The actor’s strike began just as Barbie, the biggest movie of the year, was hitting theaters. As a result, while the actors who made the movie had a chance to talk about it before it came out, they were all quite silent as the movie was becoming a monster smash. Simu Liu admits that doing that was really tough, and he’s clearly trying to make up for lost time.
Following the official end of the strike, a fan asked Simu Liu on Twitter about this little film he made called Barbie, something he hadn’t been able to talk about for the last few months. Liu admitted it was tough to not get in on all the fun everybody else was having, but he still loved to see all the enthusiasm that fans had for the film. Liu said…
It was an exercise in self-control to not respond to the endless horde of Ken puns I was exposed to in this four-month period. But yes; this was pretty cool.
Strike rules were quite strict. At one point the SAG union was worried about Halloween costumes, which shows just how seriously everything was taken. Even commenting on a funny joke would have been frowned upon. For what it's worth, it seems it was all worth it as the union seems pretty happy with the contract it was able to get.
The Ken puns certainly were hard to avoid for anybody after Barbie became the biggest movie of the year, the sort of thing that everybody had seen. Unfortunately for Liu, he was one of the few people who could not be involved in the fun due to strike rules. He has been trying to make up for the time he lost, dropping a gallery of pictures and videos on Instagram to remind people he was in this movie that a lot of people really liked.
This sort of behind-the-scenes stuff is what we would have expected to see while Barbie was in theaters. It would have been part of the promotional campaign to try and get people interested in the movie. While it was quite likely that a lot of movies did suffer as a result of their release during the strike, Barbie either because it had been part of a successful hype train previously, due to the Barbenheimer meme that swept the world, or just because it was that good, was able to become a massive hit.
One hopes that when and if there is a Barbie sequel, the actors won’t need to remain so quiet. It’s been suggested that some sort of Kencentric spinoff movie could be in the cards. If that happens there’s a decent chance that Simu Liu could return. Then he’ll be able to enjoy all the great Ken puns the way he couldn’t before.
