Hong Kong action hero JuJu Chan on working with Nicolas Cage and Tony Jaa in sci-fi martial arts movie Jiu Jitsu – interview

Jan 7 , 2021

JuJu Chan, dubbed the “female Bruce Lee”, has already worked with Hong Kong cinema legends like Michelle Yeoh, Donnie Yen and Yuen Woo-ping. Photo: K.Y. Cheng

Touted as the “female Bruce Lee”, JuJu Chan might well be the next big Hong Kong action star. The former martial artist-turned-actress worked with screen legends Michelle Yeoh, Donnie Yen and Yuen Woo-ping on Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny and her new film, Jiu Jitsu, sees her pair up with Hollywood’s Nicolas Cage and Thai star Tony Jaa. That, plus a prominent role in Netflix series Wu Assassins means Chan is suddenly the action girl everyone wants a piece of.

We met the Hong Kong-born American actress in her hometown at Smoke & Barrel, an American barbecue and smokehouse restaurant on Wyndham Street. The establishment is the brainchild of Chris Grare and Arron Rhodes and follows hot on the heels of their previous popular concept, Kinship.

The fashion world of kung fu master Bruce Lee

Jiu Jitsu is Chan’s highest profile role to date, especially in the West. Cage guarantees A-list star power while Chan and Jaa provide muscle and martial arts credibility to a zany sci-fi tale that involves aliens visiting Earth, seeking to fight the planet’s strongest warriors.

“It’s a really fun film, I have to say,” Chan, 31, tells us. “Action-wise, though, it’s very serious because we have a lot of real martial arts actors in the film. That allowed us to do some amazing action scenes – some are just mind-blowing.”

Chan details one scene in particular that she’s proud of. “We were shooting in a wheat field. Each fighter did a one- to two-minute fight scene, then the next fighter came in. I was fighting off six opponents with nunchucks and kicks, and then Tony Jaa came in, and then a minute later the next fighter came in – and it was all filmed in one take. I hadn’t seen anything done like that before. It really required a lot of stamina and energy and you couldn’t stop in the middle because the next person was coming in. Even the person holding the camera, they had to know our movements so they could keep up with us and run with us and point the camera in the right direction.”

As we chat, our table soon piles up with dishes. Our interview marks a rare meal out for Chan, who says she and her husband prefer to do their own cooking back in Los Angeles. “We cook a lot at home. In fact, we overcook usually,” she says. “We whip up all sorts of stews – Guinness beef stew, Hungarian chicken, tomato stew cooked with salmon and rice – because they’re easy to make and taste good. Plus you can use the leftovers for the next day.”

You need to know about Netflix’s Chinese sci-fi series The Three-Body Problem

Chan was six when she moved from Hong Kong to the US, but her hometown’s cinematic legacy was something she was raised with. It’s little surprise she ended up training in martial arts and getting into action cinema – her father was an avid fan of action movies. Her idol growing up was none other than Jackie Chan.

“I even had his action figure,” she remarks. “Every time Jackie Chan did those amazing stunts and kicks, I would try those same moves at home – dangerously! Hong Kong action films were a key influences for my career. Hollywood action films, especially when they brought in a Hong Kong fight choreographer, like master Yuen Woo-ping for The Matrix and Kill Bill, they helped make Hollywood action films even more phenomenal.”

Actress JuJu Chan Yuk-wan, whose latest movie, Jiu Jitsu, sees her star alongside Nicholas Cage. Photo: K.Y. Cheng

Covid-19 might have slowed down Chan’s travel plans – the pandemic forced her to postpone her honeymoon in the Maldives this year – but her work schedule hasn’t slowed. Chan has used her time in Hong Kong to film episodes for a new reality TV series she hopes a network or a platform like Netflix will be keen to buy.

Where Bruce Lee lived, filmed and trained in Hong Kong – STYLE’s DIY tour

It’s a good time to be an Asian actress in Hollywood, she says, noting the success Michelle Yeoh has enjoyed going from Hong Kong to Bond girl, to one of the stars of Crazy Rich Asians. Rather than worry about being typecast as an action hero, Chan is happy to embrace being Hollywood’s go to for a kick-ass Asian woman. “Right now I’m concentrating on action films, but there are a lot of other roles I’d like to play. If I had to choose one, I want to play a character in a musical action film.” Laughing, she adds, “There’s no such type of film right now. It may sound funny, but I love Moulin Rouge . Can we do an action Moulin Rouge?”

Want more stories like this? Sign up here. Follow STYLE on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter .

American cinema

She’s been compared to Bruce Lee and her childhood idol was Jackie Chan – after starring in Netflix’s Wu Assassins and working with Michelle Yeoh and Donnie Yen, is JuJu Chan Hong Kong’s next big action movie star?