Justin Yu is all smiles talking about crashing cars and taking hits. There’s no question, the man loves what he does. The passion pays off in The Brothers Sun, in which he was the stunt coordinator and directed second-unit. The action is crisp, clean, and colorful, as well as delightfully brutal.
Yu is now nominated at The Emmys for Outstanding Stunt Coordinator for Comedy Programing.
More than well deserved for the stuntman, coordinator, and no doubt, future director. Yu sharpened his skills for taking and throwing character-driven hits at 87eleven. At the action factory, he met one of his mentors, the gregarious J.J. Perry, stuntman who went from second-unit directing to directing features.
The two most recently worked on The Killer’s Game. After Yu spoke so highly of the man, we asked Perry for his thoughts on his long-time collaborator. “Justin Yu and I have worked together for the last 10 years,” Perry told Immersive.” He’s been like a son, little brother, friend, teammate, and partner since. We’ve done probably 30 films, including John Wick and Fast and Furious movies. We’ve been all over the world doing a bunch of crazy dangerous stuff with cars and fights and falls. I’m lucky to have him as a friend and a wingman. Love him to the moon.”
Here’s our conversation with Yu about his love for action, stunts, Perry, and his hopes to direct movies one day.
[Note: This interview has been edited for clarity and length.]
So you’re working at the gun range today. As far as do this, don’t do that goes, how do you coach the actors?
Well, it’s an extensive safety thing. Of course, finger off the trigger, understand that the rounds don’t come back. Everything you do, there’s the discipline of it. Do a lot of dry fire first, so that we take our cast through. We took Justin Chien on The Brothers Sun, too.
We want to make sure that these characters understand gun work, understand manipulation and how the slide works. That’s usually the first day. Then towards the end of it, for 10 minutes, you get them actually firing live rounds.
So, we have James Marsden right now firing live rounds at the range, and then he gets a little taste of a rifle. Then for the next session, we build on that and start implementing movement, shooting down range, and moving with the targets .
Moving into Brothers Sun, congratulations on your Emmy nomination.
Thank you. Thank you so much.
For the character Charles (Justin Chien), obviously there’s the practicality of the moves, but how’d you want his personality and arc to define his stunts?
Well, his whole entire thing was aggression, so understanding that world, the dark world, the underground of mafia, everything is rage. We wanted that in his character. Double, triple up on every single thing when he hits. You want to go for the kill shot, but you want the most brutal way. You stab his hand, pin him down, talk it out, and then you kill him off with something cool.
As the choreography evolved, the characters evolved. It was a lot of dance, understanding the camera, where the camera would be. There was a trinity rig moving back and forth, making these long shots and making sure that the actors knew they wouldn’t roll their ankle on the carpet or over here because the props. You know, there’s a big dining table, kitchen setting where there’s a lot of props, moving elements like food. We had soup all over the place, flying all over the place. We had to make sure that it didn’t get into Michelle’s hair. We’re like, “Hey, the closeup of Michelle [Yeoh], let’s not get her gown dirty as well.”
I bet [costume designer] Vera Chow appreciated that, too.
She was great, man. She did so much for us. All of our guys were sweating and dying. We shot in the summer, the dino stuff. It was in the summer and all the guys were exhausted. We had to test those dino suits, because it’s basically a suction cup in there, a hot motor blowing air. You’re wearing it in Arcadia, 115 degrees outside, and these guys are fighting, can’t breathe. In between takes, Vera and her crew would come out with fans and blow mist. They’re awesome.
Great dino fight. Whenever you have a protagonist fighting goons, like in that sequence, they’re going to be disposable, but how do you make those goons still confident fighters?
So that one was a tricky one. A lot of people when we were choreographing it were like, “Oh, that would be impossible if you cut the dino, it would deflate. You gotta make it more serious.” We got to have fun with it, and it’s hard to have fun with it. So then we were like, “Okay, let’s use the baseball bat. What would you have in a backyard? It’s a kids party. Yeah, let’s use the bat to hit him and do a big move, throw them into the pool and then stab him.”
