'Last Breath' tells the terrifying story of a deep-sea diver trapped underwater

Actor Simu Liu has taken on some physically challenging roles, from killer fight sequences in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, to extended dance numbers as one of the Kens in Barbie. But his latest film, the action-thriller Last Breath, might be the most extreme.

Last Breath is based on the true story of three deep-sea divers (also known as saturation, or "sat" divers) who were on a routine dive in the North Sea in 2012 when rough weather and computer errors resulted in one of the divers becoming trapped underwater.

Sat divers typically work at the bottom of the sea, performing routine maintenance or repair on pipelines or other underwater structures. Liu says it was evident from the start that the shoot "wasn't going to be a cakewalk." He, along with co-star Finn Cole, had to learn the basics of recreational scuba — and then they had to relearn everything in the capacity of saturation divers.

"The living conditions of these saturation divers is just so unlike anything I think that is really out there in the world, except for maybe like an astronaut living in space," Liu says. "In order for those divers to be able to operate that far beneath the sea level, because of the differential and atmospheric pressure, they actually have to live in a pressurized kind of tube on board a ship for 28 days."

Liu explains that when it's time to work, the divers enter a "bell structure," which is lowered down to the correct depth. When the divers emerge into the water, they're hooked up to the bell and then to the surface of the ship through an "umbilical" that feeds them all of their gas and their heat and their power. And then they'll conduct the required maintenance work on the bottom of the sea for eight hour shifts at a time.

"There's nothing glamorous about this job," Liu says. "And yet, there are many 'sat' divers that are available to us over the course of shooting this movie ... but the one thing that we found in common with all of them is just how much they loved it, which was very confusing to us."

Liu's first big break was in the CBC/Netflix comedy Kim's Convenience, which ran for five seasons. His best-selling memoir, We Were Dreamers: An Immigrant Superhero Origin Story, explores his family's immigration to Canada and the challenges of being an Asian Canadian in Hollywood. 

Interview highlights

On the challenge of shooting the underwater scenes  

We knew that we were going to have to do a significant portion of this film underwater and or in these really, really tight spaces. It was like three, four weeks of kind of diving every day. ... We had a tank in Malta that was about 40 feet deep. Every night, we'd go down into the water and we'd communicate ahead of time exactly the shots that we wanted to get. [It was] obviously challenging, but in a way it was really nice to be able to immerse ourselves to that degree, especially in this industry [where] it's become increasingly easy to lie to the audience. You've got green screen, you've got VFX, you've now got AI, making it very easy for actors to not really have to do anything or to exist in very comfortable situations. And I think in that, in that environment, it was really nice for us to actually go out and do it.

On his early childhood in China, being raised by his grandparents while his parents were in Canada 

I remember flashes and feelings, but I do remember we had this tiny little ramshackle apartment in Harbin. There wasn't running water for many parts of the day. … I remember this overwhelming sense of safety and belonging with my grandparents. …

When my dad did show up one day, I was about 4-and-a-half, to bring me back to Canada with him, it was very uncomfortable for me and a lot for me to accept because I had my family and I loved my grandparents more than anything. And my dad at that point was a stranger. I very, very vividly remember watching him step through the door for the first time. … I very clearly remember my grandparents looking at me and saying, "This is your dad. Go to him." And I just remember being like, "I don't want to."

On the huge adjustment of living together 

When you have parents who weren't necessarily present in your formative years, in the first five years of life, like that's when a lot of your personality is solidified, you know? And when you don't have that bond, there's bound to be a little bit of distance. I was effectively adopted by my own biological parents.

On the other side of that, for my parents and to their defense, they also weren't necessarily in the rhythm of child care. It's a never-ending job in and of itself. To have one day no kid and then overnight have a 5-year-old just dropped into your life, I think is a pretty violent change. I think growing up there was definitely some tougher times for us to get along.

On how getting fired from his accounting job at Deloitte started his acting career 

I'd been working as an accountant, just completely and utterly miserable. … I had some friends who knew some people tangentially related to film and television, and there was a fair amount of stuff that's shot in Toronto. ... And I started going on Craigslist to look for these acting opportunities, initially for fun. I really had no end game in mind, but I wound up skipping work one day to be an extra on a Guillermo del Toro movie that was shooting in Toronto. A pretty amazing first set to be on. I turned my phone off all day, and when I turn my phone back on, I had something like 47 missed calls and I was like, oh, I'm in trouble. I got fired very, very shortly after that, which, honestly, understandable. That was the end of my very short lived career as an accountant.

