Daniel Wu recently called from Cape Town, South Africa where the actor is filming “Tomb Raider,” the new Lara Croft adventure starring Oscar-winner Alicia Vikander as the adventuress.
“I play a ship captain who runs a really crappy, beat-up boat, and I help Lara Croft on this journey to find her father. There’s not much action for me, which is great for my body,” adds the Bay Area native, “but a ton of action for her.”
Wu, of course, is known for his martial arts roles during his 20-year career, his latest being “Into the Badlands.” The AMC series is returning for a 10-episode second season Sunday.
Set some 200 years in the future, “Into the Badlands” is a mash-up of martial arts, westerns and fantasy. Wu plays Sunny, who began the series as an elite highly trained assassin for one of the Barons, the feuding rulers of the post-apocalyptic world. After rebelling last year, though, the new season finds Sunny in a mining prison just trying to stay alive.
An executive producer on “Badlands,” Wu notes that because it was nearly a year and a half between seasons, the producers had more time to think about where they wanted the series to go for its second year.
“We changed a lot from the original pitch, because were able to see the responses to the characters,” he says. The actor also thinks that this season really steps it up both in the storytelling and in the martial-arts work, which was widely hailed in the six-episode first season.
For the new season, “Badlands” moved to Ireland to film. Last year, it was shot around New Orleans, but Wu believes the new location gave them more freedom to explore the different stories running through the series. One involves Sunny’s protégé, M.K (Aramis Knight), who is learning to use his special powers. Another key character is The Widow, an ambitious Baron with some deadly skills played by English actress Emily Beecham.
With a crew of around 150 people, Wu says they usually are running two units while filming — one for the martial-arts action, which he oversees, and the other for the dramatic side.
“We work six days a week. So jumping between the two units can get pretty intensive,” Wu says. “That’s why the training is so important, because by the time you start filming you have to be in shape and ready.”
Though a well-trained fighter himself, having started doing martial arts at 11, Wu enlisted Huan-Chiu Ku, who he calls “Master Didi,” to help the others on the show. He’s the one who trained Keanu Reeves for “Matrix” and Uma Thurman for “Kill Bill.”
Wu says that there are usually two big fight sequences for each episode, which are filmed over eight days. “That’s a faster pace than a typical Hong Kong martial arts film. So we really, really have to push really hard to get it done.”
While proud of the action work, the actor also stresses that “Badlands” is changing dramatically. This season it is introducing new characters. One of them is played by Nick Frost, the English actor, screenwriter and comedian known for “Shaun of the Dead” and “Hot Fuzz.”
“He adds some levity to the show. Last season was very dark,” notes Wu. “And he was tremendously fun to work with.”
Frost’s character, Bajie, meets Sunny in prison where they form an uneasy alliance. “Into the Badlands” is loosely based on the classic Chinese novel “Journey to the West,” and Sunny is the equivalent of the protagonist, the Monkey King.
“So Nick’s character is Zhu Bajie — the piggy character — who traditionally brings a kind of gruff-style comedy to the story,” explains Wu.
Those who think Frost is only there for laughs are wrong, says the actor. “If you’ve seen him in ‘Cuban Fury’ (where Frost plays a salsa dancer), you know he can move surprisingly well.”
When Wu was a kid he never aimed to be a Hong Kong action star or even an actor. His parents fled the Chinese Revolution, and he was born in Berkeley.
His biggest ambition movie-wise was “to get kicked down a flight of stairs by Jackie Chan.”
After graduating with a degree in architecture from the University of Oregon in 1997 and realizing he probably wasn’t going to work in the field, he traveled to Hong Kong planning to spend a couple of months thinking about what to do with his life.
Spotted in a bar, he was offered a spot in a commercial, which swiftly led to starring in a small film and then quickly to the Hong Kong action world, where Chan would be his manager for 11 years. “It was beyond my wildest dreams.”
Over his career, Wu has split his time between action and dramatic films, but had given up the martial-arts roles for a while when they began to take too much of a toll on his body.
“Into the Badlands” was too much of a lure, however. “It’s like a live-action graphic novel,” says Wu, “and you rarely see that level of Hong Kong action in America, especially on the small screen. This season we’re even going to do some Asian horror.”
Wu says his mindset is to go wherever the good roles take him. “I’m happy jumping back and forth, and I’m in the unique position that both places (Hong Kong and America) are home to me. So why not be involved in both industries?”
The actor does have something else to start factoring into his career, though.
He has a daughter who is about to turn 4. “Thankfully, she’s not really in school yet and my wife and her were in Ireland with me while shooting ‘Badlands.’ ”
Does he plan to teach her martial arts?
“She running around kicking things, so I think she has a penchant for it,” says Wu. “I don’t want to start too early, though, to turn her off of it, but I think it’s important for her to know anyway, as a female, to protect herself.”
Then he jokes, “Her mother likes horseback riding and would like her to get her into that, but it would be cheaper for me to teach her martial arts.”
