Born in Berkeley, California and raised down the highway in Orinda, the 40-year-old Daniel Wu has nearly 70 acting credits to his name.
Almost all of them in Hong Kong.
The executive producer and star of the upcoming AMC series Into the Badlands admits he never really thought much about helping to change the image of Asian Americans men in the media, until recently.
“Not until the opportunity to work on Badlands because until (now) nothing was happening for me in the States,” said Wu in a live Ask Me Anything chat on Reddit Thursday night.
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The show is loosely based on the Chinese novel Journey to the West. Into the Badlands is filmed in New Orleans and will bring the martial arts genre back to American TV.
“Yes, I helped brainstorm the Badlands world,” he told his Reddit audience. “This is not a show about Asian Americans and their issues. It’s a cool show with cool characters and a cool story with some badass action. It’s not meant to be a statement BUT it’s existence backed by such a big studio is a statement in itself.”
He described juggling producing duties with acting as a “challenging balancing act”
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“The hours were long and it was hot as hell wearing that leather trench coat in the NOLA heat!”
Wu is also set to play Gul’dan in the upcoming Warcraft movie set for release by Universal Studios next year. He described as “awesome” his experience of doing motion capture acting. As for playing badass characters on the screen, he states “It’s good to be bad.”
In his limited time acting in the States, he’s seen minimal differences between acting in Hong Kong and Hollywood.
“Same problems and same issues,” is the way he puts it. “I haven’t run into anyone racist in Hollywood, but plenty of ignorance.”
Wu attended the University of Oregon and majored in architecture. He also enrolled in film classes and took up martial arts. After he graduated, he went to Hong Kong in 1997 to witness the changeover of Hong Kong to China. According to Wikipedia, Wu’s sister encouraged him to get into modeling. Four months later, Hong Kong director Yonfan asked Wu to star in an upcoming movie.
“If someone hadn’t dragged me into the film industry I wouldn’t be here today,” he said.
