This is Part 2 of an exclusive interview with Daniel Wu on Into the Badlands. For Part 1, read Daniel Wu on #SaveIntoTheBadlands.

GC: Let’s discuss the diversity of Into the Badlands.

DW: We consciously tried to make the show as diverse as possible. It's hard to make a show diverse in Ireland because it's all white people [laughs]. So like extras – we were literally having people go out in the streets to find ethnic people because we wanted that world to look that way. We didn't want it all to be white people, because our view is that in the future, people are going to be brown. That's just the reality. Also our main cast – very diverse. We have strong female characters. We have a lot of people of color in powerful positions, right? And none of Hollywood saw all that. That's one of my biggest angers about the show that it never caught on mainstream-wise. But it is speaking to what Hollywood is trying to be right now. We hit all our marks and no one recognized us for that. We were never in a conversation about diverse television – hardly ever.

And then all the low-hanging fruit – action design. We've never gotten an Emmy nomination. Obviously what's happening is either it's an old boys' club and they’re not letting us in because we have non-American stunt coordinators, people that are not in their union. Maybe that's why we're being muscled out of it. Secondly, maybe because the people that actually vote don't watch all that content. You know what I mean? There's too much content. How are they supposed to watch 300 shows to vote properly. They don't. So they go, "Oh I've heard of whatever." Tick. Put that in there. They may have never even seen the show. Vikings, oh that's got action. Put that in there. Some of them do – like Game of Thrones definitely deserves it, right? But we definitely deserve to be in that conversation of best action on TV. 

Costume Design. Cinematography. These three things, we blow tons of shit out of the water with, right? Our camera-work is amazing – just on the action alone. Like on that episode with Widow versus Widow – that fight – I don't know if you saw my post but that camera is on a wire, gets thrown off a balcony, our guy grabs it and comes around to do the stitch, no one is doing that on TV. At all. We're doing like high-level movie shit on TV and no one is recognizing us for it. It's fucked. It's one thing to not get recognized for the show but, come on, give us something. Throw us a bone.

Yeah, you can tell this show also made me a lot more angrier.

GC: [laughs] Isn't the spiritual progression of Sunny supposed to make you mellower?

DW: Yeah, that's the thing. Having my whole career in Asia, and I'm not talking direct racism, but I feel it's different here in the United States. And I feel it in the Asian-American community. Other Asian-American actors look at my show and say, "Oh, that's that Kung Fu show." And they want to stay away from it because most Asian-American actors don't want to be seen as Kung Fu people, right? There's more that we can do than just Kung Fu. And then the American white people go, "Oh, that's some genre show. We're not going to watch that. We watch serious drama." But the level of drama on our show is there. The storytelling is there. It's just that we're a genre piece and we're elevated to that level. Give us a fucking chance. No one's given us a chance. And I feel like there's a slight bit of racism involved.

Also, I'm one of the few Asian-American actors leading a TV show. That should be a conversation piece for a lot of media outlets.

GC: There was some coverage on that.

DW: Very little at the very beginning, right? But I've never been asked to be on a talk show. I've never done any talk shows in the whole three-year run that we've done the show. Never been invited. The closest thing was Carson Daly, and that's a late late late night show. And I wasn't even interviewed by him. I was interviewed by his staff and they made it look like he was interviewing me. But that was it.

I think I have an interesting story – this American kid that goes over to Asia, becomes a superstar, then comes back here and leads an American TV show after not having any role models like that. That's a great American diversity story, right? No one's picked up on it. No one gives a fuck.

 

 

GC: We told it!

DW: Yeah, you told it. The people that know told it, right? But nobody in the mainstream. And all these mainstream people are, "Oh, we are diverse. We are pro-diversity." Bullshit. You're pro-diversity when it's convenient for you. So my anger as a person of color in this country has exponentially grown since I've come back here. Which I didn't feel at all in Asia because I'm working in movies, I'm being chosen not for my race at all because everyone is Chinese. We're all the same, right? I'm being chosen just for my skills, and maybe my celebrity level. That's about it.

Here, it's a totally different thing. When I go for an audition or I'm up for a role, they'll ask, "Have you ever played a role like..." and I'll show them a Chinese movie and they'll say, "Yes, but have you done it in English?" It's like if you've done it in Chinese, it's un-validated in America. Wait a second, my English is way better than my Chinese. You can hear me speaking to you in English right now, right? You fucking hear that. There's no accent. So what are you worried about? Are you worried that I might get on a set with English speakers and not know how to act all of a sudden? I think I will act much better because I'm not acting in my second language anymore. In Chinese, it's always hard to act in a language that's not your mother language. So to be questioned about that, that's fucking racist too. It's totally racist.

GC: So what’s next for Daniel Wu?

DW: As an actor, you get really passive. You wait for the roles to come to you. Or you can create your own and I don't have that big of an ego where I go, "Yeah, I want to be the superhero this and let's get this going." But what I've been wanting to do for a long time, since The Heavenly Kings (2006), is direct again. I haven't directed since that film, mainly because the acting work got really busy. And when you direct, it's not like you just plug yourself in for four months and you're out of there. It's a real full-on commitment – 18 months, 2 years really from beginning to end. But I've had this movie that I've wanted to develop for a long time. It's probably been in my head for like ten years, but I've always really been tentative to do it. And slowly over time, I've been telling the idea to other people and getting traction on it. And finally I'm like, "Okay. Let's do this!" There's no point in waiting for the great project to come. That's not going to happen. I got to create it myself. So I want to direct this film. I'll probably be in it in a cameo role, but it's a basketball movie. Truly a global movie.