It was really fun implementing all the props. [Showrunners] Kevin [Tancharoen], Byron [Wu], and Brad [Falchuk] both had a big part of that. It was one of the scenes that caught my attention early on when I read the script. I was like, we are doing that.
You shot the second unit for the entire series. What are you generally looking for when you’re behind the camera?
Being able to shoot it in a wide and using movement with it. So in our Dim Sum scene, Yoshi Sudarso and the brothers, utilizing their tricking aspect, their martial arts background, we could see all three of them in frame showing their movements using one and guiding it to another one. Doing cool movements like that.
Also, in the golf [driving range] sequence, the drone sequence, that was pretty tricky in itself. Flying a drone and utilizing and then catching it and then having the fighters fight around the drone and then flying it off again. It’s fun when the cast can hold the choreography and are great at it as well.
Throughout your career, have you noticed certain kinds of actors that are best suited for action and choreography?
That comes early on in training. What we do at 87eleven is we bring them in and we assess them in the beginning what they do and what they don’t like, what their strengths are and what their weaknesses are. Maybe they favor the right side. They have a certain trait. Some people like to, when they punch, they recoil really aggressively and sometimes can’t break that habit. You have to then find a way to change that or implement that into something else.
How involved are you with post-production? How much conversation are you having with the editors about cutting together the fight sequences?
Our team and Michael Lehr, our fight coordinator, what we do is we play live. We all learned this from J.J. [Perry], our great master. We’d like to take the dailies, plug it into our edit, and show how we see the sequence play. When the editors get it in post, they see like, “Oh, okay, that’s not a miss. You use take three that flows with this. Oh, that’s great.” And then they can then add their sauce of like, “Oh, now let’s cross-cut with this sequence, or let’s add this audio track and use this overlay.”
By then they have a full sequence of our whole fight and action design. So, we do a live edit so that we know that we completed our day that we don’t have to come back for reshoots, and they know that the edit flows seamlessly. Directors love it, too.
It’s funny, I’m interviewing J.J. again in the next few weeks for The Killer’s Game. How did you two connect?
He’s like a father to me. After my time at the gun range I’m going to head to his house to talk about our next project. He brought me up in this industry and was actually on Brothers Sun, helping me out on some of the days. He just got off Day Shift at the time, was in post-production, and had the time to help us out.
Like you said, J.J. is a father figure. How does that happen in the stunt world? How does that mentorship and relationship begin?
Crazy story is that he’s actually from my hometown, Sugarland, Texas. I’m from Stafford, Texas, which is three blocks away. He left for the military before I was born. The crazy thing was we all ended up at 87eleven. He was one of the senior members there, and I was the rookie. They called me Jabroni, that was my nickname. I was the guy who got tests like, “Hey, let’s put him on the line. Let’s test the wire gag.” And I was like, “What?” Bang. “Oh, Keanu needs to practice chokes today.” Okay, we all want to learn his choke, that choke. So Erik Paulson, Chad Stahelski, and everybody would just try these chokes on me at six in the morning. Then by eight o’clock I would be super lightheaded; you don’t get the oxygen.
J.J. saw how hard I worked over there and I wasn’t really on a team. You got all these great performers out there. It was very hard to hold myself in the stunt community. There’s not a lot of Asians at the time that I could double. So, I got called for getting hit by a car or those kinds of things. After hat J.J. saw that I didn’t have a team, he brought me under his wing and taught me.
After John Wick two, he brought me to Fast and Furious and went on to Ang Lee’s Gemini Man. Been there almost 10 years and he’s just been a father figure. Knowing I’m from Texas and he’s from Texas, we just love the same things. When we’re working in Atlanta, we go to the same Waffle House every morning.
At what point growing up in Texas did the stunt industry interest you?
I actually didn’t know about the stunt industry. At the time, I was doing Wushu. I was a US National Wushu member and my instructor, Sunny Sun, was a part of 87eleven at the time. He was like, “Hey, you should come to LA to try stunts.”
