By the D23 Team

We’re only a few days away from the much-anticipated debut of Disney’s Mulan, a Disney+ Premier Access offering—which means it’s the perfect time to meet (or reintroduce ourselves to!) the characters we’ll see in this epic live-action adventure.

Mulan (Yifei Liu)
Much like the character in the beloved original animated film, Mulan is determined, strong, and compassionate. When each family has to provide one man to join the battle against the invaders, Mulan takes the place of her father, who suffers from an old war wound. At first she is totally out of her depth, but she learns fast and develops into a strong, powerful leader—forging new relationships along the way. On her approach to playing such an iconic character, Liu (The Forbidden Kingdom) explains, “Each day I allowed myself to forget who I am for the moment. You have to kind of lose yourself and not think about just how brave Mulan is. Yes, I am playing a hero, so we need to bring out that side, but I think every human being is complex—and complex is so beautiful. And that’s where the energy of the character is.”

Zhou (Tzi Ma)
Zhou is Mulan’s devoted father. Describing his character, Ma (24, Rush Hour) says, “Zhou is a former military man who went to war and was injured. When we meet him, it is years later, and he has a family—a wife and two girls. One girl, Mulan, has a spirit that’s very different from anyone else. Zhou tries to contain her spirit as much as he knows how. But it’s impossible, because you cannot contain that kind of a spirit. It’s a gift. And Zhou understands that, so you see Zhou always trying to straddle this line of containment but not refinement. Even when he’s heartbroken when she goes in his place, I think in his heart of hearts he knows she will come back and bring greatness.”

Commander Tung (Donnie Yen)
Commander Tung is the leader of the battalion in which Mulan winds up serving. Dignified and highly experienced on the battlefield, he acts as something of an adviser to Mulan. Says Yen, known recently for his turn in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, “Tung is [Mulan’s] mentor, and she sees something in [him], not only his skill but also his wisdom… I enjoyed the scenes with the conversations between Mulan and Tung. Those are the more sentimental moments that reveal [his] inner vision and passion. You normally don’t see that because when he’s in his armor, he’s very strict and very military.”

Honghui (Yoson An)
Honghui is a fellow trainee soldier in the Imperial Army, who begins the film as Mulan’s competitor… but who ultimately becomes her friend. “Honghui is a young conscript,” An (Mortal Engines) explains, “just like all the other conscripts—but he has a military background. So his martial arts skills, compared to the other boys, are pretty much through the roof… I guess you could say that Mulan and Honghui start off on the wrong foot. But as they train together and live together in training camp, Honghui can see that there’s something different about Mulan, in comparison to the other boys. Because Commander Tung is very aware of what Mulan is doing all the time during the training process, Honghui feels like there must be something there that he’s not seeing. So, he makes amends, and it turns out that he’s right.”

Böri Khan (Jason Scott Lee)
Mulan’s adversary—and the Emperor’s nemesis—is Böri Khan, the embittered Rouran fighter from the North who will let nothing and no one get in the way of his determination to avenge the death of his father. Lee, most recently seen in Netflix’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny, admits that he loves “the choices that the villain can make, and I like the heaviness and the weight that those characters carry. It’s fun to be singled out in black costuming. You really get a sense that he’s from a different world. He’s not of that China world that’s been created.” As producer Jason Reed explains, “They say a movie is only as good as its villain, so we knew that our invader from the North had to be scary, intimidating, and a real threat to the army and the Emperor. You have to believe this character is capable of taking down an entire empire at the height of its power.”

Xianniang (Gong Li)
Xianniang is a completely new character to the Mulan universe, and she’s a close ally of Böri Khan. Describing the mysterious character, executive producer Barrie Osborne explains, “Khan’s hidden weapon is Xianniang—who is a woman not unlike Mulan. She is physically fit and has the power of chi, an almost magical power, which gives you an incredible amount of strength. Xianniang gives Böri Khan an edge over the Chinese army.” “Xianniang is powerful, but the things that she wants are actually very simple,” adds Li (Memoirs of a Geisha, Shanghai). “She wants freedom and survival… Khan and Xianniang have a collaborative relationship. She knows the things he needs, and he knows what she wants… But they won’t reach their goals if they don’t cooperate with each other, so they formed a collaborative relationship.”

