street.
Guest:It's in Toronto.
Guest:Wearing suits?
Guest:Wearing suits, a shirt and tie every day.
Guest:I lived just up the street, so every day I kind of took the elevator down and I joined this zombie walk.
Guest:Of everybody going into their cells and doing their jobs.
Guest:It was a rough time for me.
Guest:I picked just about the worst job in terms of personality compatibility.
Guest:I was like, looking back, I'm clearly a creative.
Guest:Oh my god, so were you depressed?
Guest:I was very depressed.
Guest:I was very depressed.
Guest:I would like lie awake in bed in the mornings and I would just wait until the last possible second before leaving.
Guest:And really just like every day was like, it's a battle of wills just to be able to walk myself to the door to get dressed is really, really painful.
Guest:And I thought up until that point, because I also had felt that way in class and in all learning up until then, I just thought that was who I was.
Guest:I thought I was just a shitty person.
Guest:I thought I was lazy.
Guest:I thought I was under motivated.
Guest:And then crazy thing happened is I got laid off and I was devastated for some reason because even though I wasn't engaged in the job and I hated it, I still felt like it was the death of something.
Guest:It was the death of something that I'd worked so hard to build toward.
Guest:But then, you know, when I started in this acting journey or in this, you know, show business journey or whatever, I saw this, like, I became this totally new person.
Guest:I became the person that got up in the morning and, like, flew out the door.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I became the person that checked Craigslist.
Guest:You know, every single... I basically left no stone unturned.
Guest:I just wanted... I wanted every possible opportunity.
Guest:I was so hungry.
Marc:So it was, like, the bottoming out...
Guest:of your parents expect you were on you were sort of like got out from under your parents expectations not a but by no choice your own really mm-hmm yeah it's like the choice was made for you and you're like okay so like what did they do uh well i hid it from them for as long as i could how long was that it was about three or four months oh so you got a little you got a little wiggle room i got a little head start yeah and i had a i took my severance my severance check from deloitte and i invested it in a set of headshots
Guest:and uh and then living expenses for the next little while yeah and then i i literally like i i signed up to be an extra on movie sets no acting classes and uh eventually eventually but you just want to be part of it i just wanted to be a part of it and i didn't really know any acting like i had no access whatsoever it was just a all smoke and mirrors totally opaque industry right right you had no idea how
Guest:anyone even gets exactly exactly but then you know you show up to one set and you make some friends and they're like oh you should go to this class or you should check this out and so that was i was just learning by doing every single day yeah and then and then i was lucky enough to book like a national commercial and that was the moment where i was like oh if i don't tell my parents they're gonna turn on the tv one day and they're gonna see me what was it for it was for uh bell media which is kind of like an at&t yeah yeah yeah small business commercial uh-huh
Guest:And you had a speaking part?
Guest:I did not have a speaking part, but it was, I think, a very great exercise in improv.
Guest:I played this like really, you know, I played a business owner through all stages of the business, right?
Guest:So like in the beginning, taking the lease, you know, looking at the store and being like, wow, we did it.
Guest:And then it's like, oh, business is picking up.
Guest:So I've got a phone, I've got a phone tucked on my shoulder and then I'm like directing somebody else.
Guest:I'm like, oh, hey, no, put that here.
Guest:Things are so busy, you know?
Guest:And it's like, Belle, let us help with your small business.
Guest:Things are so busy.
Marc:Oh, it's amazing.
Marc:I'm pulling this off.
Guest:All right.
Guest:So you told them.
Guest:Yeah, I told them.
Guest:And I think in the beginning, actually, they were quite sympathetic because they believed that it was just like a weird manic phase that I was going through.
Marc:They were sympathetic for like your acting experience?
Guest:Yeah, they were they were like, oh, he's clearly going through some stuff right now.
Guest:He's going to take he's obviously going to go back into the workforce at some point.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So, hey, listen, you know, you take some time.
Guest:Right.
Marc:But then, you know, thank God it was you didn't have anything to do with quitting.
Marc:The fact that you were laid off probably enabled them to have some sympathy.
Guest:Some sort of sympathy.
Guest:Oh, interesting.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And then I think as time went on, they were like, oh, he really thinks he's going to do this.
Guest:And that's when things got tense again.
Marc:Now, when you say tents, I mean, at that point, what power did they really have over you other than the expectations?
Guest:Well, we had bought a condo together.
Guest:You and your parents?
Guest:Yeah, which the agreement was that we would pave the mortgage together.
Guest:All of a sudden, I was unemployed, couldn't pay the mortgage.
Guest:And so they were effective.
Guest:They did help me out in that they didn't charge me an exorbitant amount of rent.
Guest:I was paying very, very little.
Guest:And I think the power over me is just that they just made me feel like I was throwing away everything that they had.