But prior to that Sunny was like, “I wanted to be an actor.” And I was like, “Hey, I don’t think you could be an actor, dude, you don’t speak English. It’s not going to work. In America, you gotta speak English.” And he’s like, “No, I’m going to be Jet Li. I’m going to do it.” Around that the time, they needed people to do pre-vis, so he called me.
I was in Texas, so Sunny was like, “Hey, come over here. We’re doing pre.” I was like, “I dunno what that is.” I googled pre-vis, couldn’t find anything, and then I realized, “Oh, pre-visualization. They’re doing concepts.” When I got there I ended up learning what stunts were. I just fell into it. They were like, “Hey, you can make money doing this if you want to do it.” I was like, “Sweet, let’s do it.”
That’s a good story.
Everybody’s got their little story, and yeah, it’s a family of great people over there who look after one another. I’m super blessed to be a part of it.
When did you know it’d make you happy as far as your work goes? Were there certain stunts you just really connected to at the beginning?
It was actually getting into cars. Being a kid from Texas, I love muscle cars, drift cars, all these things growing up, but I never had the money or finances to do it. So, when I started working on Fast and Furious eight, one of my buddies was really into drifting and does all those scenes for Fast and Furious, so I got into it through that.
It was very rewarding when the older generation of stunt men started to respect what I did. Then, I just branched out to fights and learn other things. I learned how to ride a bike and started wheeling. I crashed all the time. I’m not good at it. They only call me to crash the bike [Laughs]
It’s rewarding seeing the older generation like J.J. and my grandmasters out there, like Chad and everybody, start to respect us in the industry. We’re coming up, helping out, and pulling us up there, like we all should. The industry’s starting to fade away slowly, because of all the rules and things that are going on, sadly, but we’re trying to keep it together and keep everything practical.
Practical stunts, for us, is what we like to do. If we could bring somebody up to the Eiffel Tower, let’s do it. Let’s try it. Let’s explode those cars. It was awesome growing up watching Jackie do it all. “Film is forever.” That’s what he would always yell, “Film is forever!”
What are some of those new rules?
It’s also an insurance liability. Now there are a lot of things, like, “”Let’s just do CGI, let’s just do in post.” It’s getting so good that they can just say, “Ah, it’s too much money to do it practically, too much time.” So, that’s what kind of hurts. Car stuff is starting to fiddle away, but there are a few movies that really want to do it still. J.J. and his movies are definitely doing it.
Like J.J. and other great stunt coordinators, do you want to direct movies?
Absolutely. I feel that I am still fairly young. Brothers Sun did offer me to direct an episode at one point. I didn’t accept it because of the workload for Brothers Sun for second-unit. Getting this nomination for the Emmy, I never expected it or thought it was going to happen. We just did our jobs, people loved it, and we were super thankful for it. I think it’s for the crew.
I do see myself directing one day, but I’d love to just take my time and learn. [Stunt coordinator] Spiro Razatos is one of my great masters. I was in India with him doing Jawan and he literally had me direct a unit. He’d come and visit me on a set, just sit there and help me. I learned so much from him.
Like you said, you’re still fairly young, but how do you try to mentor and help people starting out in the industry?
What we do is we do seminars. We have a lot of people on our team that I teach personally to shoot and edit, pick up fight choreography, watch old cinematography and learn. We encourage them to do these things because it’s the future for us. We’re constantly looking for the next talent, the next person out there who understands and has the discipline for set etiquette and rules.
There are times where you just don’t have time on set. We have to make sure that we make our days, and respectfully to our producers, we have to do these things. And there are those things that the newer generation doesn’t understand, where maybe they just come on set and they’re on their phones. Those are the things that I like to teach and implement to the newer generations. Hey dude, there’s Instagram time. I’ll let you do Instagram time for sure, but right now, we got to help create this shot and go to do rehearsals.
Let’s make sure everything is safe and make it through our day. We’ll definitely make a lot of money and have fun doing it, creating entertainment for everybody. And that’s the J.J. philosophy of, making sure that we make our days and have fun doing what we do. At the end of the day, man, we’re risking our lives to do what we do. One little mistake could be our brother or sister’s life.
The Brothers Sun is available to stream on Netflix.
