Simu Liu prepared to play a superhero with extreme workouts. For new movie 'One True Loves,' he watched 'a long list of' rom-coms.
The "Shang-Chi" star says male romantic leads are changing, and that some aspects of those characters are "outdated."
Simu Liu famously buffed up to star in Marvel's Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, but his latest project, the romance movie One True Loves, required a different approach.
"I had a long list of romantic comedies that I wanted to watch, just to kind of get a sense of what the genre is, what the patterns were," Liu tells Yahoo Entertainment.
In the movie, which definitely has some funny moments but also heart-tugging ones, Liu plays Sam, a school music teacher who finds love with Emma (Hamilton's Phillipa Soo) only for, in a Casablanca-like twist, her late husband (Luke Bracey) to resurface alive, well and still very much in love with his wife. The story is based on a book of the same name by Daisy Jones and the Six author Taylor Jenkins Reid, who also co-wrote the script.
The lesson Liu took away from his preparation is that there are "aspects of that kind of old archetypal-type romantic lead that are maybe a little outdated."
Watch Sam and Emma interact in this exclusive clip from One True Loves:
"I really did come to this conclusion that, for x amount of years, our male romantic lead was someone who maybe wasn't great at listening," Liu says, "[but] was great at performing and was great at giving grand romantic gestures and professing love."
Think the rushing to the airport, to the news conference, to the wedding or... fill-in-the-blank big event.
Sam isn't like that. Without giving too much away, he allows Emma her own space, even though it's obviously incredibly painful for him. And that was a selling point for Liu.
"What really intrigued me about Sam was that he was a different type of male romantic hero. And I think it's about time that we had that conversation, that, you know, maybe love doesn't look like screaming, professing your love at the top of your lungs, the boombox or stopping traffic so that you can have this big, grand romantic moment. Like, maybe that's actually not always the right answer," he says. "Maybe the right answer isn't always to prove how badly you love someone or how much you love someone. Maybe it's listening. Maybe it's really taking a step back and being the kind of partner that listens to what their significant other needs. And sometimes it doesn't look like a man beating their chest, flexing and flaunting."
Sometimes, he says, it looks like giving someone space, maybe to figure something out about themselves.
"Maybe this new generation of boys growing up will be conditioned differently than people in our generation," the 33-year-old says. "I think there are aspects of that kind of old archetypal type romantic lead that are maybe a little bit… maybe a little outdated."
The Chinese-born, Canadian-raised Liu said he loves that the movie asks an ambitious question, which is what all good romances do. He points to more comedic movies like Pretty Woman ("Can love trump status and class?") and Hitch ("Can you coach love?").
"I think the big question with One True Loves is, 'Can you have more than one soulmate over the course of your life?' And I think that’s just a really interesting question to explore," he says. "And I think we've all in some way shape or form, we've all kind of gone into our past, maybe romanticized our first love and sometimes wondered, were we meant to be with that person? Whatever happened to that person?"
He praised Reid for writing a book and script with a message that people should give themselves credit for the people they grew into.
"Give yourself some credit for the person that you've become," he says, "because that person is a very different person and has very different needs than that much younger version of you whose understanding of love may have been maybe a little bit more naive at 16."
Liu also teased that audiences should make sure to stick around for the movie's end credits, when none other than, yep, Simu Liu sings the song that plays.
One True Loves arrives in theaters Friday, April 7. It's available on digital services Friday, April 14, and on demand Friday, April 28.
