It’s been said that we have no star system in Canada. Mexican actor Melissa Barrera would beg to differ.
Whenever she walked around Toronto last winter with her television co-star Simu Liu, “in any direction, we would walk for five steps, he would get stopped and recognized and asked to be taken pictures with,” she said.
“It must have felt really nice to be (on) your home turf and feel so much love from so many people … getting recognized is nice when you feel the genuine love, which is what I saw in those interactions.”
Indeed, Liu was already beloved in Toronto for starring in the CBC comedy “Kim’s Convenience” from 2016 to 2021. The acclaim and affection has only grown since he became a movie star with Marvel’s “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” and a role as one of the Kens in the pop-culture juggernaut “Barbie.”
There are more movies in Liu’s future, including another Shang-Chi adventure and an “Avengers” instalment, but, for now, the Chinese-Canadian A-lister has returned to the small screen.
He stars with Barrera in “The Copenhagen Test,” a Peacock series about a Chinese-American intelligence analyst whose brain is hacked. It starts streaming on StackTV on New Year’s Day.
Liu’s character, Alexander Hale, is a special-forces agent turned analyst. He wants to be promoted within the Orphanage — a top-secret organization that monitors all other U.S. intelligence agencies — but fears that being a first-generation immigrant has made his bosses feel they can’t fully trust him.
That fear only intensifies when he learns his brain has been hacked by an unseen enemy, compromising his intelligence work.
To prove his loyalty, Alexander agrees to act as if the hack hasn’t been discovered in order to smoke out the culprits, which means his life has essentially been handed over to the Orphanage.
And that means that he, in turn, no longer knows whom he can trust. That includes Barrera’s character, Michelle, an operative who’s pretending to be Alexander’s girlfriend.
If that all sounds twisty, well, it is.
“The thing that made it challenging for us was also the thing that made it the most fun,” Liu said in a video interview with Barrera, “which is this multi-layered, multi-dimensional character-within-a-character conceit that is the whole theme of our show.
”‘What do I feel about this person? Is it real?’ It’s a really fun thing for an actor to get to play, so that was definitely my favourite part of it.”
Thomas Brandon, an American writer known for the vampire series “Legacies,” conceived of “The Copenhagen Test” in 2017. It started with a John le Carré-like espionage concept that crystallized after Brandon’s wife’s laptop was hacked. That made him wonder about brain-hacking technology, which he discovered was already being tested.
According to the series’ press notes, Brandon always envisioned the lead character as an Asian- or Middle Eastern-American. But James Wan, the Chinese-Australian horror filmmaker who’s an executive producer of “The Copenhagen Test,” pushed to make the character Chinese-American.
“I’m an immigrant in this country,” Wan said of the U.S. “I was an immigrant in Australia as well. There’s always this thing in the back of your mind that makes you question, ‘Do people see me as one of them?’ And Simu totally understands that world as well,” Wan added in a video interview with Brandon.
“I really appreciated the way in which Thomas Brandon framed the story of this intelligence analyst who feels like he’s given everything to his country, and like his country doesn’t reciprocate that trust or that faith,” added Liu, who was born in China and grew up in Mississauga.
“That resonates with me a lot, and I think resonates with a lot of immigrants and immigrant families. Feeling like outsiders, feeling like we have to work so much harder to get the same level of recognition …
“And so when (Alexander is) finally given this opportunity to prove himself worthy, even though there’s a lot of risk and at any moment he could slip up and (his) world could end, he’s willing to do it because he so desperately wants to prove that he’s worthy and that he is capable.”
From the sounds of it, Liu’s worth wasn’t questioned on the set of “The Copenhagen Test.”
He’s an executive producer of the series as well as its star. And showrunner Jennifer Yale said in the press notes that Liu was “an invaluable resource”: helping develop stories in the writers’ room, helping choreograph fight sequences, helping make the action scenes more visceral in the editing.
“He was an unbelievable collaborator from beginning to end,” she said.
Liu already had experience with action scenes, given the physical demands of “Shang-Chi,” but he did multiple sessions with a shooting coach so he could learn how to handle a gun convincingly, since a former special-forces agent “probably knows his way around every single gun.”
“I also watched every war movie under the sun and did a deep dive into the themes of loyalty, patriotism and disillusionment with authority, and what they mean in the context of ‘The Copenhagen Test,’” Liu added in the press notes.
Still, he said the goal was never to make viewers feel anxious, but to approach the series from “a place of inherent optimism … the idea that there are actually people operating behind the scenes who have the best interests of the country at heart, in terms of what is moral, right and righteous.
“At points in the past, those are things America has been very much a defender and a representative of.”
Of course, “The Copenhagen Test” is yet another example of an American story being told on Canadian soil. The series was filmed in Toronto from October 2024 to March 2025.
That was another bonus for Liu, who still has strong ties to the city that launched his acting career.
“It was really cool,” Liu said.
“Hometown hero!” interjected Barrera.
“We had some crew members from ‘Kim’s Convenience’ that I ran into. Cast members would come through that I used to take acting classes with. It was a really fun and full circle moment, and I was just really ecstatic,” Liu said.
“Any time a production comes into the city, it’s jobs, it’s opportunities for young actors to cut their teeth and to get to be a part of a show like this.
“There’s this really, really talented local actor, his name’s Anthony Jhade, who played Remy on our show, and I just loved talking to him. I saw so much of myself in him, I could feel just how much it meant to him and it was really great to be a part of.”
And it wasn’t just young actors: Canadians Saul Rubinek (“Hunters”) and Mark O’Brien (“Halt and Catch Fire”) are also part of the cast.
All that being said, Liu added that he “didn’t appreciate how cold it was” in Toronto. He mostly lives in Los Angeles these days.
Barrera concurred, saying she felt like being a hermit because of the cold, but did agree to walk around the city with Liu, visiting the Royal Ontario Museum and her favourite restaurant in Toronto: the Mandarin.
“I had whole list of recommendations, but this girl knows what she wants,” said Liu.
“I love a buffet,” said Barrera.
All episodes of “The Copenhagen Test” stream Jan. 1 on StackTV. The show also premieres on Showcase Jan. 6 at 9 p.m.
