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

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?

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.

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.”

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.”