Venom: The Last Dance Actor Peggy Lu Bids Farewell To The Iconic Ms. Chen & Shares Tales Of Tom Hardy's Kindness

WARNING. This interview includes SPOILERS from Venom: The Last Dance.Mrs. Chen actor Peggy Lu looks back at her Marvel journey with Eddie Brock in Venom: The Last Dance. While being the character who started Sony’s Spider-Man Universe to begin with, 2024 is the end of the road for Tom Hardy’s anti-hero. Following the Venom: The Last Dance ending, the story of Eddie and the Venom symbiote has come full circle following their biggest showdown of all time.

From all the Easter eggs in Venom: The Last Dance to the heartfelt and comedic moments in the Marvel road trip adventure, the 2024 film also featured a handful of familiar players. One of the characters who have been part of the whole Venom trilogy is Mrs. Chen, played by Lu, who went from being a convenience store owner to becoming an ally for Eddie and the symbiote. Mrs. Chen became such a fan-favorite that she even also got a cameo in Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse when Spot came over to their universe.

ScreenRant recently sat down with Lu to look back at her time with the Venom trilogy, including the third and final installment, as it marks the end of an era for Sony’s Spider-Man Universe. Throughout the interview, Lu shared what it was like to return as part of the Venom: The Last Dance cast and sharing the screen with Hardy once again. Lu also opens up on the incredible dance sequence she has in Venom: The Last Dance while wrapping up Mrs. Chen’s arc.

Peggy Lu On Bidding Farewell To Sony’s Spider-Man Universe With Venom: The Last Dance

ScreenRant: First of all, you are incredible in all of the Venom movies. I love seeing your character appear on screen. I loved what you did in Venom: The Last Dance. I thought that scene was so much fun, absolutely incredible. How did you develop the character of Mrs. Chen and create such a memorable and unique experience for the Venom trilogy?

Peggy Lu: Well, working with Tom Hardy has been a joy, and it feels like it’s all within the same family. We’re cousins and there’s that closeness to where you are there, you show up, go, ‘Oh, this feels familiar.’ And then it just sets the tone immediately [of] how you work with each other. It just makes it so easy when you have good colleagues. It just doesn’t matter what or where the environment is, it makes it such a smooth transaction. That’s all I can tell you, it’s easy and fun.

We got Venom: The Last Dance, which is Tom’s last hurrah as Eddie Brock. Can you share with fans that are excited about the film, how Mrs. Chen’s character might evolve in this final installment?

Peggy Lu: Well, I’m not working at the store in the last one, and, you saw in the preview that I am in Vegas. You know how Asians love to just gamble and have a great time, and we also love to dance.

Peggy Lu On Incorporating The Last Dance Into Venom 3

“I’m not a dancer, as the fans will be able to know when they see me on the big screen dancing.”

Can you talk about working on the choreography specifically for The Last Dance?

Peggy Lu: I worked with the choreographer, the same choreographer as Barbie, Jennifer White, and she is amazing. I’m not a dancer, as the fans will be able to know when they see me on the big screen dancing. I am not a dancer, and she has so much patience, and I’m a little bit of a perfectionist. Sometimes I forget to point my toes, and she’s going, ‘Oh no, that’s all right. We’ll keep working on it,’ and that’s how nice she was.

I also have an injury on my left knee, my ACL has been replaced, so she would do the choreography according to my injuries and I can’t turn very well. Because my left knee has a tendency to go sideways, not forwards and backwards, sideways, and especially after I jump and land and you’ll just go sideways. She was very good at working around my injuries, and that has been such a huge blessing. She was there for the entire process, and I couldn’t have done it without Jennifer White.

You could have fooled me. I didn’t know you weren’t a dancer because you seem pretty light on your feet there. As you swayed around and you moved around with Eddie/Tom/Venom. Your career spans many acclaimed projects. How have your diverse roles influenced your portrayal of Mrs. Chen in the Venom series?

