Things seemed to be getting back to normal with masks being optional at this year’s Awesome Con. The main attraction, or the “Ace Experience” as they called it, featured the badass cast of Shang-Chi (Simu Liu, Meng’er Zhang, and Florian Munteau). There was also Anthony Daniels (C-3PO), Giancarlo Eposito (Moff Gideon), Wilson Cruz (Dr. Hugh Culber) and many more in attendance. It seemed like it was meant for me to go, because it so happened to be my birthday weekend! Haha!
Day 1 consisted of my exploring the exhibit floor and getting to meet Simu at the signing of his new book,We Were Dreamers. He was as cool as I hoped he would be and even wrote ‘Happy Birthday my dude’ when he signed my copy of the book. I spent the rest of the day exploring the floor, bought a few cool items and took many pictures of the cosplayers.
Day 2 I thought was going to kick-off with a Shang Chi panel, but before that started we had a contest where 8 volunteers would try to pose as their favorite character and the audience cheered for who did the best. There was one contestant that we all knew from the start was going to win. She was born in 2014, is going to be a marine biologist and her favorite animal is a sperm whale. Yes, you guessed it! She posed as a sperm whale, and the other guy only won because she wanted to go back to her seat.
That was a fun way to start the day.
The Shang-Chi panel started with each of them talking about their different auditions. Meng’er only knew they wanted a girl that could speak English and Chinese until she did the screen test with Simu who had been already announced as the lead at SDCC in 2019. Florian said they wanted a big guy and he loves actions movies so…Yea lol. He also happens to be a professional boxer if you didn’t know. They have so much fun together on this panel answering the fans’ questions. The main things I took from this panel were that Simu was in his underwear when he got the call that he got the role, the things that make you special and unique are cool and to surround yourself with people that support you.
I was able to get each of the Shang-Chi cast to sign their funko pop I brought with me! I even got to take a picture with Wilson Cruz! He was there for the Star Trek Discovery panel and team up photos with his co-star, Anthony Rapp, but I know him more from one of my favorite shows of all time, Noah’s Arc. I even got to tell him thank you for being part of such a monumental show. I wish I could have recorded my interactions with each of these awesome people!