Guest:But at that point, you're a big kid.
Marc:So I imagine the physical abuse and whatnot stops.
Guest:No, it wasn't it wasn't the fights.
Guest:It was it was just like, you know, it was just passive aggressive, passive aggressive talks.
Guest:And, you know, I remember one dinner.
Guest:I tried to go home for dinner and I can make it like 10 minutes in.
Guest:And I was like, I have to I have to go into to be fair.
Guest:At that point, I did think that things were about to get about to get violent.
Guest:With who?
Guest:Your father, mostly?
Guest:My mom.
Guest:My mom.
Guest:My father.
Guest:I mean, they both were, but my mom had a way with words.
Guest:I mean, first of all, I need to preface, she's an incredible woman, so smart and hardworking.
Guest:And if you read the book, We Were Dreamers, I have this entire chapter dedicated to her.
Guest:It's one of my favorite chapters in the world.
Guest:Sorry, it's my favorite chapter I've ever written, anyway.
Guest:But she has such a way with words and a way to twist the knife.
Guest:And...
Guest:So she's a, she's a firecracker for sure.
Marc:It just like, just, uh, uh, just, uh, it just kind of like blow through everything that you are right to the core, right to the core.
Guest:Oh yeah.
Guest:That it's like, it's like I, I rue the day I ever had you kind of level of, sure.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Like savagery.
Marc:How do you, so, and that's, and that shame's built into you.
Marc:Right.
Marc:That you feel that it's a voice you've had to deal with in your head your entire life that that like any time that you want to do anything outside of the purview of their expectations, you had to deal with that shame.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:What was the prevailing thought for me during this time was who I was becoming was so important that overrode any sort of intense feelings of shame or filial piety.
Guest:Any desire to like assume the family duty or keep the family face?
Guest:I mean, I actually think that if I if I had had a better relationship with my parents, it would have been harder.
Guest:But we had fought so much over the course of my teenage years that there was really no relationship to salvage.
Guest:And so I was like, you know what?
Guest:Screw it.
Guest:I don't care.
Guest:To your point, Mark, it was like, you don't have any power over me anymore.
Guest:I don't care.
Guest:anymore.
Guest:And what is so important to me right now is the person that I'm becoming, is this creative, this hardworking person.
Guest:I really felt like I was coming into my own and that feeling of when you're right where you need to be, it's like you come alive.
Guest:And I was coming alive.
Guest:And that was more powerful.
Guest:That was the most important thing.
Marc:Oh, see, that's great.
Marc:That's great because it doesn't always have to go that way.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You know, some people break, you know, and whatever happens happens.
Marc:But like, that's amazing that you had, they definitely planted in you some sort of stick-to-it-ness.
Marc:Yeah, definitely, definitely.
Marc:Because I imagine in the book, you have to sort out these things that were once negative to you in terms of qualities that you have or that they taught you.
Marc:They become positive if you sort of apply them to what you do.
Guest:Apply them directly.
Guest:To what you do, yeah.
Guest:I think the fallacy in my parents' logic was that they worked so hard for their next generation to have all of the opportunities that they didn't.
Guest:And then they turn around and had the expectation that they would...
Guest:that the next generation would do the exact same thing that they did.
Guest:But obviously, people don't work that way.
Guest:And the other thing, too, that I only realized very recently was that the decision to leave China, my parents were working at that time.
Guest:They had graduated from school.
Guest:They were working in China.
Guest:They had careers.
Guest:was that it was actually the ultimate risk was to throw that all away and to immigrate to a new country where you didn't speak the language, you didn't understand the culture, and you didn't know if you were going to get a job or not.
Guest:Basically, they were redoing their education in the hopes of landing something, but none of that was guaranteed.
Guest:And so people must have thought that they were crazy too.
Guest:And so that made my journey feel so...
Marc:you know so so small but also i i was like oh i literally my parents did this that was their immigrant dream so this is my version of that dream sure and i'm entitled to that dream just as much as they were right it's a theirs was like really an immigrant dream and yours is sort of a dream of of self-actualization where where you know you can do what you want to do and and be you know successful at it mm-hmm
Marc:Because even if you were to become whatever they thought you should become for the family and the expectations, is that there was something you said about just to do exactly what they did, which is limited.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So now here you've become more than they could have ever expected.
Marc:I mean, you're driving a free Beamer.
Guest:My parents would love that it's free.
Guest:My parents will.
Guest:I will say, Dad, if you're listening, I did not have to pay for it.
Guest:A convertible.
Guest:It's a convertible.
Marc:It's great.
Marc:But I mean, I imagine that whatever.
Guest:Was there a begrudging appreciation of your success initially?