Peggy Lu: I think every character is a complicated character – we have ups and downs. You know when you see an Asian person running a grocery store, they are direct. There’s no BS. We tell you how we feel; we tell you what we think and having that background also and just observing people growing up, a multicultural community helped a lot to develop for me as an actor and as an artist to develop. The more we mingle with other people, the more it helped us in the creative process, I feel. So then I’ve also been typecasted as well as the typical Asian character. Then, what’s so cool about Sony was in the breakdown when I first auditioned, they didn’t say, ‘Oh, let Mrs. Chen do an accent,’ that was not in the description of the character, which kind of freed you as an artist to do whatever you need to do to get to that place to become the person [of] Mrs. Chen. I mean, I already have an accent, and they have never met me, and then just the fact that it was just [a] very plain female running a grocery store, a convenience store.

Peggy Lu On Her Relationship With Tom Hardy Throughout The Venom Trilogy

“Peggy, what do you think about this script? What do you think about Mrs. Chen in Venom 3?”

You’ve been working with Tom on this film story for the last seven years, spanning over three films. Can you talk about how your working relationship with Tom has evolved throughout the course of each one of these films? We know this is Tom’s Last Dance as Venom, but is this also Mrs. Chen’s Last Dance in the Venom franchise?

Peggy Lu: Oh, you’re tricky, Joseph! [laughs] Okay, so instead of describing how Tom is, I’m going to tell you what happened between us. The first Venom was in 2018, so I got on set before he did, and I was just running my lines facing a wall. Someone go, ‘Hey,’ tapped me on the back of my shoulder and he turns me around, gave me a huge hug first. Then he said, ‘Hi, I’m Tom Hardy, I’m in your scene.’

He called it my scene and he was being so cool. He doesn’t travel with anybody, he travels by himself. It was just him standing there and then he was so cool and so relaxed about it. I was trying to do the same. I was going, ‘Who?’ That was the first word that came out of my mouth. I was trying to be so cool. Because he was so down to earth, it just set the tongue for everything. Then I was able to relax and he could tell that I was nervous and then he said, ‘Hey, do you want to run lines?’ and I went, trying to be cool again. ‘Oh, hell no!’ That was our first encounter.

Let me fast forward to the latest one, Venom 3. First day on set, again, 8:00 AM, the production assistant comes and knocks on my trailer, ‘Hey Peggy, Tom wants to see you in his trailer’. I freaked out. No one has ever asked me to go to their trailer. I’m already dressed, in my high heels now, ready to dance. So I put on my tennis shoes. I go, ‘Okay, what am I going to do?’ I’m just going to run out and scream really, really loud. So I go to his trailer, I met his dog, Blue, he always travels with his dog, cute little puck. Then he says, ‘Would you like to have a latte?’ and I said, ‘Okay!’ He made me a latte. and then he goes and sits on his couch and he says, ‘Come here. come sit over here.’ I went, ‘Oh.’ So I walk over there, and he leans in really close, he says, ‘Peggy, what do you think about this script? What do you think about Mrs. Chen in Venom 3? Is there anything you want to add? Anything you want to subtract?’

Oh my God, that was not what I was expecting from him, asking for my opinion. That just set the tone. He respected my opinion. Tom Hardy asked Peggy Lu what I thought, and I was just so touched. It was one of the most, I guess, validating that I am an actress. What I love is that he has treated me as an equal, as a colleague asking me what I thought about the script and having a discussion, peer to peer, about my character, about the direction of the movie, and if there’s anything I wanted to add or subtract. [It] doesn’t get any better than that. Yeah, I guess that’s the word. He always made me feel like I belonged on the set, [and] belong[ed] with him, working together as a team. That just means so much to me – thank you, Tom.

Yeah, you belong, Peggy! You belong, and you’re incredible. That’s incredible. I love the fact that Tom has embraced this universe and this character so much to the point where he wrote a lot of these story elements in this film, which is absolutely incredible. Now, that was a great memory from you and Tom on the set of the last Venom movie and your experience in the first Venom movie. But what do you think makes the friendship between Mrs. Chen and Eddie/Venom so special and relatable?

