Celebrity Life
JuJu Chan Szeto: Putting Up a Fight
No one said showbiz was easy, and if you’ve met JuJu Chan Szeto, you’ll know she’s not one to give up. We sit down with the action star to talk about how embracing her martial-arts background led to her big break in Hollywood.
As a child, JuJu Chan Szeto wouldn’t sit still. Her father was an action-movie fanatic, and every time they watched something together, Chan Szeto remembers copying every move by Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan and Donnie Yen. “I’d jump from table to table,” she says. “I broke a lot of things at home.” Exasperated with their daughter’s boundless energy, her parents sent her off to judo school where she fell in love with martial arts. From judo, to karate, Chinese kung fu, taekwondo and Thai boxing, Chan Szeto has honed her martial-arts skills since she was 10, entering national competitions and representing Hong Kong in taekwondo.
A born performer, Chan Szeto says she’s never turned down a chance to sing, dance, or act since she was a child. She studied computer science – “something practical befitting a traditional Chinese family” – but ultimately found herself enrolling into New York’s Tisch School of the Arts and learning the ropes of the film industry. Afterwards, she came back to Hong Kong to begin her career here and she’s never looked back since.
It wasn’t an easy start, though. From beauty pageants to reality shows, and even a brief music career, Chan Szeto tried everything to make her mark, but it wasn’t until a director told her to embrace her roots as a martial artist that she found her way. That director, with the gems of wisdom that put Chan Szeto on the map and Hollywood on her radar, is Antony Szeto, who’s now her husband.
I talked to Chan Szeto about her love for martial arts, her favourite action scenes and her upcoming feature film on Netflix, Wu Assassins: Fistful of Vengeance.
You’ve credited your husband for pushing you to embrace your martial-arts background as an actress.
Yes. In Hong Kong especially, actors are expected to act, sing, and appear in campaigns. When I came back I took any opportunity that came to me, because I just wanted to perform. I got signed to a music label and I released an album in Hong Kong where I wrote my own songs. My husband, Antony Szeto, directed one of my first music videos. At that time, I was doing so much and Antony knew I wanted to become an actress. But at that time also, I didn’t tell people that I could do martial arts. My image was very different then – I had long hair and looked very girly, which was the typical look in Hong Kong at that time. I wanted to make hip-hop and rap music, but my management told me to stick with mellow love songs. But Antony told me he was having a hard time finding female actors who could act and do their own actions. There are a lot more action stars in the older generation, but not in our current generation. He could tell I could fight, and he said maybe I should focus on letting people know that and not be afraid of being different. After that, I brought my nunchucks out and showed people what I was capable of.
Was that how you got your Hollywood start and joined the cast of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny (2016)?
Netflix was doing this worldwide search for Asian actors and actresses who knew martial arts for the movie, and they’d heard about me as one of the action actresses based in Hong Kong who also spoke English. There really weren’t that many of us at that time. There’s Michelle Yeoh, whom I really like, especially after working with her. She didn’t start in martial arts, she was a dancer who actually got trained by the Jackie Chan team and became a female action figure. I’d say until this day that she’s the biggest female action actress in Hollywood and it was amazing to have worked with her on Sword of Destiny. She was so graceful, really loving and caring and generous. I look up to her and, yeah, I hope I can work with her again.
Do you do a lot of your own stunts?
No matter how good you are, everyone in Hollywood has a stunt double for insurance. But I do all my fight actions myself. I have my own fighting style and the way I do my actions makes it hard for people to double me. But there are times when we shoot multiple units because of our tight schedule and the production might have to use doubles to pick up some shots of our previous fights, because we can’t be in two locations at once. I love to run through all my actions as many times as possible before I shoot them. And I also like to attend the pre-visualisation sessions with the stunt team, which is where we visualise the scene to show the director how it’s going to look on
the screen.
Have you choreographed your own stunts too?
On Wu Assassins, we had a longer period of shooting because it’s a TV series, so I became really close to the stunts team and the action choreographer Dan Rizzuto. He knew I did a lot of high kicks, so we incorporated a lot of those into the kitchen scene. We came up with the choreography together in the stunt room and ran the whole scene with the other stunt doubles. The choreographer was like, “I’ve never had an actress do this – usually it’s the stunt double’s job.” But I like being there and being able to have some creative input. I also choreographed all of my fight scenes in an independent action film called Hollow Point, which aired on FOX Movies in Hong Kong and my action performance in that film got me a nomination for a Jackie Chan Action Film Awards in 2019 for Best Action Actress.
Out of all the projects you’ve done so far, which would you say is your favourite fight scene?
The kitchen fight in Wu Assassins episode three is one I love a lot. It’s so quick and dynamic and we were making use of all the kitchen pans and stuff. I love including things from the environment in the fight. Another favourite one would be in Jiu Jitsu (2020) with Nicholas Cage. That was one long shot of me fighting five or six guys alone, using nunchucks, jumping and turning. When we shot it, it was a two-minute-long fight scene, but in the final edit, there’s other scenes added in because there were a few fights happening at the same time. The camera guys are also moving with us at the same time to capture the shots – we’re not really hitting the actors, so you have to catch it at a certain angle, right? It’s a whole teamwork thing.