Guest:There was a begrudging appreciation of my work ethic, and I think that started before I booked the Marvel role, before I booked the sitcom, Kim's Convenience.
Guest:I was on a show called Blood and Water in Canada, where I played a pedophile murderer, but that's a story for another time.
Guest:But I also was a Chinese character, so I had to speak a lot of Mandarin, and my Mandarin was not great, so I kind of...
Guest:roped my parents into uh into running lines with me and we were shooting in vancouver so i was in the i was in the hotel room late at night running lines with my parents running lines with my dad and and i think it was through that process they finally started to see oh this dude takes it seriously like he's not you know i think their worry was that i was being fed a pipe dream of like oh i could just
Guest:I could just sit there.
Guest:I'm like, you know, I take a couple of nice headshots and then I'll just all of a sudden be discovered and I'll be in a... They were like, oh, he is recognizing how much work this actually takes.
Guest:And also... He's ready to put it in.
Marc:Oh, that's interesting.
Marc:So they were able to appreciate the work it takes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yes, yes.
Guest:And I think with familiarity, too, I think it breeds some sort of empathy.
Guest:They just had no idea how the film industry or show business even worked.
Guest:Neither did you.
Guest:Who the hell knows?
Guest:And neither did I. But I was starting to make headway into the industry.
Marc:So they were like, he's really serious about this pedophile murderer.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:If this means so much to him that he gets this right, maybe there's no getting him back.
Guest:But I do think that was the turning point that really set the stage for our reconciliation.
Guest:Because if it was as easy as, oh, you're a Marvel person now.
Guest:Yeah, you're fine.
Guest:We're proud of you now.
Guest:I don't think I would have accepted that.
Guest:I would hold a lot of resentment in my heart.
Guest:That would have taken too long.
Guest:For sure, for sure.
Guest:And it wouldn't be unconditional love by any means.
Guest:No, no.
Guest:It would just be they had no choice, right?
Guest:Right, right.
Marc:Oh, yeah, no, that's pretty cool.
Marc:Yeah, I guess you did it.
Marc:No, but so, okay, so you do the commercial and then you come out as an actor.
Marc:So...
Marc:But how fraught was the relationship until what was the first thing you got?
Marc:It wasn't Kim's Convenience.
Marc:It was this other series.
Guest:Yeah, it was Blood and Water.
Guest:That was the first major one.
Guest:Before then, it was really like two years of, you know, it was like Joe Jobs.
Guest:It was like Spider-Man at kids' birthday parties.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:You dressed up?
Guest:I dressed up.
Guest:I dressed up as Spider-Man.
Guest:How was that for you?
Guest:You know, some days were better than others.
Guest:Some days you'd have like a really angelic kid and you'd be like, oh, that was really sweet.
Guest:I also took it, by the way, to be like an exercise in performance as well, because I had, you know, I was in class, but I was like, yeah, you know, that's a crowd.
Guest:That's a crowd.
Guest:Were you doing the moves?
Guest:I was doing the moves.
Guest:I was doing like the backflips and stuff.
Marc:When did you learn all that shit?
Guest:Basically when I was breakdancing, when I was trying to be that cool kid in high school.
Marc:So that's where all the physicality happened?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Kind of self-taught gymnastics?
Guest:Self-taught gymnastics, like stage combat, stunty stuff.
Guest:All through breakdancing?
Guest:Yeah, breakdancing, like parkour.
Guest:I don't know if you're familiar with parkour.
Guest:What is that?
Guest:Have you ever seen people running across rooftops of buildings?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:I never really got there, but it was all about free movement.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:And just jumping over things.
Guest:Precision and jumping and flipping.
Guest:You did all that?
Guest:And all of that, yeah.
Guest:Were you doing it on TikTok?
Yeah.
Guest:No, I missed the TikTok.
Guest:I was too old.
Guest:Oh, so none of that.
Guest:And also, by the way, not as good as some of the people on TikTok now.
Guest:Everyone's just incredible.
Marc:I see all kinds of people doing crazy shit.
Marc:Totally crazy shit.
Marc:Wild.
Marc:On rooftops, jumping.
Marc:There's a lot of people that just hang off of balloons.
Guest:Hot air balloons and drop.
Guest:Right, right, right, right.
Guest:There's that.
Guest:There's people that go on rooftops.
Guest:You ever see the Russian videos of people that go on rooftops and then they go out to a beam and then will do pull-ups on the beam?
Guest:People have legitimately died doing that.
Marc:Yeah, I assume.
Marc:I always wonder what the ending of some of these TikTok videos is.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:So you learned all that.
Marc:So you started doing that type of work before you got the series?
Marc:Doing sort of stunt stuff?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, I think I was just trying to do whatever I could.
Guest:So I had a stunt coordinator, Tommy Chang, who gave me a shot, you know, on a set for the first time.
