Kung Fu Tai Chi and KungFuMagazine.com has covered AMC's groundbreaking show INTO THE BADLANDS extensively for Season 2. AMC granted unprecedented access for INTO THE BADLANDS, including set visits and plenty of interviews with the stars and the people behind the scenes. Daniel Wu, Executive Producer and playing in the lead role of Sunny, has a genuine passion for the Chinese martial arts as a longtime practitioner. During a visit to the drama set of INTO THE BADLANDS near Dublin, Ireland, Daniel generously gave an extensive interview between filming his scenes, revealing some details about his character Sunny and some of his personal insights on the martial arts and INTO THE BADLANDS.

Season Two has been quite a ride for Sunny.

The beginning of this season, he starts going back. Basically, he's been captured [S2E1: Tiger Pushes Mountain]. He's a slave, so for the first couple of episodes, he's trying to get out of that situation. This is not the Sunny you've seen, that kind of regal noble Sunny. It's this kind of, like, downtrodden, depressed, beat-down Sunny. He's trying to find the will not only to survive but to get out of there, get out of the situation and get back into the Badlands again – to his girl and baby. That's really the driving motivation that will push him through all of this. I think it has more focus than last season where Sunny would get himself into these situations – now he's putting himself into the situation. He's fighting for a real reason now. He's not fighting for others. So that drive is completely different than last season. Last season he had this desire but then he also had this, like, responsibility to Quinn, so he was fighting between that. Now that's all gone. Now he's dealing with the emotions, what it is to have a family. So it's a different motivation than last year.

What have been some of your favorite fight scenes this season?

There's a really cool fight that entails me and Bajie, Nick's character, and we're chained together [S2E2: Force of Eagle’s Claw]. It's kind of little elements of Jackie Chan – a Jackie Chan type of fight where you have to figure out how to do this with two people, like Jackie and Sammo chained together. So it has comical elements in it, like a Jackie Chan fight but it's also kind of cool where we use this chain. At first it becomes this handicap, then all of a sudden, it becomes a tool that we use to win the fight. That was a fun fight.

Did you go to that junkyard set over there? [Daniel was referring to the set in the adjacent sound stage from where he was filming during the interview.] There's a big fight that happens in there. There's a lot of Parkour elements. We got a bunch of guys who had a martial arts base but switched to Parkour and so they're the top Parkour guys in England now. So we brought them over to do some of the cool non-wire jumpy stuff integrated within the fight. Every fight we're trying to do something slightly different, so we're going to incorporate different ideas in each fight.

I liked the fight in the junkyard with all the Parkour fighting because there was a lot of flipping, jumping, people getting thrown out windows [S2E5: Monkey Leaps Through Mist]. A lot of people got thrown out windows. That was fun – smashing people through a window and throwing them down two floors down. We try to bring something different to each fight. That was cool because we never done the Parkour thing before so to have those guys come in and do all that stuff without any wirework is pretty amazing. And scary. Jumping off these stories, doing like a twist in the air, pretty amazing.

 

How's your body holding up? In your January+February 2016 cover story interview, you said "Aw, this is going to be tough…on me."

Physically, I'm actually doing okay. There's sores and pains and scrapes and bruises, all that kind of stuff, you get through it. The heat from New Orleans last year made it much harder, much more physically tiring. So this season is not so bad. We kind of had a formula last season that didn't quite make sense. There had to be two big fights per episode. Sometimes it was hard to write the reason for that fight. So this season, it's more organic. The fights are not as much volume of fights, but the drama leads you to the fights.

Last season you had to do a scene on drama, you had to then run over to the fight unit, then jump back over to drama and do another scene, and you may be working until ten at night. This season, I avoided that. Although now that we're getting to everyone being together and all the fights, it's starting to happen again, but at least I had the first half without so much running around.

Last season after we aired, we got together with the writers and the showrunners Al [Gough] and Miles [Millar]. We discussed what worked, what didn't work, what we did, where we should go. So we had a general brainstorming in terms of how we could make the fights cooler, how story integrated into the fights would make the fights cooler, that kind of stuff. And then, more philosophical ideas, like M.K.'s journey this season is a spiritual journey. He's in the monastery being trained by the Abbots and it's not necessarily him learning Kung Fu. It's more about him dealing with what he's done in the past. In the first season, we hint at something in the past that he's done bad. He's digging into that spiritual journey – those kind of ideas that we thought would help with the martial arts side of the story.