Do you have plans to direct your own film one day?
I did a short action-comedy in Los Angeles before Covid. I shot it already I just need to finish editing it so I can release it. I’m interested in directing action films, especially as an Asian. I don’t think there’s another female action film director who actually has an action background, and I’d like to be the first. Hopefully I could get the editing done by the end of the year so I can put it in a festival and release it next year. It’s a really fun piece.
Do you feel that as an Asian American actor today, you’re finally receiving the recognition and getting more opportunities?
I started auditioning while in NYU, but at that time there weren’t that many Asian-American roles in America. It’s only these past five years or so that more roles have come up. I receive auditions every week from Hollywood now. There are a lot of roles and more people competing for those roles as well. It’s a good thing. For Asian representation in Hollywood to grow, we need more Asian faces, more roles in different genres. It’s a healthy competition.
What’s a role you’d like to play that you haven’t tried yet?
A musical! Singing, dancing and maybe some action. I want to be in a musical so badly. I recently re-watched Glee and there were so many great songs and dance, and it looked like it would have been so much fun to be one of the main cast.
So Wu Assassins: Fistful of Vengeance comes out on Netflix next year. What can we expect from it?
Four of the original cast members come back from the TV series. I still play Zan, and then Lewis Tan, Iko Uwais and Lawrence Kao also come back to reprise their roles. There are new cast members too, including Jason Tobin from Hong Kong, who’s great fun to work with. Roel Reiné is the director and he was super great to work with too. We filmed the entire movie in Bangkok in 28 days because of Covid – I think they wanted to shoot it in the shortest amount of time possible since the longer you stayed the more liability there was for the whole production in case the whole thing had to shut down. We managed so many fight scenes it’s quite amazing. The audience can expect heavy action, fast pacing and just pure fun seeing all of us going around Bangkok.
The post JuJu Chan Szeto: Putting Up a Fight appeared first on Prestige Online - Hong Kong.
Action Actress JuJu Chan on Her Path to Hollywood
From starring alongside Michelle Yeoh and Donnie Yen in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny to playing a leading character in Netflix’s hit show Wu Assassins, Hong Kong-born martial artist and actress JuJu Chan seems to be taking the world of cinema by storm.
Having trained from the age of 10, Chan represented Hong Kong in the 2013 Taekwondo World Championship in Bulgaria. Since then, she’s gone on to win the championship in the 46kg category of the WMC The One Legend Thai Boxing competition. What's more she’s a published writer, with two books to her name. We took a moment to find out about her inspirations and aspirations for her blooming career.
[bc_video video_id="6171777830001" account_id="5537314740001" player_id="HkciYHERZ" embed="in-page" padding_top="56%" autoplay="" min_width="0px" playsinline="" picture_in_picture="" max_width="640px" mute="" width="100%" height="100%" ]
JuJu Chan demonstrates her martial arts skills at Hybrid MMA & Fitness Gym in Central.
Hair by Cannis Chan for BRUNEBLONDE and makeup by Kayan Lo.
The post Action Actress JuJu Chan on Her Path to Hollywood appeared first on Prestige Online - Hong Kong.
Hong Kong Director Stephen Fung on His Netflix Debut of Wu Assassins
Singer, actor and screenwriter-turned-director Stephen Fung has just finished directing the first two episodes of Netflix's debut martial-arts series, Wu Assassins. He tells us how years in the Hong Kong film industry have uniquely prepared him for the task.
On his days off, when he's in Hong Kong and has a spare moment, Stephen Fung likes to go to the computer centre. He also happens to really like bubble tea from a chain he frequents in Causeway Bay. He prefers trainers to loafers and loves a soft sweater to hang out in.
Fung shares all of this while he’s sitting in hair and make-up on a workday, prepping for our cover shoot. There’s an easy rapport, and his amiability carries over to crew members outside of his own team, as if we’ve all known one another forever.
Of course, most people have known Fung forever. Hong Kong audiences first met the son of famed local actress Julie Sek Yin in 1997 as a heartthrob singer in the two-man band Dry. The experience was that of a fish out of water for the international-school-educated, University of Michigan graduate whose music idols growing up were Alice Cooper and Iron Maiden.
“At the time, Hong Kong pop culture was similar to the West actually,” he says, “where they were into boy bands who wore a lot of make-up and danced. I’m totally anti that. I was into heavy metal in high school so it was a bit of shock, having to do things like wear a mascot costume at Ocean Park.”
After a year, Fung decided he was more suited to acting and segued into what became a successful career in front of the camera, working with the best of the Hong Kong film industry in its heyday, actors like Andy Lau, Faye Wong, Tony Leung Chiu-wai, Jackie Chan and Eason Chan (Fung also met his now wife, Taiwanese-born actress Shu Qi, on the set of the 1998 Hong Kong drama Bishonen). “I realised I wanted to venture into film,” he explains. “Because when your job is to play someone else, you can actually be yourself.”