Guest:I was trying to teach myself how to produce and edit and, you know, write and do posts.
Guest:So I was signing up for all these, like, little film intensives and collectives and also joining playwright, you know, theater companies and...
Guest:joining playwright workshops yeah i was just doing everything it was like a shotgun blast into the industry i was just like everything all the time so you're doing theater too huh yeah because because i didn't want to i didn't know where i would end up right really i would have loved you know i really do feel like i'm living the best version the best case scenario of that but i think equally as fulfilling if i didn't get this role or if the acting thing didn't take off i would be
Guest:I would be something else, but I'd be in the industry.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Oh, I see.
Guest:So you just love the industry.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:On some level.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:My friend used to ask me all the time, what's your plan B?
Guest:And I was like, I don't have a plan B. I just have an A1, A2, A3, A4, and A5.
Guest:Oh, that's good.
Marc:But there's no plan B. Yeah, there isn't a plan B, but I like that you were able to have an A spectrum.
Marc:An A spectrum, exactly.
Marc:So what was it like in Canadian television?
Marc:I mean, Canadian TV, I used to make sort of a half joke about how I think that if you hang around within the world of entertainment in Canada, that eventually you will get your own show.
Marc:That you can make it happen easier than you can do it here.
Marc:But what was casting like in terms of, given that...
Marc:The Asian community was so large.
Marc:Was there representation that was not limiting?
Guest:Yeah, I would say hard no.
Guest:Hard no.
Guest:The Asian representation did not exist.
Guest:I think what was out in the world is very different.
Guest:than what was being put forth in media.
Guest:And to some degree, I feel like that was the case in America, too.
Guest:It was like there were Asian-Americans in America for, you know, we've been here for over 100 years, but you wouldn't know it watching the film.
Guest:films and consuming media or or when you see the Asian characters they would really be like the really the same two people they would be running a laundromat or a restaurant to be heavily accented yeah that's not that I mean that's not the people that I grew up around those people were not
Guest:represented at all.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And it's definitely the same in Canada.
Guest:I would say, I would say, I would say it's a small market and a small system.
Guest:And a lot of, a lot of times, oftentimes, um, what those systems result in is the same people getting opportunities over and over again.
Guest:And it was very much the same production companies, the same show runners going from one show, that show getting canceled really like, I don't want to say failing upwards, but definitely, definitely failing laterally and getting more opportunities and more opportunities.
Guest:And
Guest:And it can be really tough to break in in that kind of environment.
Guest:But a little show called Kim's Convenience did come along, and it was based on a play written by Ince Choi.
Guest:And when it was a play at the Toronto Fringe Festival, it just blew away all expectations.
Guest:A theater company had picked it up, had toured nationally.
Guest:By the way, when Ince was first pitching the play to all the major theater companies around the country, all rejections, because none of them were Asian.
Guest:None of the artistic directors were Asian.
Guest:None of them could see what this play was.
Guest:And it wasn't until the people saw it and built it up and blew it up that they finally started to believe in it.
Guest:So then the play was mounted around the country and then optioned into a TV show.
Guest:And that's how I got my break.
Marc:I remember hearing about it.
Marc:It was a big deal.
Marc:In all show business, it was a big deal.
Guest:Oh, man.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:What year was it?
Guest:It was 2016 was the first year that we shot and came out.
Guest:And in the first season, it was really just, I mean, we were on the CBC and nowhere else.
Guest:So nobody outside of Canada could watch it, at least.
Guest:But after that, in our second season, we got picked up by Netflix.
Guest:And then all of a sudden, we were in, like overnight, we were in like 100 countries all over the world.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It wasn't like we were Riverdale.
Guest:It wasn't like we were Justin Bieber-level fame, but certainly it blew us all up in a way that we could never have imagined.
Marc:Well, I think that when you have the full spectrum of...
Marc:Asian culture feeling a lack of representation if there's any that is you know modern just yeah yeah and represents you know any Diversification within the community.
Marc:Yeah, they got to be like oh my god, it's like a drop of water in a desert It's like oh my god.
Guest:Thank you.
Marc:Yeah, thank goodness and that was the feeling I
Guest:I remember even watching Kim's Convenience for the first time on stage as a play.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:How transformative of a feeling it was watching what was my life being played out.
Guest:Not just seeing Asian people, but the story about the intergenerational conflict, about the father and the son who are struggling to reconcile, struggling to understand each other.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, the father with slightly accented English, but, you know, the son that was, you know, doing his best.
Guest:I mean, it just, it broke me on such a visceral level.
Guest:And I realized that up until that point, my relationship to theater was very much like going to a museum and being like, oh, this is nice.
Guest:Yeah, right.