The Emperor (Jet Li)
International mega-star Jet Li dons the robs of the regal Emperor, and he was struck by the tone of the script: “It was very moving and very emotional to read, because Chinese people always believe in loyalty and filial devotion. It’s very difficult to do both well, but the Mulan story is very special. She shows both loyalty to her country and filial devotion to her parents. It’s a wonderful story because it is showing that a human can do both.” And there was no one better to play the role than Li, explains the film’s director Niki Caro: “He brings to the role of the Emperor all the gravitas that you would expect for the Son of Heaven—but he also brings tremendous heart and soul and action. So that when Jet Li’s Emperor leaves the throne to protect his people, you know it is going to go down.”

Look for Mulan when it begins streaming, with Premier Access, on Disney+ this Friday, September 4!

By Courtney Potter

It’s a story for the ages… a fearless young woman risks everything, out of love for both her family and for her country, to become one of the greatest warriors China has ever known. Acclaimed filmmaker Niki Caro (Whale Rider; McFarland, USA) brings this awe-inspiring tale to life in Disney’s Mulan, set to debut with Premier Access on Disney+ this Friday, September 4.

Suggested by the narrative poem The Ballad of Mulan and the 1998 Disney animated hit, the film follows Hua Mulan (Yifei Liu)—the eldest daughter of an honored, though now ailing, warrior (Tzi Ma)—as she decides to take his place in the Imperial Army, now defending the country from Northern invaders. Masquerading as a man named Hua Jun, she is tested every step of the way and must harness her inner-strength and embrace her true potential. It is an epic journey that will transform her into a hero… and earn her the respect of a grateful nation and a proud father. The film boasts a celebrated international cast, including Donnie Yen as Commander Tung; Jason Scott Lee as Böri Khan; Gong Li as Xianniang; and Jet Li as the Emperor.

D23 was lucky enough to hear directly from Caro and Liu at a special screening of the film—where both women offered up some fascinating behind-the-scenes tidbits.

On their first encounters with Disney’s animated Mulan:
“I [can’t] remember how old I was when I first watched the animated version,” says Liu, “but it’s for sure in my memory and I loved it. I think in one of my auditions [for this film], I actually sang the song ‘Reflection’.” For Caro, the animated Mulan more fully resonated once she had kids of her own, several years after that version’s release: “I had children—I had girls—and of course I watched it then,” she admits. “I couldn’t believe it, and I was so grateful for it—that in a time of princesses, here was a warrior.”

Caro on what attracted her to such a high-profile project:
“Mulan herself,” Caro explains, succinctly. “I love her—and I think for me it was her journey from village girl, to male soldier, to warrior and hero that felt like it spoke for all of us. It was a story that didn’t in fact originate with the 1998 animation; it’s been resonant and relevant for centuries, and never more so than now… The [only] intimidating thing is my responsibility to the story, to the studio, and to the audience. [But] as far as budget goes… I think with every film I’ve made—Whale Rider included—I had a vision that was far bigger than the budget allowed. And so this time to be able to have a budget equal to the very epic vision of my head was just really satisfying.”

How Liu first learned of the opportunity:
“When I first heard [was when] my manager asked me, ‘So there’s Disney’s Mulan. Do you want to audition for it?’,” Liu says. “I had heard that so many people were auditioning. So I asked myself, if I wanted to go, what can I bring? Because I know, obviously, [that] this is a role that everyone wants to play. It’s just so meaningful, as a woman [and] as a human being, to really be that brave and loving and accepting [of] her imperfectness—to become who she really wanted to be. I really asked myself a lot of questions, because I know the audition process is hard—you need to go into a room and continuously run a few scenes [that are] spread throughout different sections of the script… [On one] side, I’m super excited and nervous—but on the other side, I wanted to bring the best me. So I needed to really, you know, get through [it]—meditate, just calm myself. And then [I got to] meet Niki, this beautiful director… ”

