Simu Liu insists that his coworkers don’t hate him
After an awkward moment with Barbie co-star Ryan Gosling went viral, Simu Liu felt the need to point out that they're actually good friends
Aux News Simu Liu
Recently, a video was shared online featuring Barbie’s Ryan Gosling and Simu Liu posing for photos at a press event in Canada, but the two awkwardly separated after Liu tried to put his arm around Gosling’s waist and was rebuffed—with Gosling apparently asking him to move and Liu saying something along the lines of, “Oh, it’s too tender? Fair enough.” It’s like Don’t Worry Darling’s “Spitgate,” except the whole thing is pretty easy to see and confirm. Also people actually like Barbie.
But before you try to make some absurd leap and conclude that this is proof that Liu’s co-stars don’t really like him, the man himself posted on his Instagram stories to insist that he and Gosling actually getting along really well. “I’d beach off with this Kenadian again in a heartbeat,” Liu posted, saying Gosling is “the best human in every way, especially when he jokes around with us on the carpet and on set, infecting all of us with his kenergy.” See? Gosling jokes around! He was joking around in that video even though it really, really, didn’t seem like it. Really.
Liu—who will someday appear in a sequel to Shang-Chi, closed his message by asking everyone to “get back to the issues that matter, like supporting strike actors and writers fighting for fair wages.”
And hey, he’s right about that part at least. But also there’s a VanityFair TikTok video going around where Margot Robbie had to say which Barbie cast member is the most like their character in real life, and even though Gosling spent months saying “I’m like Ken in real life! I was born for this!,” she said Simu Liu is the most like his Ken… which is not really a compliment. She’s joking around, of course, just poking fun at the guy, but at the very least it gives off the impression that he’s a bit of a punching bag for the rest of the Barbie team.
Maybe we’re all just jealous that he’s friends with Ryan Gosling? We hear he’s a great Kenadian with impeccable kenergy.
72 Comments
Maybe their friendship is Simu-lated.
Simuliuted?
InKENvenient.
When Gosling and Liu collide they annihilate each other, releasing Kenergy.
Some Oppenheimer level science right there
see, that would cause liu-donarritive dissonance.
Weird, I didn’t know “ludonarrative dissonance” was a term until now.
it comes up in video games a lot, when you are a selfless hero who loves all life, and wants to save the world but have to kill thousands of guys who are just doing their jobs as security guards/soldiers for exp grinding. so its kind of weird. in this case i was just going for the pun, it doesn’t actually work with the situation, just being silly.
Yeah, that pun was really (please stop me) Liudicrous. (NOOOOO!)
stop you? im promoting you to liu-tenant.
These guys on security detail were just doing their job!As were these guys!
An InKENvenient Ruth (Handler)
I’m not buying it.
That’s ok, I think he’s giving it away.
With dual strikes going on it is hard out there for an AV Club writer blogger employee.Gotta publish…something.
Wasn’t Dual Strike a DS game in the day?
It’s been a brutal journey from the aughts to today, I tell you what
Except, you know, that the strike itself should be generating more copy than the shows that have been deferred.
“He was joking around in that video even though it really, really, didn’t seem like it.”I don’t understand the need to pretend that Gosling seems eve a little bit angry. He’s so obviously not angry with Liu at all.
So they’re both banging Olivia Wilde is what you’re saying?
“Aren’t they all?” — Jason Sudeikis
I’m eating her salads with the SPECIAL DRESSING! That isn’t some code. I’m honestly really enjoying this tasty salad she made with this home made dressing
I’m a row?
I’m an oar.
I don’t think I’m ever going to be good at typing on my phone.
Kevin Smith
Jason Mewes
Florence Pugh
in a film by Kevin Smith
Snowball, Darling!
Try not to bang Olivia Wilde on the way through the parking lot!Hey, get back here!
Are you Arrow?
I think because they’re famouses we want to think it’s something meaningful, but it just seemed like an awkward moment between two people who worked together but don’t actually know each other very well.
