The Ke ingredient: We speak to Oscar winner Ke Huy Quan about his new film

Ke Huy Quan and Jonathan Eusebio talk to What’s On about the trailer release of Love Hurts…

If you’ve ever unironically owned a shellsuit, or can, whilst blindfolded, rewind a cassette tape using an HB pencil – there’s a good chance, your first introduction to actor Ke Huy Quan was as Data in The Goonies (1985) or Short Round in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984). These were huge, epochal blockbusters, but the talented child actor who starred in them grew up to take on roles on the other side of the camera, and that’s largely how things remained until the huge 2022 hit Everything Everywhere All At Once.

Ke Huy Quan’s return to front-of-house cinema was marked with an Oscar for his interpretation of Waymond Wang. Since then, he’s appeared in the second season of Marvel’s Loki and provided the voice for Han in Kung Fu Panda 4. But it’s his next project that his fans both new and (let’s say) vintage should be really excited for.

He’s taking the lead in the martial arts-forward action-comedy, Love Hurts, directed by stunt impresario Jonathan Eusebio. We caught up with Quan and Eusebio following the release of the trailer, this is what he had to say…

When What’s On met Ke Huy Quan

The trailer reveals that you’re pretty handy to have around in a bar fight, can you tell us about your martial arts background?

My first exposure to martial arts was in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Spielberg and George Lucas hired a Taekwondo expert to teach me how to do some kicks in one of the fight scenes. We shot the movie in London and when I came back to America, my brother and I signed up for classes and we studied for many years. During that time I became obsessed with Hong Kong action movies and their stars – Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung, Jet Li, all of those iconic action heroes.

When you watch those movies, you can actually see the actors doing the fights themselves, it’s clearly not a stunt double, and there’s something really special about that. For Love Hurts, the fights are very grounded. There’s no wire work. It’s all punches and kicks.

It’s very real. And what’s incredible is all the actors in this movie, including Ariana DeBose, Daniel Wu – who has martial arts background, Marshawn Lynch, Mustafa, Lio, everybody, they did their fights because we have an incredible, incredible action team who spent a lot of work training everybody, including myself.

You’ve been involved with lots of different parts of the filmmaking process, both in front and behind the camera, what are the most special elements of that process?

When I was working as an action choreographer, one of my responsibilities was to train the actors. The great Koi Yuan took me under his wing and that’s where I learned the language of how to choreograph a fight sequence. I trained Hugh Jackman for X-Men for example and on a lot of the movies, I trained the actors who didn’t have a martial arts background. I taught them how to punch, how to kick and how to make it look good on screen. I almost feel like everything that I have done for the last 20 years was me getting prepared to do Love Hurts.

How much can you tell us about your character in Love Hurts?

So I play Marvin Gable, who is an affable real estate agent who loves his job, loves the 9 to 5, just a normal life. He’s very enthusiastic, he loves helping people’s dream of owning a home come true and nothing about his life is dangerous until everything becomes dangerous.

This movie is high energy, action-packed with lots of punches and kicks. There’s a lot of heart to it and you’ll learn through my character that being normal is not as easy as it looks.

What’s guiding you in choosing your new projects?

I’m very grateful and feel very lucky to be in a position where I have choices now. And it wasn’t like that for many years. Ever since Everything Everywhere came out, there’s been so much love and support for me that I feel like there’s a responsibility, whatever I choose to do.

I do it with the fans in mind. I don’t want to disappoint them. I want to keep on doing stuff that they will like. Love Hurts comes out one week before Valentine’s and it’s just a great movie to bring your date or to bring a bunch of friends to and just go have a good time. We’re not trying to do anything with this movie other than to entertain you for 90 minutes.

I’m also looking for challenging roles, if it’s something that can take me to a different place.

When What’s On met Jonathan Eusebio

Can you walk us through your journey to getting behind the wheel of this ship?

I started as a stunt performer and then I made my way up to second-unit action director and as a creative person, you always want to keep challenging yourself and when you’re working for other directors, the rules of the world are already made.

I wanna see what happens if I control the rules of that world. And I just decided I wanna make that jump. But it didn’t start like that. I didn’t come into the business thinking I was going to direct. I started out going “I’m going to be the best stunt performer I can be. Be the best fight coordinator I can be, stunt coordinator, second unit director, keep going.” Every time you go up, you’re learning a lot of things.

Can you share with us any sources of directorial inspiration for this movie? 

I grew up watching a lot of Hong Kong cinema in the eighties. I loved Spielberg movies and Scorsese, and I also grew up on like John Wu and Luke Bassan back in the day.

And those guys had a big influence on me and how I looked at action movies or gangster movies. So a lot of my sensibility are from those, I would say, from that 80s kind of era.

I wanted to ask you about the casting process for Love Hurts and how easy was it to put together?

Right away, we knew we wanted Ke. The whole script was revolving around him. So once we got Ke on board, you’re just trying to find the best cast that to support him and at the same time, the challenge for me is: I want my cast to do 90 percent of  anything physical. I want them sparring, smashing through their head through windows and crashing through walls.

So the trick was trying to find a cast that was just as physical, and could keep up with Ke because Ke is very physical. If you look at him he’s a super friendly, super nice guy, but the guy can move like a cat, you know, and you’ve got to make sure whoever’s in those action scenes with them can keep up with him physically.

Can you tell us anything about any groundbreaking new stunts we’ll get to see in the movie?

I always try to make each action set piece different. So we have these serene suburban settings in this movie that turn into war zones. So, what I liked to do with every fight is build upon his emotional journey. So, so by the end, he’s a physically completely different person so it matches his emotional journey. The physicality of the fights matches the intensity of this emotional journey throughout the film, so some things will be more fun and lighthearted at the beginning, and by the end it gets kind of brutal.

Even in the trailer we get to hear some killer lines of dialogue. Can you share with us a little bit of how much of that was ad-libbed or is it, was it ruthlessly scripted?

It all comes from a place of being scripted of course, but you gotta open things up to an organic process. You know, Ke would come up with some gems sometimes and we’d use them.

What can you tell us about your working relationship with Ke?

He’s exactly that guy that we see, he’s the super friendliest, happiest guy.

And when he turns on his action guy mode, it’s kind of scary. It’s great for the movie. And I think people will be very surprised. People say don’t work with your heroes right? You’ll be disappointed. I wasn’t disappointed. He’s such a great person and a great performer. And for me to witness it, in real-time, that was the craziest part. I think people are gonna be very surprised at his range and his physical prowess.

Love Hurts is scheduled to hit UAE cinemas in February 2025. The trailer is out now.