I feel everyone has been trying to get this formula for the movie that can do well in China and well in the States. You make a movie like The Great Wall (2016) and you shove a bunch of people like Matt Damon in it and you think it'll do well in the States. No, that's not going to work. Because it doesn't make sense. Period China with white people? Why? Where did they come from? Why are they there? And why are they white saviors? Then you have the Transformers and Mission Impossible where they sprinkle a bunch of Chinese actors in there – the flower vases. Yeah they do well in China but it's not because of those actors, it's because Tom Cruise. Or Transformers is a spectacle and that's what they want to watch, but it's not truly integration of the two. That's what I feel is missing. You can't avoid the cultural aspect of doing a movie in both lands. That has to be part of the story at least.

Mine is about basketball. An older NBA player at the twilight of his career gets asked to go over to China to play. China is totally different from what he expected. You know how it is when Americans go over there; they're like, "What? China's like this now?" not just the culture part but the fact that how modern it is and how much money there is there. I think people that haven't been there still think it's rice-picker hats and bikes all over the place, right? That's long gone, like 20, 30 years ago. And even though he's in a 4th tier city, it's still a 10 million person city. It's like bigger than any city in the States... It's a feel-good sports movie. I want to do it because it's not been a sports movie ever in China. There's a cycling one. There's some comedy ones.

 

GC: There’s Kung Fu Dunk. [laughs]

Yeah. Those are not really about the sport, like Hoosiers (1986) or things like that. That's what I want to make. I want to make this inspirational movie that has a positive message and is also about cultural understanding, in this time when America and China are not getting along. I want to show that the people want to get along. And if it's over a game of basketball, or kung fu, or whatever, that's how they’re going to get along. It's not about government versus government. That's all bullshit. So I'm putting that together. I have a scriptwriter on it.

[Daniel went on to describe his film in full and then teased a project that he’s working on with a certain Hip Hop group, but it’s too early to disclose those details here beyond the following comment on that project. –GC]

DW: I'm helping to produce the fight part of that. Dee Dee [Ku] is going to be on it; basically the BADLANDS crew is getting back together to shoot this in China. It's just for one episode, but it's like a 15-minute segment throughout the episode. I'm going to be doing that in July,

Alex Tse is going to be writing my movie for me. He's Asian-American. He played basketball in college so he knows the game really well. That was my big problem before is that I couldn't find any Chinese writers that knew how to write a sports movie and then an American, like a white guy, would not necessarily understand the China side of it. I'm hoping to shoot it by next year, 2020.

GC: Are you still going to pursue a movie career in Hollywood?

DW: It's still something I definitely want to follow through with. You know, I've done a lot of stuff in Asia. I'm good with that. There's a lot of projects that I get offered but it's like stuff I've done before and I'm not really interested in repeating myself. So at this stage of my life, after that hospital stay, I'm not wasting time doing stuff just to do it, like this producer's a friend of mine, I don't really like the script but I'm just helping him out, I've done a lot of that in the past. I'm not doing that anymore. The second half of my life is my time and I'm going to do things that are fulfilling to me.

 

GC: What about more martial arts films?

DW: It's important to me now in my career to show America that I'm not just a martial arts guy. I think martial arts is very important. I'm very deeply tied into it. But my career in Asia was not all martial arts. In fact, I only did like 3 or 4 martial arts based things, other action stuff. But it's very easy for white people here to go, "Oh, he's Badlands. He only knows martial arts." But no, I was a dramatic actor before all of this. I just happen to be good at martial arts also. And so I don't want to be stuck in that genre only, because I think if we want to advance ourselves as Asian American entertainers, we have to show more sides of ourselves. Martial arts is one way. And that's one way that Americans see us. But there's many many many other ways. And so we have to show that. We have to make a conscious effort to not jump into the next martial arts thing. I've been offered a bunch of roles where the character does martial arts, and I'm just like, "No."

Even on Tomb Raider (2018), they asked me when I got there, "Do you want to be doing like spin kicks and all that stuff?" I'm like "No. I don't want to throw a single kick. This guy is a sailor. It doesn't mean he knows kung fu just because he's from Hong Kong. He probably could fight pretty good, probably a bar brawler, but he's not a kung fu guy so cut all that shit out. I don't want any of that."

And then I got comments from fans on my instagram like "Oh, I wanted to see you do Sunny stuff." No you don't. If you respect the movie, you don't want to do that.

I have a really funny story about RZA when he was doing Man with the Iron Fists (2012). When he came out to China, he was talking to all these people about these weapons and all the translators were like, "We don't know these things." He was like, "You don't know these things?! You're Chinese. You should know these things." No, they're not into kung fu. They're not going to know any of that shit, right? It was a wake-up call to him because he didn't realize like, yes, kung fu is Chinese culture, but it's not like basketball here. It's not in the mainstream consciousness all the time. And even though they watch kung fu movies, they're not thinking about the kung fu. They're just watching it.

So the funny thing here is, yeah, I gotta fight against that as well, the stereotype that I've done this martial arts show. I will do martial arts again for the right project, but I don't want to have to do it all the time.

GC: Fight to the End, right? Any last thoughts on Into the Badlands?

DW: This is our final hurrah. We can still get this year's Emmy nominations in, right? For this second half of the season. Just to get nominated in there, I'm happy with that. Just to get some kind of recognition that we existed at some point.