“Tried to put his arm around Gosling’s waist”That’s a weird thing to do with a coworker, even if you get along with with them. I don’t have an opinion on Simu Liu apart from liking Kim’s Convenience but if he did that a lot I can imagine it wouldn’t exactly endear him to people.
Well you might put an arm around a colleague’s back, but, yes, putting an arm around someone’s waist is too intimate for a relationship that isn’t close. I’m imagining someone doing that in front of an official photographer at a work party and it might get the same reaction.But what do I know? Perhaps Liu is a boundary-crossing piece of shit who gets off on making people uncomfortable. I’ve been burned on too many ‘nice’ celebrities who turn out to be monsters to think anyone is entirely beyond suspicion.
I had an HR Director (not mine) tell me that the basic rule was you can put your arm around someone’s shoulder briefly but don’t rub or pat. The waist is off limits no matter what.Might this be a cultural thing? Americans love our personal space. People brought up in other cultures sometimes miss this.
“but, yes, putting an arm around someone’s waist is too intimate for a relationship that isn’t close.”
Putting an arm around the person’s waist beside you is also something that’s done ALL the fucking time when having your picture taken with someone, especially when the people taking pictures want the subjects to be close to each other.
Actors putting their arms around each other for a photo shoot is “weird”??? Gods help you if you ever look inside a People magazine… Do you think cooties are an actual thing, too?
Except your HR-watching-you-like-a-hawk accounting job because upper management can’t keep its hands off the young women working there is nothing like Hollywood red-carpet culture. They are constantly hugging and touching each other in these venues, mugging it up for the camera, faking camaraderie, etc. Yes, Gosling has every right to say no to this interaction but the AV Club playing this up as some kind of quasi-predator and mocking him is ridiculous. This was a harmless faux-pas which I imagine are very, very easy to make in Hollywood. Gosling said no, and Simu instantly stopped. That’s how real life interactions work, my fellow terminally online friends.Meanwhile, women get this 1000x worse yet where are all the AV club articles about that? A man gets his waist touched by another man for a brief moment and its quickly resolved and that’s the top news item at “totally not Gawker-level garbage” AV club? Uh ok. Try harder AV Club editors.
Agree.
fair but most jobs dont require one to take photographs with coworkers. Sometimes taking pictures with another person requires people to state personal boundaries. So in summary, Marvel’s Simu Liu respects boundary that costar establishes. We’ll stay on this story all night if we have to!
Hollywood stars rarely come right out and say, publicly, that so and so is an a-hole or a stuck up narcissist, etc, etc. So backhanded compliments or sly digs or body language is usually the most you’ll get in order to figure out how the people that have to work with someone really feel. Between Gosling pulling away from him and Robbie’s backhanded compliment, I think a good case could be made that Liu isn’t an actually liked guy on set, for at least Barbie anyways. There’s been no real news on a Shang Chi sequel so maybe Marvel wasn’t a fan of his either, or maybe the movie underperformed, it’s been a while and I don’t remember.
I think because they’re famouses we want to think it’s something meaningful, but it just seemed like an awkward moment between two people who worked together but don’t actually know each other very well.
the dude is pretty insufferable. see his twitter feed for examples.
Twitter is pretty insufferable in general so I’m not willing to take that chance.Yes, I know about X.com but I really wish I didn’t.
“Yes, I know about X.com but I really wish I didn’t.”
Yet YOU brought it up out of literally nowhere.
right? I dont do Twitter but from what Ive read over the interwebs, he seems like a total knobcake…
Hollywood actors: we care about LGBTQ rights!Hollywood actors: Uh quit twitter because its run by transphobic Space Karen and platforming Nazis? Haha, good one.Its incredible any of these people continue to use that site and how fandoms don’t care.
Don’t have much to add other than The Other Two has made it impossible for me to refer to him as anything other than “Marvel’s Simu Liu.”
Also people actually like Barbie.Man, I cannot wait to read the “People got it totally wrong about Don’t Worry Darling” pseudo-thinkpieces that will be popping up in about 3 years.