But I was very lucky to kind of book a couple of things very quickly. … I was waking up every day really motivated to go out and look for work, and I was just kind of experiencing this entirely new version of myself, because my whole life I thought that I was just a lazy, under motivated guy. I thought that I wasn't smart, and I thought that I wasn't a great student because I wasn't a hard worker. And all of a sudden I was kind of pleasantly surprised by how motivated and hardworking I could be. I just knew that there was something to that, that I had to keep going. I obviously kept it from my parents for a very long time, but in secret, started to audition. And I got an agent in Toronto and it was off to the races.

On the lasting effects of doing a job as a stock photo model 

I was doing everything that I could to pursue my dream and to fuel my passion. So one of those things was to be a stock photo model, and I'm sure I didn't realize the full consequences of my actions at the time. … But I remember it paid 100 bucks for a day of work. … I showed up with all my work outfits. We did all these different poses, and in the boardroom I put on a suit. I pointed at computers and smiled at people and then I thought that would be it. Little did I know, the photos would actually do really well. And I've seen myself on billboards. I've seen myself on corporate websites, and on the cover of accounting textbooks. When you're a stock photo model, you basically sign away your rights to the images in perpetuity. And the stock photo company can basically take those images and just sell them over and over and over and over again. I've probably made that company like hundreds of thousands of dollars and have not seen a single penny. ... So let that be a warning to anybody who's considering pursuing a career in stock imagery. Be warned. You will end up in random places and your friends will make fun of you endlessly for it.

On how Kim's Convenience was a turning point for his career and his relationship to his parents 

I remember being ... 23 years old and deciding that I was going to be an actor. I mean, that catalyzed a moment of extreme tension with my parents. And so we would not speak to each other for long periods of time. And I think it was very, very difficult for my parents to understand that choice. When Kim's Convenience came along, it was originally a play, actually, and I'd watched the stage play before auditioning for the show, but the play left me in tears because it really the first time that I had seen that parent/child dynamic play out on stage and was so true to life, it was so relatable to what I had been through and what I was going through, even in that moment that I was just overwhelmed. And I remember sitting in my seat crying and realizing that that's what it felt like to have art that you could connect with.

Getting to play Jung and getting to act out his dynamic with [his parents] helped me make a lot of sense of what my parents are going through. And I think that actually set the stage for a reconciliation quite nicely, not only in that it gave me consistent work as an actor, and made my parents actually kind of realized that I was going to do this. … It kind of brought us closer together, which I will always be so endlessly grateful for, among other things.

On performing the "I'm Just Ken" musical number at the Oscars in 2024

It's a number and a character that begs 100% commitment and not a drop less. It'll go with me for the rest of my life as one of my core memories. And I'll never forget that feeling. It was, I will say, a bit of a [mess] in the lead up to the performance [for] the main backup Kens. We were kind of brought on relatively late in the process. The Oscars are on Sunday. So our first rehearsal was the Thursday before. And then we show up to the Dolby Center on Friday to do kind of like a blocking rehearsal and we realized that the choreography is completely changed and we're like, OK, all right. … We show up Saturday for the dress rehearsal and the choreography is completely changed again. … It didn't go poorly so much as it just didn't go. …

So we all met at the hotel connected to the Dolby Center and then early morning Sunday we ran through it one last time. And it was in that last run through that we finally stuck it. And I had something like seven minutes to get ready for the red carpet, but it didn't even matter at that point. I was just like the entire time thinking about the choreography and thinking about just not messing up — not only on live television — but also in front of Chris Nolan and [Robert] Downey and Cillian Murphy and Greta [Gerwig] and Margot [Robbie]. … Thankfully it went really well. And Ryan [Gosling, who played the main Ken], such a credit to him, delivered one of the all time greatest performances, I think, that the Oscars has ever seen and ever will see.

Lauren Krenzel and Anna Bauman produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Beth Novey adapted it for the web.