‘The Copenhagen Test’: Simu Liu Talks Fight Scenes With Melissa Barrera (VIDEO)

A first-generation Chinese-American intelligence analyst, Alexander Hale (Simu Liu), realizes his brain has been hacked, giving the perpetrators access to everything he sees and hears in Peacock‘s The Copenhagen Test. Caught between the Orphanage, the shadowy agency he works for, and the unknown hackers, he must maintain a performance 24/7 to flush out who’s responsible and prove where his allegiance lies. The stakes are high in the series, premiering on December 27. With a high-stakes spy thriller comes thrilling action scenes from Liu and his costar, Melissa Barrera.

Barrera plays Michelle, who’s not all she appears to be when first introduced into the show. The Scream star holds her own next to Marvel’s Shang-Chi action star. Liu sings Barrera’s praises in our video interview above, which took place during New York Comic Con 2025 in October.

“She’s one of the bravest and most courageous people that I know,” Liu says. “I think that permeates every facet of her being, whether it’s who she is offscreen, how she approaches her onscreen process. There’s a lot of actors out there that will very gracefully bow out of an action sequence and look at someone getting the sh*t kicked out of them and say, ‘OK, that’s very cool! We’ll get the stunt person to do it.’ And I think there’s a type of actor that looks at that and is like, ‘Hell yeah, get me in there.’ That’s Melissa Barrera.”

Liu was eager to bring Asian representation to the spy genre. Alexander’s identity as a first-generation Chinese-American informs how he operates in this world and how others see him. The story raises questions about loyalty versus patriotism, Liu explains above with fellow executive producers Thomas Brandon and Jennifer Yale. That patriotism is checked in the titular Copenhagen Test, which viewers will see Alexander undergo in the first scene of the first episode. The US intelligence agency he works for in this not-so-distant future, where brains can be hacked by the internet, doubts Alexander’s loyalty because of his heritage.

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“Mark O’Brien‘s character, Cobb, says it expressly in one of their first scenes together. ‘Because you’re in a first generation, you come from an immigrant family, it just adds a little bit more risk.’ I love that that’s just said, flat-out, point-blank. Alexander’s response is, ‘Thank you for saying that. At least you’re saying it, and you’re not acting like that’s not what’s happening.'”

The Copenhagen Test also stars Brian D’Arcy James and Sinclair Daniel.

Learn how the Copenhagen Test works, why Alexander fails it, and how that kicks off the entire series that comes with a Truman Show-style twist in the video above.