Cung Le fights Patrick Cote on Saturday at UFC 148, and recently wrapped up filming for the part of Bronze Lion in Quentin Tarantino's The Man With the Iron Fist. Le discussed being handpicked for the role by director RZA.
Stephie Daniels: You've just finished filming a Quentin Tarantino film. You've made leaps and bounds in your movie career, so I have to ask if getting your first win in the UFC ranks as high as landing a role of this magnitude?
Cung Le: I take my career as a fighter just as seriously as I take my career as an actor. Every fight, whether it's UFC or Strikeforce, is a big deal to me. This fight is on a huge card, so it's kind of like the big budget project of my MMA career. I'm a supporting lead, along with Patrick Cote, in this project, so I'm definitely going to do my part and try to steal the show. Everything I do, I put 185% into it, so for me, it's go big or go home.
Stephie Daniels: What has it been like, working with such a talented cast and crew for The Man With The Iron Fists?
Cung Le: Well, the first person that invited me over was RZA. I was in LA one day, taking meetings, and he invited me over to his studio. When I went over there, he just said to me, 'I want you to play Bronze Lion.' I told him, 'Sure, do you have a script?' He told me he had one and that he wanted me to read it and tell him what I thought of it. Then he was like, 'You know what? I want to know if you're in or not right now.' I said, 'Before I even read it?' and he said, 'Yeah, it's a good part', so I shook his hand and told him I was in. I was already signed to do Grandmasters and Dragon Eyes. Next thing you know, I was doing three movies, back to back.
As a big UG Blog critic I wouldn't worry to much about it. Although he had nothing to do with the film he is attaching his name to it so it is a "Tarantino" film in a way. Kind of like "Official Sundance Film Festival Selection" is used for marketing. At the end of the day you're bringing more attention to Le's new movie and that's a good thing.
Side note - It kind of pisses me off he just whores his name out like that, he doesn't even have a production credit. So her basically had nothing to do with this film other than sticking his name on it.
Right. He did the same for Western Django (awesome movie). The trailers all said TARANTINO PRESENTS!. It's just his way to help the movie get traction.
Not hating on cung in anyway whatsoever. This may very well be the greatest movie ever made for all I know. I'm just a big qt fan and when I read the title I was thinking how cool it was Tarantino was putting out two movies in close proximity to each other (this and django unchained). Then I read more about this movie and realized it was an Eli Roth/rza movie that qt didn't have anything to do with. How is this hating on anyone?
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