… And how Caro came to cast Liu—after seeing over a thousand actresses—in what amounts to a role of a lifetime:
“We did a worldwide search, and we did a really deep search in China,” Caro says. “We found, honestly, some beautiful actresses—but when it really came down to it, we didn’t feel that we had found Mulan. So we started again and we went back to China; this is a year after we’d started. We went back and we went through the list of everybody that wasn’t available the first time around. Yifei was one of the people on that list. And she agreed to come audition, [to] come to Los Angeles. And she was so terrifyingly good, as an actor—but also, really strong, super strong. The audition was very demanding. So on top of her jet lag, and the [acting] audition with me, she had to go to a physical audition with a trainer—because I was determined to have a young woman in this role that could understand and commit to the physical nature of the work. And so she hadn’t slept—she’d flown for 14 hours, she hadn’t slept all night, it’s like 5:00 the next day, and she’s in the gym with a trainer who’s pushing her to her limits. And she never stopped, she never asked for a break. She did everything that was asked of her. And I knew then that we’d found our Mulan—and that I’d found a partner and a collaborator, and genuinely a warrior.”

On Liu’s extensive, and varied, training for the film:
“For me, every movie [experience] is brand new—totally new to me,” admits Liu. “I did act in some movies that had a martial arts element, but obviously I’m not a professional. I’m so glad that I had [a] long time to prepare [for this film]… [We trained] in New Zealand for three and a half months. I think [the actions are] so specific for this film that, you know, if you’d ask me [again] what kind of training I would do, I would pick the exact same things. I even learned Tai Chi movements, because for Mulan, I understand her chi as her connection of her spirit—not the ego, but the true self… I really see it as a whole journey.” Adds Caro: “[Yifei] can do everything. So a lot of the times, even though she had a stunt double who was incredible, we would ask for Yifei to come in and do the stunt work—because she has amazing grace, and somehow it was just more right when she was doing the stunt work.”

On the importance of having amazing women in front of and behind the camera:
“I think it’s the only movie of this scale and genre where all the voices—all the people running it were women,” explains Caro, proudly. “Me; Mandy Walker, our cinematographer; Liz Tan, the first assistant director; also our co-producer, costume designer, makeup designer… [it was] very female-led, this production. And of course, being female-led, [we were] very, very well prepared. We communicated very effectively, brought it in on time, and slightly under budget—because that’s just how we roll!”

On the biggest challenges Caro and Liu faced during production:
As Liu explains, “It’s always easy to ask for answers, like, ‘What is your opinion about this character?’ But the hardest thing about Mulan to me is how to answer… [to] put yourself in that circumstance and then to have it be organic, not like ‘acting’-acting. I really want to thank Niki, for everything—she’s the kindest human being that I’ve really ever worked with.” For Caro, aside from finding her Mulan, the challenge was “how to tell a story about two armies going to war, a young woman going to war… I was really blessed that the fighting style was martial arts, [which is] inherently beautiful. But also, I think what unlocked it for me was that I figured out that I could set the battle sequence in a geothermal valley—so that the smoke and the steam could reveal and obscure violence. So it could suggest it, [and] it could also be very beautiful and very cinematic. I’m proud of that—I’m proud that the battle sequences feel visceral and robust, but never gratuitous.”

Caro on the vital—and timely—message of the film:
“[Filmmaker] Jane Campion is so meaningful to me because she’s the first time I saw somebody that looked like me do this work that I so desperately wanted to do,” explains Caro. “And I used to think—kind of embarrassingly now—that I would somehow have to disguise myself. So the fact that I’m making a movie about this very thing, and the fact that I was able to tell the story in [this] way… the animated movie has Mulan disguised as a man to find herself—and in our version, Mulan learns that she can never be powerful unless she loses that disguise. [There’s that] big moment in the movie, when you hear the iconic ‘Reflections’ music, when she lets her hair down and shows up in battle as a woman and is truly powerful in that moment—and in fact, goes on to save China—that’s what I’m the most proud of, I think. And what is the most meaningful to me, to send that message out there.”

See Disney’s Mulan beginning Friday, September 4, as a Premier Access offering on Disney+!