Peggy Lu: Because it is two people that you don’t think will work together [or]that would have a friendship, just like I think it is so parallel to our real lives to where he’s an A-lister that treats everyone equally on the set. Even the background actors. He always goes out of his way to say, ‘Hey, how are you? Do you need anything?’ You learn from that. No matter how much money you make, where you are on this corporate ladder, you treat everyone the same.

Just as if when somebody goes into a convenience store, you don’t think they will become friends with the person who’s running the store or owns the store because there’s such a difference in their lifestyle and who they are. But yet, they’re able to come together because we have so much more in common than we have in differences. I think that’s what makes it interesting, always in life that you don’t think, ‘Hey, they could be friends,’ but they’re really friends. It’s the same thing in real life with me and Tom, the way that he treats me as an equal. I think it’s very parallel to what’s going on with our relationship in the movie as well.

Peggy Lu On Mrs. Chen’s Sendoff In Venom: The Last Dance

“I have learned so much from him, how he treats people, how he approached the project, and how thoughtful he is of others.”

I completely agree with you. Mrs. Chen and this Venom trilogy have become quite iconic. What aspects of Mrs. Chen resonate with you the most?

Peggy Lu: She could go with the flow. She could say, if she needs to get [and] dodge to save her life, she goes, ‘Okay, got to go! Let’s not take away their friendship though, because Tom and I did discuss that, because I was thinking, ‘Tom, why would I just leave you there and not help you?’ He says, ‘You got to do what you got to do.’

Because Venom could handle it.

Peggy Lu: Exactly, because he has Venom. I have no Venom that just comes out.

Another question: would you have wanted Mrs. Chen to get a symbiote in the movie? Was that a thing that you thought in your head like, ‘Oh, this would be fun.’

Peggy Lu: They came up with the idea [in Venom: Let There Be Carnage,] and then the interesting about that is – another cool thing about Tom is – because I had to imitate what Venom sounds like and how he talks. You know what he did? He says, ‘Hey, let’s put an earpiece, and then you just repeat after me one line at a time.’ Usually, when that has happened to me in the past, lots of times the person would be speaking the entire paragraph, and then I can memorize the paragraph and then repeat, which makes it harder. But what Tom did was so sweet. It never crossed my mind to do this, but he did one sentence, I repeated one sentence, and then we moved on to the next sentence. That is so thoughtful.

Little things that he comes up with, it just blows my mind to where I got to learn from and have to learn from him. I have learned so much from him, how he treats people, how he approached the project, and how thoughtful he is of others. Don’t get me going because I’m going to get all teary. It’s just when you look back, and you think about how considerate people are and you’re so appreciative, and then when you look back, you go, ‘Oh my gosh, what an opportunity. The opportunities that he has given me.’ It’s a lifetime of treasure.

More About Venom: The Last Dance (2024)

In Venom: The Last Dance, Tom Hardy returns as Venom, one of Marvel’s greatest and most complex characters, for the final film in the trilogy. Eddie and Venom are on the run. Hunted by both of their worlds and with the net closing in, the duo are forced into a devastating decision that will bring the curtains down on Venom and Eddie’s last dance.

Check out our other Venom: The Last Dance interviews:

Venom 3 is the third and final installment in Sony’s symbiote trilogy starring Tom Hardy as Eddie Brock. It follows the events of Let There Be Carnage, where the anti-hero fought serial killer Cletus Kasady, and Spider-Man: No Way Home, where Brock was briefly transported to the MCU through the multiverse.

Director

Kelly Marcel

Release Date

October 25, 2024

Studio(s)

Columbia Pictures , Marvel Entertainment , Pascal Pictures

Runtime

110 Mins

Main Genre

Adventure

Expand

Sony’s Upcoming Marvel Movie Release Dates

Release Date

December 13, 2024