Guest:Shakespeare.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:This is, you know.
Guest:Right, right, right.
Guest:Okay, what a nice thing.
Guest:History.
Guest:History.
Guest:But I didn't realize that art could be participatory.
Guest:I didn't realize that art could speak to my lived experience.
Guest:And really, it was because I had been starved of that kind of representation my whole life.
Guest:So I think in that moment, it clicked for me.
Guest:That's what I need.
Marc:But that's a different type of institutionalized, not necessarily racism, but kind of.
Guest:Yeah, it's, you know, I mean, that word is thrown around so much, but it's definitely institutionalized.
Marc:Institutionalized lack of opportunity or understanding.
Guest:Institutionalized ignorance.
Guest:There you go.
Guest:That's it.
Guest:It's just, you know, none of those decision makers ever had an Asian friend.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It's wild.
Marc:I feel like I'm seeing, that's one of the most amazing things that's happened over the last decade or two, is just that this surge of representation.
Marc:It's exciting.
Marc:It's exciting for me.
Marc:I mean, I just did an episode of Reservation Dogs, and it was so amazing to be on a set with Native Americans who have never had that kind of freedom of expression and to sort of approach the modern version of what...
Marc:Native life is like, it was exciting.
Marc:I was thrilled to not have anything to say and just do the role and be impressed as an old white guy that something amazing was happening culturally.
Guest:I hear that.
Guest:I hope that everybody is able to feel that in some way, shape, or form.
Guest:And I know there's still...
Guest:You know, there's still minority populations or maybe marginalized groups out there that don't feel that way.
Guest:And certainly I'm not saying by any means that as Asian Americans, like we are where we need to be either.
Guest:There's definitely we always want more.
Guest:We always want more ownership over the stories that we tell.
Guest:And more accurate representation and better representation.
Guest:But certainly, yeah, I think it's really easy to get cynical when representation and diversity just start to get tossed around and thrown around and people start to lose sense of what that actually means.
Marc:Well, that's true.
Marc:I could see that.
Marc:And that it's not quite... We're not done.
Marc:And that there's still a way that there needs to be some sort of balance of representation that honors the world that we live in.
Marc:But I still think there's been a tremendous success in...
Marc:in sort of integrating and making fiction more diverse.
Marc:So if somehow it can actually have an impact in the real world to sort of create connections among people.
Marc:We'll see.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I think I have to believe this, being an actor, but I think the power of stories, fictional or non-fictional, it has the power to just transcend boundaries and cultures and language, and it has the power to inspire people and to show people what's possible.
Guest:I mean, the amount of parents that I've met who have said that Shang-Chi has affected them and their children in such a profound way.
Marc:Oh, yeah, I bet.
Marc:Well, that was the first Marvel movie I've watched in like a decade, by the way.
Marc:I watched it for you.
Marc:And not because I'm just not the guy that watches them.
Marc:But that movie was a special movie, not just because of representation, but it's fundamentally a Kung Fu movie, really.
Marc:Right?
Marc:I mean, in the way that it is of a type.
Marc:It's more that.
Marc:it's more of an Asian experience than it is a Marvel movie.
Marc:It seems to me that all the symbols and the story and everything about the combat and also where it takes place.
Marc:Those things have been existing in Asian film and Asian culture in film for as long as there's been Asian film and Asian culture for thousands of years.
Marc:Everything in there is completely familiar.
Marc:Yes.
Guest:To any generation of Chinese person, I would imagine.
Guest:Yeah, I hear that.
Guest:I would say the film is definitely a celebration, the celebration of our culture and our lives.
Guest:I might disagree that it's a kung fu movie.
Guest:Is that wrong?
Guest:Is that inappropriate?
Guest:No, no, it's not inappropriate.
Guest:I think about this a lot.
Guest:I'm like, did I do a kung fu movie or did I do a martial arts movie or did I do a coming of age story with homages to martial arts and kung fu?
Guest:I think that's what I thought going in because I genuinely believe that if it was a kung fu movie, I wouldn't be cast.
Guest:If kung fu is the be-all and end-all of what you wanted Shang-Chi to be, I'm not your guy.
Marc:No, right.
Marc:No, of course, of course.
Marc:No, I understand that.
Marc:But, I mean, structurally, the Marvel story, from my understanding of it, if this is your origin story,
Marc:You know, everything around it, you know, even like, you know, for whatever reason, it's, you know, the rings, you know, is a fairly, somehow or another, even that rings as specifically Asian to me.
Marc:Oh, interesting.
Marc:The number of rings, you know, the 10 rings, like, I don't know what that is or where that came from.
Marc:I get Thor's hammer and I get like, and I get some other stuff or whatever the spider bite business, but there just seems to be some sort of ancient history to rings that seems, uh,
Marc:But what do I know?
