How Ke Huy Quan's Action Past Helped Bring "Rhythm" to Love Hurts Fights (EXCLUSIVE)
With Ke Huy Quan, you get an actor and an international stunt performer.
With 87North Productions' original action/rom-com spectacular Love Hurts now in theaters, Hollywood veteran and Academy Award winner Ke Huy Quan (Everything Everywhere All At Once) can finally claim top billing in a feature film.
Helmed by first-time feature director and longtime stunt coordinator, fight choreographer, and stunt performer Jonathan Eusebio, Love Hurts follows the unexpected adventures of Milwaukee real estate agent Marvin Gable (Quan), a mild-mannered everyman who turns out to be anything but when his past life as the enforcer for his mob boss brother (Daniel Wu) comes to light.
RELATED: Ke Huy Quan's Reaction After Reading Love Hurts Script: "You Should Be Calling Jason Statham!"
While Quan started professionally acting at the age of 13, playing Short Round in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, his Hollywood career has had many chapters, from actor to editor to stunt choreographer, and now back to actor. But it was his time as an action film stunt performer that Eusebio found to be especially helpful in Love Hurts.
Eusebio told NBC Insider that Quan's martial arts tutelage under stunt legends Tao-liang Tan and Corey Yuen made him the perfect choice to lead his eclectic cast, even while diving into the very physical role without a lot of prep."[He] knows my language," the director said. "That helps knowing where you're gonna shoot and having an actor or actress that can do what we're asking of them, because it was a fast shoot."
Director Jonathan Eusebio on working with Ke Huy Quan on Love Hurts
Throughout Love Hurts, Quan's Marvin is consistently pitted against assassins twice his size and far younger than his spry 53 years. To make him a plausible adversary, they employed several martial art styles to show off Marvin's skills as he gets back into the groove of his former mob enforcer life.
"I grew up watching 80s Hong Kong action movies, so my sensibility of action is from those movies," Eusebio told NBC Insider. "To do that type of action, you have to be understanding the rhythm of the fights, like the distance and timing it takes for fight beats. I didn't have a lot of time to shoot this movie, so I had to make sure I had actors and actresses that can do the action that we were going to ask of them.
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"I knew when we were getting [Quan], I would get that person," Eusebio continued. "He knows the rhythm. He knows the language, so it'd be easier for me and and my action designer to choreograph for him. We got really lucky, in a sense, that he can kind of do everything."
Asked how he directs for all kinds of fighting styles, Eusebio said it depends on each performer. "Some people like a lot of notes, some people don't. It's an intuition because every process is different for every actor. For me, I knew they would own the characters, and would put their own thing to it. You just kind of let them do their thing and if I see something that helps steer, or I see something more interesting, I'll be like, 'Maybe we'll try it like this?' You let them do their thing, and if something is amiss, then it's my job to kind of redirect it to fit the rest of the story."
Love Hurts is now in theaters; get tickets here!