Well, I liked it. It wasn’t a great movie and I haven’t thought about it since I watched it, but I did enjoy it.
That whole train of anti-hype leading up to it did it no favours; by the time it came out everybody was already sick of it. Finally seeing it myself, I rather liked it too.
It really was a pretty good movie somewhat spoiled by a not very good ending, but it got dragged into the National Discourse, which means it’s officially the worst thing ever, aside from all the other worst things ever.
There’s arguably not a single good scene in the entire movie… And none of the interesting plot points were ever explored. Was everybody sitting in chairs with VR goggles on? How’d they go to the bathroom??? What was the tech? Do these women have families? Friends that are worried about them? These guys were rich and clever enough to build this whole thing somewhere/somehow and they were already in relationships, but they’d rather be in… a bad VR world where they… worked all the time?What nefarious man in his right mind would build such a world and not have the women be the ones that have to work full time, while they men hang out and drink martinis? It didn’t make any sort of sense… The One Direction guy would rather work full time in VR world than have a normal relationship with his attractive wife? It was like somebody shooting the first draft of a Twilight Zone concept before figuring out any of the plot points or the ending.
Please, please tell me a single thing that’s good about the movie. Just one.
If I do, will you dismiss whatever I say out of hand because you don’t agree? It’s well acted. Even the slagging that Styles got was undeserved because he was just fine in it. In fact, I would feel perfectly comfortable naming Styles as one good thing about the movie. You remember good, right? It’s when things are ok, nice enough, better than bad. It’s a mythical space that use to exist between the only two modern options “the best” and “the worst”.Florence Pugh is, of course, great in it. I could list more things, but imagine what it would take to change your mind. It’d probably take more than a dissertation, and I don’t have any stakes at all in whether or not you like a movie.Go see TMNT. It’s great fun!
Same. It wasn’t great, but it was good enough.
And you know at least one will be posted by Barsanti, after he watches half the film.
It probably deserves a *better* reputation as it’s at least fairly visually interesting and some of the performances are fine, but it’ll probably land in positive over-correction territory for its messages and themes, even if it’s not doing anything at all new on that front. Realistically, the movie’s about as blandly 5/10 as it gets.
So what you’re saying is, it’s going to receive an absurd positive over-correction that will in turn irritate people sufficiently to resort to a negative over-correction which sends its reputation right back to what it currently is, at which point the reappraisal will begin again.And so the wheel keeps turning…
I can certainly wait for that.
Not happening. Movie was genuinely one of the worst things I’ve ever watched.
I don’t understand what the big deal is. I post Instagram stories of myself saying that Ryan Gosling and myself get along well together all the time.
And Simu Lu is constantly trying to put his hand around my waist and yes, it’s to intimate!!
You must really hate America Ferrara, Margot Robbie and the rest of the actresses that were doing the same thing for the press photos… America seems particularly handsy. For shame!
To intimate what? That he’s your boyyyyfriiieeeend??
they’re both famously Canadian. ergo, it’s impossible for either of them to be anything other than nice and friendly.
And if they make contact for to long they will burst into a cloud of denim
Lol.
He and Brie Larson should have much to talk about then.
What has happened to your editorial standards to make this in any way AV Club quality news? Honestly, answer me.
Gosling was uncomfortable, politely set a boundary, Liu apologized and life went on.
That’s kind of how I saw it. And I almost think it was mostly about Gosling having decades of red carpet experience so he knows how quickly those photographs get taken. Having someone’s hand on your waist will ruin the line of the suit and look weird in the pictures. But he only had a split second to make that clear before all the cameras start going. Regardless of whether Gosling was genuinely uncomfortable or whether he just didn’t want that particular pose in all of the pictures, it was handled with little fuss and everyone moved on with their lives. So nothing to see here.
That did seem pretty awkward, although the press junket might’ve got a bit old and tiresome by that point. Who knows.
Liu laughed it off, has since clarified. Non-story!