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:I was hoping you'd bring them, though.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:No, I would have loved to take them from set.
Guest:But, you know, they're pretty tight about that sort of thing.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:You know, I really did, I think I went into it thinking about what I wanted the movie to be.
Guest:And I think I wanted it to be a superhero movie.
Guest:And I think Destin wanted it to be a superhero movie with a very specific cultural perspective in mind.
Guest:But I think and I hope that there are universal themes that play beyond just like, oh, this feels Asian, which it does.
Guest:Of course.
Guest:Totally does.
Marc:But also, it is exactly the same story as Kim's Convenience.
Yeah.
Marc:Similar.
Guest:There's definitely similarity.
Guest:And it's exactly your story.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Down to even, like, you know, I know we talk a lot about the traditional Chinese, you know, iconography and aesthetic, but there's also, like, the very real aesthetic of, like, two Asian-American, you know, 20-somethings growing up in San Francisco and playing a karaoke together.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Hanging out and parking cars.
Guest:And I think that's so much of my life is in that and my character is in that.
Guest:So we were able to, I think, encompass a very broad kind of sense of, and really it's the type of specificity and nuance that you get when you have a filmmaker like Destin who is Asian American, who understands.
Guest:And it's also, this is very important, also a phenomenal filmmaker.
Guest:That he was able to imbue the film with all of this nuance and these different character perspectives that you're like, oh, yes, this does feel Asian, but it also feels specific.
Guest:It feels like these characters each have their own, you know, their sense of identity and motivation and where they come from.
Marc:Oh, absolutely.
Marc:Very specific.
Marc:And I just love that you're just a regular kid, but you have this eternal father who you don't get along with.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:And then he just comes back into the picture with his expectations.
Marc:With his expectations, yeah.
Marc:Not great, but you're going to make them better.
Marc:Yeah, the expectations, you know, you use the power in a different way.
Marc:And I was talking to my producer today about how this huge chunk of story is almost dropped in passing, you know, which is that, you know, this this forest, you know, kind of eats people.
Marc:And there's a there's this there's this gate to a mountain.
Marc:And behind that is this giant dragon that's going to eat souls and take it.
Marc:Right.
Marc:It's like it happens in three lines.
Guest:It does.
Guest:It does.
Guest:It feels MacGuffin sometimes.
Marc:No, but I don't know.
Marc:It's not, though, because I've never been a comic book nerd, but I think there are people that either get comics or they don't.
Marc:There are people that can read them and effectively have the experience of the stories being told from those panels and process it immediately, or they don't.
Marc:And I think that one of the things, at least in this Marvel movie, that it honors that, that you can drop that kind of information if you have a brain for that kind of stuff.
Marc:You're like, no problem.
Marc:I get it.
Marc:That's the mountain.
Marc:There's the wall.
Guest:That's the mountain.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:And also the other thing I loved, and I don't know if I'm being racially insensitive, but the good dragon was a specifically Chinese dragon.
Marc:Oh, interesting.
Marc:Like the way it looked.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:And again, it's like I recognize that dragon from soup bowls in Chinese restaurants.
Guest:I love that dragons have ethnicity, but I think they totally do, because yeah, there's not...
Guest:It's funny that they're all dragons.
Guest:Why do we call them dragons when they're so different?
Guest:Like the Game of Thrones dragon.
Guest:Different.
Guest:Like the medieval dragon.
Marc:But even the one in the mountain is not, it didn't strike me as an Asian dragon.
Marc:Right, right, right.
Marc:It was just a general menacing horrible dragon and the little soul eating things.
Marc:Like I like that, all that stuff.
Marc:But it seemed like the good dragon was like, I recognize that from Chinese festivals.
Guest:Mm-hmm.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Is that possible?
Guest:Oh, absolutely.
Guest:Well, there's a lot of the creatures in Ta Lo in that world were based off of Chinese mythology.
Guest:The Qilin, the firebirds, the nine-tailed fox, and the dragon, and even Morris, that little headless kind of chicken butt-looking thing, is based on a, I'm blanking on the name right now, but is based on a very wise Chinese mythological creature.
Guest:Oh, wow.
Guest:That's totally honored it.
Guest:Like, I imagine all generations of Chinese people were like, holy shit.
Guest:Well, frankly, I did not know any of this going in.
Guest:I wasn't like, oh, yeah, that's the Qilin.
Guest:But now I do, thanks to really, really incredible VFX artists.
Marc:That attention to detail being specifically culturally identified is kind of amazing.
Marc:So the feedback has been like you're an actual superhero, I would imagine, to Asian kids.
Guest:Oh, man.
Guest:I don't know how that makes me feel.
Guest:I mean, yes, I think the feedback has been really incredible.
