Aside from the fatalities, the improved VFX, and the game-accurate story, one of the many things the new Mortal Kombat franchise has gotten right is the casting choices. Joe Taslim as Sub-Zero, Hiroyuki Sanada as Scorpion, and, of course, Ludi Lin as Liu Kang were the perfect picks. But getting those roles in the film didn’t come easy, especially for Lin, who revealed that he showed up at his audition bloody and bruised.
As the Fuzhou-born actor tells it, he was rushing to his audition in Los Angeles on an electric skateboard. Then a car knocked him. A car! “My pants got ripped, I was bleeding,” he told August Man.
But while most actors would rush to the hospital and cancel their audition, Lin pushed forward. Today, he believes that the crash might’ve been the best thing that happened to him.
“Sometimes, the thing about acting and auditioning is that you’re your own worst enemy,” he explained, reflecting on how actors tend to overthink auditions. “You’re trying too hard fighting yourself to get out of your own head.”
“I think because of the accident, I got sort of thrown off that I wasn’t really in my head, and I was very much in my body. The audition went very smoothly,” he added.
That smooth audition that landed him one of gaming’s most iconic roles. And producer James Wan (who he worked with on Aquaman) called him personally to offer him the role of Liu Kang.
And perhaps it’s because of this bloody experience that Lin’s take on the Shaolin warrior-monk Liu Kang stands out, too. Even though he’s the second actor to portray the character in film, after Robin Shou’s performance in the 1995 movie adaptation, he’s very much made Kang his own. You can see it in his quiet restraint. And yes, of course, you need a lot of endurance to play a figure that can summon fire and pull off a fire dragon fatality.
Even though Lin has played famous characters before, like the Black Ranger in Power Rangers (2017) and an Atlantean soldier in Aquaman, he’ll probably always be known as Liu Kang moving forward. But he isn’t getting too attached. According to him, “He doesn’t belong to any one person or actor.”
In 2026, Ludi Lin is back for Mortal Kombat II, alongside Karl Urban as Johnny Cage. It’s a much bigger cast, for sure. And yes, higher stakes, too. But we bet Liu Kang will still be the character to anchor the heroes.
Lin sums it up best: “I’m trying to be a lover, but really, I’m a fighter.”
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