Simu Liu is still recovering from a torn Achilles tendon, and he didn’t let it stop him from participating in Ryan Gosling’s “I’m Just Ken” performance at the Academy Awards.
The “Barbie” actor, in an interview on “Today With Hoda & Jenna” Wednesday, opened up about the “surreal” moment when he danced with fellow Ken actors as Gosling rocked the Oscars stage with Slash and Wolfgang Van Halen.
Liu, who revealed that he tore his Achilles tendon in October, told hosts Hoda Kotb and Jenna Bush Hager that he’s “like four months into recovery” from surgery.
“But I’m powering through it because I’m like I feel like this was gonna be a historic moment that I would never forgive myself if I wasn’t a part of, but I was definitely like, ‘Should I be doing this?’” Liu said.
“I was talking to my physio and he’s like, ‘Ehh?’ And I was like, OK, whatever, I’m gonna do it.”
The actor told People magazine in November that the injury stemmed from a basketball game during what he described as an “Olympic-style tournament of sports” with friends in Miami.
“All of a sudden I feel like someone has either shot me or kicked my shin out from underneath me or just barreled into me,” Liu explained to the magazine.
“I’m like, ‘Who hit me?’ Everyone’s looking at me and they’re like, ‘Dude, nobody hit you.’ And it was at that moment that I knew that my Achilles was torn, and I went to urgent care right away.”
Liu, who told People that he wanted to have “a self-healing period of time” after the injury, has still maintained his “Kenergy” as he performed “I’m Just Ken” –– along with a cover of Matchbox Twenty’s “Push” –– during a show at Los Angeles’ Hotel Cafe in December.
The actor, when asked how he feels about being “Ken No. 2,” told Kotb and Hager that he has a “personal connection” to “I’m Just Ken.”
“I mean the entire song is you know, ‘Doesn’t really matter what I do, I’m always No. 2,’ so I think that song actually really applied to me,” said Liu, who was described as “another Ken” in a “Barbie” movie poster.