"What I had planned for myself in life is not what it ended up being," Wu recently told Speakeasy from Los Angeles.

 

Sixty-plus films later, Wu is a big movie star in Hong Kong and Chinese mainland. He's done romantic comedies, action thrillers², art-house films and martial³ arts films. And now, starting this Sunday, Wu will star in his first American TV series, AMC's new dystopian Kung Fu show "Into the Badlands." He originally signed on to be an executive producer but like his fateful trip to that bar nearly two decades ago, things ended up changing. "I'm not a spring chicken any more," he says. "I had my peak and [AMC was] asking me to come back out of retirement⁴."

 

Wu became interested in martial arts after his grandfather took him to see a Jet Li's first movie, 1982's "The Shaolin Temple." It was a hard sell to get his mother on board, but eventually she came around and he got an instructor⁵. "I was a hyperactive kid and my mom thought I was going to get into school yard fights if I learned a couple moves."

 

In "Into the Badlands," Wu plays Sunny, a hitman of sorts who has no problem killing⁶ for his master. It's a world where no guns exist and there's a distinct caste system. The feel is dark and gloomy, with an element of fantasy thrown into the mix. Sunny continues the anti-hero path that many characters in AMC shows take, but with a twist. Instead of going from good guy to bad guy, it's the opposite. "The series is about him coming out of this darkness," Wu says.

 

Part of Wu's concern about signing on as the lead actor stems from the show's intense fight scenes. In a kung fu movie, it can take weeks to shoot one fight scene. "Into theBadlands" had to turn around an episode in eight days, fight scenes included. The first season is just six episodes and 12 fights. Wu is in 11.

 

Training for "Into the Badlands" was intense. He started six months prior to shooting, doing lots of yoga to keep limber and flexible. He ran a lot, too, and had to learn how to fight with two swords.

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