Guest:I think and I believe that superheroes have a very special part of... They take up a very special space in this world, and I think the kids growing up today will grow up differently because they have a superhero that represents them.
Guest:Because I know growing up, when I turned on the TV, I never felt good about myself.
Guest:I never felt like I exist.
Guest:I always felt kind of invisible.
Guest:And I always felt very limited in what I believed was possible for myself, right?
Guest:Sure.
Guest:A lot of my narrow kind of viewpoint of success was based off of my parents because I didn't have anything else to model after.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Maybe if I had seen more, first of all, more working Asian Canadian and Asian American actors that
Guest:That would have changed things.
Guest:If I had seen stories featuring Asian protagonists in America or in Canada, that would have changed things.
Guest:If I saw a superhero that looked like me, that would have changed things.
Guest:Sure.
Marc:Same with Black Panther as well.
Marc:It seemed to have a similar effect.
Marc:And what happens when you make the next movie with this guy?
Guest:Well, I think we're trying to figure out what exactly that next movie is going to be.
Guest:And I also, you know how it is.
Guest:I'd be very careful about what I say.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:But I think there's, you know, I think obviously he's got a future.
Guest:I think it's obviously a shared cinematic universe.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And are there Shang-Chi comics?
Guest:There are.
Guest:There are.
Guest:He's an established guy?
Guest:He's an established guy.
Guest:He's been around for a while.
Guest:He was made in the 1970s.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:In the height of the kung fu craze.
Guest:Those early comics were, I wouldn't say they're problematic.
Guest:I would say they're not great from a representational standpoint because they were not written by Asian people.
Guest:In doing research for the role, I obviously went through some comics and I was like, huh, I don't know if I like this.
Guest:And I went to talk to Dustin and he was like, yeah, no, no, no, we're doing something totally different.
Marc:And you got to work with all these great, like Michelle Yeoh.
Guest:Michelle Yeoh, Tony Leung.
Guest:It's amazing.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And they've been around forever.
Guest:They've been around forever and are legends in Asian cinema.
Guest:Michelle, I think, has crossed over into Hollywood and is now having a full-blown moment of her own.
Guest:With everything everywhere all at once.
Guest:I'm just such a big fan.
Guest:I could not tell you how happy I am that she's getting her comeuppance and getting all of these accolades that she's deserved for so long.
Guest:And Tony, of course, is, you know, that was his first kind of foray into Hollywood, but he is an art house cinema icon.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You watched him growing up.
Guest:Oh, absolutely.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:Infernal Affairs, Trunking Express, you know.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Great.
Guest:And you get that amazing opportunity to work with these people.
Guest:Very intimidating, very intimidating, especially because going up against their resumes, I felt like I was at a literal zero.
Marc:But I think you played, I think you must have felt you were playing a version of yourself in a lot of those scenes.
Marc:Very much so, very much so, yeah.
Marc:And that the emotions of it were genuine.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:And what is this Barbie movie?
Guest:What is it, man?
Guest:It's wild.
Guest:Have you seen it?
Guest:I have not seen it.
Guest:We just rapped on it.
Marc:Okay.
Guest:Greta Gerwig.
Guest:She's great.
Guest:But it's Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then, of course, Greta Gerwig.
Guest:They wrote it?
Guest:They wrote it.
Guest:And she's directing it.
Guest:And she's directing it.
Marc:I can't even understand what it is.
Guest:Yeah, I don't even want to give too much away because the buzz that's out right now is good.
Guest:I mean, the fact that they went on the Venice boardwalk with those outfits and the rollerblades.
Marc:Yeah, with Gosling and Margot Robbie.
Guest:Yeah, and I don't know how much I want to say.
Guest:I don't know how much I'm allowed to say, but I will say it was one of the best scripts I've ever read.
Guest:And a good experience.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And a phenomenal experience working for, yeah, again, just like a transcendent director.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Such a strong vision and so smart and intelligent and subversive.
Guest:And I think it'll, I think it'll surprise a lot of people because I think a lot of people get cynical when they see like Mattel.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Or they see Barbie.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But truly, truly, without giving anything away, the first
Guest:The first thought that I had after reading the script and finishing it was like, how the hell did they get Mattel to sign off on this?
Guest:Right.
Guest:Because this is not the kind of movie that that like corporate overlords sign off on.
Guest:Right.
Guest:This is the type of movie that I love.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Unabashedly.
Guest:And that it's smart and it's subversive and it's meta.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it makes fun of itself, but how did they understand it enough to greenlight it?
Guest:And I think that's props to not only Greta, but also to Margot Robbie and Tom Ackerley, who produced it and shepherded it every step of the way, that they were able to really fight for that original vision.
Guest:Yeah, I'm excited.
