Simu Liu loves making animated films, and for good reason.
“I definitely showed up to a recording session in my pajamas and flip-flops,” he told me while promoting his new Netflix animated family film “In Your Dreams.” All that matters is your vocal performance. ”
Directed and co-written by Alexander Wu and Eric Benson, In Your Dreams follows two young siblings (Jolie Huang Rapaport and Elias Janssen) who meet the mythical Sandman (Omid Djalili) in a dream and ask him if their parents (Lieu Milioti and Cristin Milioti) are on the verge of breaking up.
Liu’s character is a musician, so it’s no surprise that he was asked to sing original songs for the film alongside Milioti. “I don’t think we signed on knowing we were going to create original music, but we did and we were able to work on it with Christine, which is really amazing,” Liu says. “She’s a great Broadway-level singer.”
When Milioti reminded Liu that he won the Grammy for Best Musical Theater Album in 2013 for Once: A New Musical, he chimed in: “I was nominated for Best Fight at the MTV Movie Awards and I lost to Sidney Sweeney.”
At one point in the film, Sandman talks about how dreams can depict “how perfect the world could be, how perfect it should be,” so I asked Liu for his thoughts on a perfect world. “Oh my god, the internet doesn’t exist. Maybe phones don’t even exist…everyone’s talking to each other. And more importantly, everyone’s listening to each other, and people are leading with acceptance and curiosity, and not with the mindset of, ‘I’m going to poke this person on social media to get likes.’ They’re saying, ‘Hey, we’re all stuck here together, so let’s figure out a way to get along and not kill each other in the meantime.’
However, Liu has become known for speaking out against right-leaning politics on social media. The possibility of a backlash doesn’t worry him. “Maybe I should be more scared,” he says.
But the need to speak your mind overcomes any fear. “I feel like there’s something about the Internet that drives people crazy,” Liu says. “There’s a public nature to this work, and people like to be the guy who brings down other people (or an entire group of people). I’m not really cut out for that energy.”
He praises people like Melissa Barrera, his co-star in the upcoming TV series The Copenhagen Test, as “incredibly courageous and outspoken.” She was fired from the Scream series in 2023 after producers deemed her pro-Palestinian social posts to be anti-Semitic.
“She seems like the bravest woman I’ve ever met, the most outspoken and fearless, the most certain of what she believes is right,” Liu says. “Whether you agree with her opinion or all of her opinions, you can’t not respect it.”
Earlier this year, Liu reprized his role as Shang-Chi in the new Marvel movie Avengers: Doomsday.
“It was really amazing and exciting,” he says. “To be able to play in that sandbox with so many of the actors I grew up watching…it’s a dream come true. I grew up watching superhero movies and wanting to believe that outcasts and nerds and weirdos could have their own superpowers and save the day. That’s what 12-year-old me was clinging to. For better or worse, I still believe in the power of what those movies represent today.”
Liu hits back at the wave of criticism being thrown at superhero movies. “It’s fashionable now to hate it,” he says. “I think there are valid criticisms of how movies are made and how production budgets are handled, and I think there’s a lot to be said, but the idea of disparaging superhero movies as a genre, I don’t get it. Because I’m speaking as someone who loved watching superhero movies as a kid, I don’t get it.”
“In Your Dreams” is available on Netflix.
