Shang-Chi star Simu Liu reacted to Marvel memes inspired by his viral resurfaced stock photos on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. The Canadian actor and stuntman, a former accountant and stock images model, went viral when Twitter users shared Liu’s old photos available on such services as Getty Images and iStockphoto. After Marvel Studios’ first Asian-led movie opened with a record-shattering $94 million four-day Labor Day weekend, Liu published a viral tweet of himself — circa 2014 — pointing and laughing at “the people who thought we’d flop.”
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“If you’re a nice model, you get paid thousands of dollars, you walk the runway… if you’re a stock model, you get paid typically a base rate of a one-day shoot of $100,” Liu said Friday on The Tonight Show. “And they own the rights to the photos that they take in perpetuity. Which is very, very important. It means the rights never run out.”
“They could sell these photos and make millions and millions of dollars off of them, and the talent will not make a single penny,” continued Liu. “That’s what happened to me.”
Fallon displayed genuine stock images of Liu before showing off “Marvel-ized” versions published on Twitter, including memes inspired by Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings and another inserting Liu into a scene with the Avengers in the 2016 film Captain America: Civil War. Watch Liu react in the video above and see some of the memes below:
