Wu Assassins star Byron Mann on The Modelizer – the film is a ‘love letter to Hong Kong’

The actor talks about playing a playboy in Hong Kong-set film The Modelizer, and how his martial arts skills are ‘just basic stuff’

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Byron Mann of Netflix show Wu Assassins in a still from The Modelizer. He talks about the film and how it reminds viewers Hong Kong is a multi-ethnic place. Photo: Berton Chang

Stephen McCarty

Published: 7:15am, 18 Jun 2024

You saw him fight the bad fight as a pulverising, punching, fire-raising triad boss in 2019’s Netflix supernatural thriller series Wu Assassins.

You marvelled at his big-screen bravado when he one-upped Jason Bourne as a microchip-modified super agent in Dark Asset (2023); channelled his inner Bruce Lee in Jean-Claude Van Damme knuckle-cracker Street Fighter (1994); and, most courageously of all, led a feudal Chinese warrior clan while making a 1980s headband look cool in The Man with the Iron Fists (2012).

But now, expect a different kind of action as the Mann of the moment comes home: the between-the-sheets kind of action, prefaced by fast cars, faster girls, exclusive nightclubs and champagne tsunamis in overpriced hotel suites.

Yes, it is Byron Mann as unapologetic Lothario and vain, entitled playboy in the film he calls his “love letter to Hong Kong”. Speaking by video from his Los Angeles home, he reveals how The Modelizer, a passion project in more ways than one), came about.

Mann in a still from The Modelizer. Photo: Berton Chang

“I have a deep love of Hong Kong. And I made this movie for Hong Kong,” says its screenwriter-star. “I was born and lived there until I was 18. Then I would go back every year for months on end, just because I liked living there.