From there, Fung transitioned to directing because, as he puts it, “I think I’m a bit of a control freak. I don’t like it when people tell me I have to do this or do that, and eventually I felt that I also have stories I want to tell, so I went into directing. It’s where I can just do my thing.”
The decision paid off. Having first started in Hong Kong with Enter the Phoenix, a movie for which he also wrote the screenplay, Fung made his way to Hollywood, directing two episodes of AMC’s Into the Badlands in 2015 with friend and erstwhile co-star Daniel Wu as lead – the first Asian lead in an American television series in 40 years. Fung’s directorial efforts were noticed by showrunner and producer John Wirth, who happened to have written Wu Assassins, a project slated as Netflix’s first martial-arts series.
“My agents told me someone was looking for a director for a job called Wu Assassins,” Fung recounts. “They sent me the script but when I first looked it over I was a bit hesitant because there are lots of elements in there that I felt were really stereotypical Asian-type stuff. Then when I spoke to John, he was very open-minded and expressed that that was why he wanted to find someone who would be sensitive to and familiar with the material.”
While the screenplay was in Wirth’s hands, Fung’s amiability gave way to a determination to set the right tone in the two episodes he was going to direct (Fung also signed on as executive producer for the entire project). “There were things that I couldn’t do because the storyline was pretty much set when I got on board, but what I could do was try to be more sensitive to the Asian ethnicity. I tried to change the kinds of restaurants that were in there – not like the ones where, you know, you always see a Chinatown where there’s a golden dragon.”
Because the show is essentially a modern iteration of the traditional chopsocky, drawing on the idea of the Chinese five elements, Fung wanted also to change the music – “I gave suggestions. I did say, ‘Please, no more of that Kung Fu Fighting song.’”
But Fung’s experience in the actual, authentic Hong Kong chopsocky gave him a more nuanced understanding of how and what fights to film in Wu Assassins. “The main difference was shooting styles. In the US, especially for TV where you have a very hectic schedule, what they do usually is they rehearse and rehearse, and then they use a lot of cameras and they shoot it – a lot of coverage [from different angles] and they throw it all to the editor who edits it,” he explains.
“Then there’s the Hong Kong way and the Indonesian way with [actor] Iko [Uwais], where you rehearse in the gym and have mops and things for prop replacements, but when you’re on set you might suddenly come up with other ideas. There’s a destination but the path is not set.
“So I’d tell John that if he’s hiring me and someone like Iko, there’s no point in doing things the same way he usually would. Otherwise, why not just hire someone from the US and shoot it his own way?
“There were changes we made to the script because there was a big car chase and I said, ‘Why don’t we change this and make use of Iko because he’s known for hand-to-hand combat? Let’s turn this car chase into a fist fight that can highlight what your actor is best known for. No one wants to see Iko driving a car, and given the very tight schedule, it’s not like it’s going to be Fast & Furious anyway, so why don’t we just shoot him doing some real fighting?’ They agreed.”
Fung’s resolve to do justice to the Asian actor and the martial-arts genre stems from his earlier attempt to break into Hollywood as an actor in 2002. “I first ventured into Hollywood in 2002 when the Hong Kong film industry was not in the best shape. It was just as Sars was starting,” he says. “A friend of mine who was a manager in the US suggested that I fly over and have him manage me and see if I could get any acting jobs. I thought that could be interesting so I moved to LA for a year.
“At first I went to lots of auditions and I did get roles, but as you can imagine, 20 years ago all I got offered were gangster roles. It was either crap roles or nothing. It wasn’t great for Asians in film back then.”
In the ample amounts of free time that Fung had in Los Angeles, he began to write what became the 2004 film Enter the Phoenix. “Then I wanted to come back to Hong Kong, but Sars had broken out so I stayed in LA for a bit longer and during that time I polished the script, the treatment and the pitch,” Fung continues. “Coincidentally, Willie Chan was starting a production company with Jackie Chan and Emperor films. They were looking for ideas so I pitched it to him and he liked it.”
With his directorial stint for Wu Assassins under his belt, Fung isn’t just resting on his laurels. The renaissance man has come home and accepted a new project that sees him alongside Hong Kong film- industry veterans Carina Lau and Simon Yam as a judge for Singapore’s Star Search 2019 finals. Where does he get the energy? Well, home. “It’s like that saying, ‘You are what you eat,’” he says with a laugh. “When you grow up in Hong Kong, a place that’s so energetic – I mean it’s not even just in the movies, it’s not just in a John Woo or a Jackie Chan film, it’s the whole city. It’s so vibrant. You go to Causeway Bay and it’s so vibrant. Hong Kong films have never been known to have the best lighting, by the way, except for maybe Wong Kar-Wai movies, but they’re known for the energy.
“So I think that’s what was always fed to me – the multi-ethnicity, the culture, possibly my love also for heavy metal. That’s like everything to me, that energy.”
Photography Kaon
Creative Direction Gigi Lee
Styling Zaneta Cheng
Hair Carr Cheng at Number8
Make-up Hetty Kwong
Styling Assistant Jan Li
Wardrobe Loro Piana
The post Hong Kong Director Stephen Fung on His Netflix Debut of Wu Assassins appeared first on Prestige Online - Hong Kong.