With Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings finally out in theaters worldwide, we recently caught up with one of the film's stars, Fala Chen (The Undoing; Sound of the Desert), who plays Ying Li, the mother of Shang (Simu Liu) and Xu Xialing (Meng'er Zhang) and the wife of the film's primary antagonist Xu Wenwu (Tony Leung). While her role may be relatively small, she plays an absolutely pivotal part of the story, as her absence essentially catalyzes the events of the film.
It's no secret that Wenwu is not exactly the most benevolent person, having conquered countless kingdoms throughout history while amassing the deadliest of armies, but despite all of his baggage, he still manages to find love and starts a new life with Li and his two children.
Speaking with Chen, she detailed her experience working opposite the legendary Tony Leung (Internal Affairs; The Grandmaster) and shared her thoughts on how her character could fall in love with a man with Wenwu's history.
"I mean, he's played by the great Tony Leung, so it’s almost impossible not to fall in love with him. He’s so charismatic, like in the scene, the character Wenwu is such a complex character, he is - I can’t reveal too much about it - but I feel like he just like draws your eyes, your attention to him automatically, so it was basically like the easiest job in the world to play with Tony and to also play a couple.
So, I feel very lucky to be able to work with him and also - you’ve seen the film - and we get to do a lot of choreographed fights together and those are just so beautifully designed, and it’s so beautifully shot. I loved the sets and the costume, so we kind of just made the whole scene very romantic, and I just really love that scene and working with Tony."
As she mentioned, their first meeting does get off to a somewhat rocky start as Wenwu arrives at the entrance of Ta Lo, thinking he can easily unlock the secrets of the mysterious village. There, he is greeted by Ying Li, who denies him access before engaging him in a stunning fight - where she bests him fairly easily.
While the breathtaking sequence runs only a few minutes long, it took several weeks of training for both Chen and Leung before they were ready to film what turns out to be one of the film's standout moments.
"It took us weeks to shoot that scene, but prior to that, I personally had to train for a couple of weeks, for that particular scene, and I had to basically learn the whole scene in its entirety. So, if you asked me to perform that whole scene, I was able to - at least then, I forgot some of it now *laughs* - but I was able to do the whole scene altogether and now, I see the value of it.
When I was learning, I was like, “Oh my God, this is so long and so much to remember,” but now seeing it on screen, I could tell the genius of Destin is not just to make this a beautiful scene, but it’s a story. It’s how they fall in love and it’s how they size each other up, and then go into this whole other arc of the story and it makes total sense now in hindsight, that we had to learn it in its entirety. I also had to train for Tai chi, just to learn the basic stance and the basic hand movements and all of that, so that alone took me a whole month to learn full-time, like 9-5 every day for a whole month, but it’s all worth it."
Check out the full video interview below!