Guest:I'm excited.
Guest:But it's special, and I think it'll be special.
Marc:And in closing, how did your parents react to the book?
Guest:Well, they were very involved from a very early stage.
Guest:I knew the story that I wanted to tell, and I knew that I couldn't tell it without them.
Guest:So I was very upfront.
Guest:I was like, I want to tell the story of you, I want to tell the story of me, and I want to tell the story of us.
Guest:I was very clear.
Guest:I was like, I'm not out there to air out dirty laundry, to be vindictive, to say, hey, see, this is how you treated me.
Guest:How dare you?
Guest:It was like, but let's not shy away because our culture is so much about saving face and presenting well, right?
Guest:I'm like, let's not do that.
Guest:Let's present an honest snapshot of what our lives were and where our conflict came from so that families can read this and see themselves in it and choose a better path and choose empathy and choose...
Guest:to have those conversations that we were never able to have right um and i think they you know i think they they first at first were were very on board and then i they read my first draft and they were like oh god and so they had a moment of like what have we done but then at the at the very end you know once once we got it to to the publisher and it was out of their hands they were like no this is really they had some sense of like this is really important
Guest:And great for them, too, because they've come a long way and have really kind of acknowledged, taken accountability for, and have expressed a genuine remorse over things that were said, things that they had done.
Guest:And at that point, I think I was so ready to move on and move past.
Guest:And I'm very, very happy with where we are today.
Guest:That's a great story.
Guest:Thank you.
Guest:Thanks for talking, man.
Guest:Thank you.
Guest:Thanks for having me.
Marc:There you go.
Marc:That was a full arc of a life there.
Marc:It was a nice talk.
Marc:The book is We Were Dreamers.
Marc:And you can get that wherever you get books.
Marc:It's out now.
Marc:And you can go watch the Marvel movies.
Marc:But, you know, they're not struggling.
Marc:You don't have to rush out.
Marc:It's going to be okay if you wait on that.
Marc:And please wait to, look, just hang out a minute.
Marc:So listen, people, if you missed out on last week's Ask Mark Anything episode for full Marin subscribers, you can get it as soon as you subscribe.
Marc:I answered a lot of the stuff you probably don't know.
Marc:For example, did my cats almost kill a guest?
Marc:Yes, actually, they kind of did.
Marc:Almost.
Marc:Have any guests had severe allergic reactions to the cats?
Marc:Yes.
Marc:But it's weird because they were never in the garage.
Marc:But Ed Helms had such a severe allergy.
Marc:Go find that.
Marc:If you're listening to this, you can listen to all of them.
Marc:Go listen to Ed Helms.
Marc:I almost let that guy die.
Marc:I don't think I took it seriously.
Marc:But it was pretty terrible.
Marc:It was pretty bad.
Marc:I feel bad about that.
Marc:Because I was like, I really wanted to get the full hour in.
Marc:And he was having a hard time breathing.
Marc:Some people are allergic, but not so allergic.
Marc:There's never been a cat out here in either garage, really.
Marc:But some people are so allergic that it kind of like maybe through the vent system happened.
Marc:Subscribe to The Full Marin on WTF Plus for more bonus content, including future chances to ask me anything.
Marc:Go to the link in the episode description on whatever podcast app you're using or go to WTFPod.com and click on WTF Plus.
Marc:On Thursday, I talked to Whitney Cummings.
Marc:We had a talk a long time ago back on episode 106 in 2010.
Marc:She also did two live WTFs, episode 24 and episode 576.
Marc:So if you have a WTF Plus subscription, you can listen to all those episodes before the new one with Whitney on Thursday.
Marc:I'm coming your way, people.
Marc:Tucson, Arizona at the Rialto Theater on September 16th.
Marc:Phoenix, Arizona at Stand Up Live on September 17th.
Marc:Boulder, Colorado at the Boulder Theater on September 22nd.
Marc:Fort Collins, Colorado at the Lincoln Center on September 23rd.
Marc:And Toronto, Ontario at the Queen Elizabeth Theater on September 30th and October 1st.
Marc:I'll be in London, England at the Bloomsbury Theater Saturday and Sunday, October 22nd and 23rd.
Marc:I'll be in Dublin, Ireland at Vicar Street Wednesday, October 26th.
Marc:I have dates in November and December in Oklahoma City, Dallas, San Antonio, Houston, Eugene, Oregon, Bend, Oregon, Asheville, North Carolina, and Nashville, Tennessee.
Marc:And don't forget my HBO taping at Town Hall in New York City is on Thursday, December 8th.
Marc:Go to wtfpod.com slash tour for all dates and ticket info.
Marc:Links.
Marc:There are links.
Marc:Now I'm going to do some ragga blues.
guitar solo
guitar solo
Bye.