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AMC's "Into the Badlands" is equal parts dystopian fantasy, Southern Gothic drama, and martial arts epic. Well, with at least two elaborate fight scenes per episode, it's mostly a martial arts epic.
Loosely based on the ancient Chinese tale, "Journey to the West," in which a violence-prone character embarks on a quest and becomes enlightened in the process, "Into the Badlands" tells the story of Sunny, brought up as an assassin for his feudal baron.
Lead actor Daniel Wu is also one of the show's executive producers, and he was originally brought on to coach the fights in the show. Despite his background as a martial arts actor, he was initially reluctant to cast himself in the lead. The physical demands of the role, as he told The Frame, far exceeded those he was used to. For example, a Jackie Chan movie might contain four fights that are filmed over a six-month period, whereas Wu had to film 11 over four months for "Into the Badlands."
Still, Wu emerged from shooting with "only" a cracked rib, and now fans are praising him as as a groundbreaker for Asian-American leads. Read more of Wu's discussion on "Into the Badlands" and how he got started as an actor in Hong Kong:
That first day on set [of my first movie] was a really transformative thing for me. I was in this environment where I realized, This is who I want to be. Then, two weeks after finishing that film, the director recommended me to another director, and I worked on another film, and in that year I did like six films. So I was pretty lucky.
You were pretty lucky, but it also sounds like if you had stayed back in the United States, who knows what you would be doing?
I know. I definitely wouldn’t have tried acting, that’s for sure. As an Asian-American growing up in America, you never thought that that could be a viable option for you. And so, getting the opportunity to do that in Hong Kong was something that had never been [offered] me in the U.S.
What’s behind that, do you think?
I think it’s old-school Hollywood not really understanding that the fabric of America has changed, and that really it needs to reflect on current society. And for us as Asian-Americans, I think the bane of our existence is one stereotype — “Sixteen Candles,” the Long Duk Dong character. So that’s one sort of thing I think the Asian-American male actor has been fighting against all this time.
If I were trying to make it in the States, in Hollywood, and auditioning and doing that, I think I’d find it very disheartening. And I probably would have given up much earlier on.
As producer on "Into the Badlands," how did you end up casting yourself in the lead role?
[Laughter] I’d actually resisted it for a while. Because, as a producer, I was brought on to bring the authentic martial arts side to the project. And so I brought on my producing partner, Stephen Fung, who became the action director. We were there to make sure that the action side worked really well. Then, when we started casting, AMC was adamant that they wanted the main character to be Asian, to be a good martial artist, to be a good actor. So we sent out feelers and got a lot of audition tapes back. And in my mind, I thought that the main character should be in his late 20s to early 30s. Mainly because of the fights, and how intensive they are. If the show is successful it can go on for five or six years. This person’s going to need to be able to last that amount of time.
In this first season, we have about two fights per episode. There’s six episodes, that’s twelve fights. I’m in eleven of them, right? And so to do eleven fights over a four-month period is incredibly demanding on you physically. For example, in a Jackie Chan movie or any other Hong Kong action movie, there are three to four fights per movie, and that’s over a six-month period of time. So you have time to recover. You have time to let your body rest. But on this kind of schedule, you don’t have that. So we needed somebody young, I thought, to play this role.
The producers were not satisfied [with the audition tapes]. Then they all turned to me, predictably, and said, You know you’ve gotta go for this, right? Although I’ve been doing martial arts my whole life, I stopped doing martial arts films about six or seven years ago because of certain injuries. I’m almost 40 this year.
So I consulted with a lot of experts, a lot of people who worked in martial arts films, and figured out a way to kind of get myself built back up to that state.
I want to talk about some of those fights specifically. In the opening episode of “Into the Badlands,” there’s a fight where your character goes up against 10 to 12 other fighters. The fight probably lasts about five minutes on screen. How long does it take to choreograph, rehearse and film a scene like that?
I have to tell a secret. We don’t rehearse much.
That sounds kind of dangerous.
That’s kind of the Hong Kong style. We had gone through certain specifics of the fight scene during the training period we’d had before filming. And then we took six days to film that fight.
Part of the Hong Kong style is the fact that a lot of the performers can perform the moves, and we don’t over-rehearse this stuff. In "The Matrix," you see the fight between Keanu Reeves and Lawrence Fishburne. It’s an amazing fight. But I know that they’ve rehearsed it for months beforehand. Because in some of the moves you can see them anticipating blocks before they actually happen. And you can say that that’s part of Neo’s character and he can anticipate stuff, but at the same time, what makes Hong Kong action so lively is that there is an element of danger there, that you’re not sure you'll block that punch. And so that kind of gives it a life that’s very different from something that’s over-rehearsed — much in the way that if an actor over-rehearses their lines, they can become really flat.
Was this as hard a shoot on you physically as you expected it to be?
I think it was as hard as I expected it to be and it was the hardest I’ve ever worked on any project I’ve ever done. I’ve done over 60 films. It was very, very physically challenging.
Injury-wise I was lucky that I didn’t get injured that badly. I cracked a rib on an accident, but the major things you want to worry about are pulling a muscle [or] tearing a tendon, because it takes a long time to recover from that. And you can’t function that way. A cracked rib, you can keep going with some Advil.
You kind of got your career going in Asia. You’re now doing a lot more work in the United States. How does it feel to move there, then move back? Do you prefer one to the other? What are the advantages of one nation’s productions over another’s?
It’s very interesting. To work in Asia, I play characters that are not based on race whatsoever because everybody is Chinese. Whereas here, I’m dealing with issues of race and all that stuff, and a lot of questions about "Badlands" are, How do you feel about being groundbreaking? And honestly I never thought about it because for 18 years I’ve never had to.
And do you think you’re now seen as an actor first and a fighter second? Or do they go together?
I think, here with “Badlands,” I’ll be seen as a fighter first. But my whole career in Asia has been as an actor first. So, we’ll see what I do after “Badlands” to show audiences that I have more in my repertoire besides martial arts.
"Into the Badlands" airs Sunday nights on AMC.