In recalling the "crazy" moment he got the call that he would be starring in Mortal Kombat, Tan told ET's Ash Crossan, "I just lost a crazy job -- a really, really high-caliber level job -- and I heard that news on a plane to Japan and I was, like, devastated."
The job, he confirms, "was for the role of Shang-Chi in the Marvel film." Best known for Netflix's Into the Badlands and an appearance as Shatterstar in Deadpool 2, Tan was a fan-casting favorite for Marvel's Master of Kung Fu. (He is, technically speaking, part of the MCU already, playing Zhou Cheng in one episode of Iron Fist.) Then he got the call that he didn't get it.
"I did this mediation course, and I came back and then I was on my way to Nashville, Tennessee, to race cars at NASCAR -- I was like, 'Maybe I'm the first Asian person to ever be in this place before!' -- and all of a sudden I get a phone call saying I got the role in [Mortal Kombat]," he says. "I was supposed to drive a car that day and I ended up not doing it because I was like, 'Uh oh! I need to be safe now because I've got an opportunity here.'"
As for Shang-Chi, "A friend of mine, Simu, got that part," Tan says. "And I think he's going to do a fantastic job with the material."