Avengers Doomsday's Simu Liu Bats For Hollywood Extras Making A Living: Maybe Actors Shouldn't Be Making $20 Million

He may be a Marvel star now with the upcoming Avengers: Doomsday, but Simu Liu has risen through the ranks in Hollywood. During his early days, Simu worked as an extra and a stuntman. The actor credits

his extra experience as beneficial, giving him access to an industry he normally wouldn't have a chance to enter. In a press conference promoting his new spy thriller series, The Copenhagen Test, Simu addressed the financial inequalities between extras, actors, and the producers in Hollywood. He went on to share that using AI (artificial intelligence) would deprive newcomers of these career-building experiences in the industry.

Why Simu Liu is sticking up for background extras on sets

In the press conference, Simu Liu was asked about AI taking over roles that background extras performed in films and the kind of protections that should be put into place for actors. The Copenhagen Test star revealed that he learned how to operate on a movie set just by being an extra. He said, "I had no prior connections to this industry, and so being a background performer on Guillermo del Toro's Pacific Rim was how I watched working actors for the first time and how they worked with the director, and it's where I learned how to work with camera movements and marks. And all of that is critical training and information for people who don't have access to that industry. And so just the idea that we would replace an entire echelon of performers, I think really deprives somebody in a similar situation as I was from gaining those skills and that expertise." Simu went on to add, "My worry is that the industry becomes even more opaque and even more inaccessible to people who come from outside. You know? And I think that, of course, you're going to have, I guess we call them nepo babies, but you're going to have people who are born into the system and who have a lot of connections, and that's fine. That's a reality of our industry. But I also think it's very important that we are still accessible to people who grow up in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, who have a dream of seeing their name in lights one day. And so that's one part, and the other part is that I'm not convinced that that's the money-saving measure that's going to save our industry either."He further made his point by saying that eliminating the extras who are earning by the hour will not be a good financial decision. "I don't think that we should be taking money away from people who are trying to make a living off of that. And rather, and my agent's going to hate me for saying this, but maybe actors shouldn't be making $20 million, and maybe producers shouldn't be making $50 million. Maybe we should all take a little off the top, rather than trying to say that these $11-an-hour wages are what's killing the industry, because I can guarantee you that's not true." The Copenhagen Test is now streaming internationally on Peacock and on JioHotstar in India. Avengers: Doomsday, directed by Anthony and Joe Russo, releases in theatres on December 18, 2026.