Who are some of the martial arts stars that inspired you?

I've always liked Jet Li. Jackie is amazing. All of them are amazing, but I like Jet Li personally because that's why I started learning martial arts. And also his form is so clean and perfect. Donnie is about power and speed, kind of like Bruce. And then Jackie is about acrobatics and comedy when they do fights. But I think Jet is about this very traditional good form. I also like Tony Jaa. I think Tony Jaa is great – his power and sort of lethal destruction and flying up with his head. It's real. I mean people are taking these hits. We don't really do that in our show. We need our guys to be able to make it through the whole season.

What about non-martial art actors?

Clint Eastwood – his old cowboy movies are definitely a slight influence on me on these. Especially last season because it's sort of like the nature of Sunny. He couldn't really reveal anything he was thinking to anybody. I was looking to that. This season is a little bit different. I didn't put it that way. I didn't look at other actors that much. But I think we look at other shows that we like that are very rich in dramatic content, that also have amazing action as well, and how those things are integrated together. Game of Thrones is really great at building up the story to lead you to this amazing action piece. The Battle of the Bastards was shocking, the horses and all that stuff, it was amazing. So I think those are good influences on how to go about integration of drama and good action.

Has the success of INTO THE BADLANDS opened up Hollywood a little more for you?

The commitment of this show keeps me from doing other stuff at the moment. But then also, commitments back in Asia, like that Ringo Lam movie I just did. So my balance now is that I do one project here, one project in the West, and then one project there, and if there's time for something else, I'll try to slip it in. But I have other movies coming out later next year [Geostorm is slated for late 2017 – this interview took place in late 2016] – totally different character – I play like a nerdy engineer. So those opportunities are coming now, but it's more about balancing it in my schedule.

Because working so much in Asia, I worked through so many different kind of characters, I have a lot of experience doing that kind of stuff, so it's fun for me. I'm not that kind of action star that only wants to be a hero. That allows me to do other things. It doesn't corner me into one genre or type of character, because I hate playing the same character over and over again. Some people are cool with that, but I just can't really do it. I get bored.

Would you play a villain in the future?

Love to. I think villain roles are the most fun. They are literally the most fun because you don't have to stick to any, like, hero guidelines. Like Guldan was fun in Warcraft. That was an interesting experience all around because I've never done motion capture before. It's a good way to just do performance and not worry about anything else. Method acting – we talk about that – like trying to disappear into a role, but you really can do it with motion capture.

 

Most shows today are based on something – a book, a comic, a videogame. But INTO THE BADLANDS is completely original – the connection to Journey to the West is very loose, not at all binding. How is it to venture into something so uncharted?

I think that's the fun part of the show. They never really stay with anything at any point. There's the in-house drama that's happening between the Barons, there's political drama, there's individual stories between people, this thing is happening, this dream sequence where trippy stuff happens to Sunny. [Note: Daniel was referring to the "dream sequence" scenes he was filming for S2E7: Black Heart, White Mountain at the time of the interview.] It also lets you see what's going on inside Sunny without him being expository about it. That's what I hate, for him to sit down and go, "Bajie, you know how I'm feeling? I'm feeling like I really miss my wife." That kind of dialog, I can't stand that. So it allows you to show that without actually having to say it.

 

Epilogue.

The Season Two Finale will be broadcast after Kung Fu Tai Chi 25th Anniversary Festival. And Season Three is coming. INTO THE BADLANDS was renewed in April. “I am elated that AMC has given us a full third season,” says Daniel. “Sixteen episodes is great but also a daunting task because that means there will that much more fighting in the season.”

As fate would have it, Daniel Wu is travelling through the San Francisco Bay Area right when Kung Fu Tai Chi 25th Anniversary Festival is happening. He recently finished shooting Tomb Raider in South Africa and is on his way back to Hong Kong. Daniel Wu is planning to attend the first night of our Festival, the Cover Master Demonstration Grandmasters LIVE! at San Jose’s California Theater on May 19. Daniel is looking forward to seeing some of his old Wushu friends, and of course, meeting INTO THE BADLANDS fans. So be sure to get your tickets for Grandmasters LIVE! and tune into the Season Finale of INTO THE BADLANDS.