‘The Copenhagen Test’: Simu Liu & Melissa Barrera Introduce Mysterious World & Characters of New Thriller

Imagine if your whole damn brain got hacked and the hackers could see and hear everything you see and hear. Now imagine that you also work for a top-secret government agency and you have served time in the military where you have definitely seen some things. Now also imagine being Chinese-American at a time where nationalism is rampant and throw in an anxiety disorder just for funsies.

It’s a marvel (get it?) that The Copenhagen Test‘s Alexander Hale (Simu Liu) can stand upright, much less stand up for what’s right. And yet according to the Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings hero, his low-level intelligence analyst is just built to be a good guy.

“I think Alexander begins a story from a place of, I think, extreme competency, but he’s also very unfulfilled about where he is at in his career,” says Liu, who is also one of the exec producers of Peacock’s stylish new high-tech thriller. “And I think it echoes how a lot of people feel just in life. He’s someone who’s kind of proven himself on multiple occasions, but just doesn’t seem to be put up for advancement in the same way as some of his peers. And just for whatever reason, he feels like he hasn’t been given all of the opportunities that he deserved and simultaneously has seen people around him advance in ways that he hasn’t.”

Odd that Alexander hasn’t been given his flowers given “the way that we opened the show…” Liu told us last March on the show’s Toronto set before cutting himself off. Suddenly, it’s as if Liu is experiencing some of the paranoia his character endures, only here, the confidential intel is spoilers. “I think I’m allowed to talk about Alexander’s Special Forces background?” When he gets the thumbs-up from a nearby publicist who has sworn us all to secrecy, he relaxes a little and lays out the show’s opening scene, which revisits the mission in which Hale was forced between following direct orders or making a call to save innocent lives.

Amanda Matlovich/Peacock

“We really wanted to start things off with a bang and open with a really strong sequence that shows the audience exactly what the character is capable of,” he explains. “So being someone who has served in the military at a very, very advanced capacity, you would think that puts him in a position where working in Intelligence, he’s got a lot of tools and a lot of skills. But that feeling of always being passed over for something, it’s something that I definitely feel some sort of kinship to, but I think everybody does. It’s very universally relatable thing.”

Still, he steps up after realizing that the reported mole within his covert department — known as The Orphanage — is actually him and slyly clues in his bosses. Instead of yanking Hale from duty, the higher-ups (which include Brian D’Arcy James and Kathleen Chalfant) decide it’s time to finally activate their asset and “begin to build a Truman Show world around him” to suss out the infiltrators, continues TCT‘s creator and co-showrunner Thomas Brandon.

“And that’s really the story, is these two sides kind of trying to figure out how can they trust each other, how can they get to who hacked him and why they did this and how their lives kind intersect.” Additionally, Brandon notes, “for Alexander…his parents were Chinese immigrants. So he’s first-generation American and we’re really leaning into that story [because]  there are extra questions that come about you, that you have to prove yourself, that you are American, because he didn’t grow up with me like me, because he looks different, because of where his parents are from. There’s this extra step of ‘prove your loyalty’ or ‘prove you can be trusted.’ And those threads are infused throughout the series.”

Also infused into the story are tons of high-octane action sequences, secret identities, red herrings, and myriad twists, including an early gotcha regarding Melissa Barrera‘s Michelle. Initially introduced as a chatty, flirty bartender, it’s soon clear that Michelle plays a key role in the reality being constructed around Alexander by The Orphanage’s story builder, Parker (Sinclair Daniel). Is she more than that? Does she actually have feelings for Alexander? And at the time of our conversation on set, even Barrera wasn’t sure what to think about Michelle.

Christos Kalohoridis/Peacock

“This character is just a mystery,” she confesses with a laugh after Liu slips off to prep for their upcoming scene. “And in every episode, it’s kind of like you learn something new about her that you’re like, ‘Oh, well that’s not what I thought.’ And that was basically me reading every episode, trying to construct the character out of the crumbs that I get because she’s such a mystery and then getting some piece in the next episode where I’m like, ‘Well, now that’s out the window!'”

Without burning the agent she may or may not be, Barrera offers that her involvement in Hale’s mission is a last-ditch effort to get out of the spy game. “She’s been an agent for a while in different organizations, but she’s new to The Orphanage,” the Scream 6 alum divulges, hinting that Michelle’s undercover history is “really bad. So bad that I don’t even know it…There’s a reason that she’s stuck in this position and she has to continue in this lifestyle because she did something really bad in the past. She made a mistake.”

Christos Kalohoridis/Peacock

What that is remains to be seen, but we can confirm that both Barrera and Liu make for a perfect two-pronged weapon of mass destruction, fueled by a sexy playfulness. On set, they were loose and laughing in between set-ups, then intensely connected once cameras rolled on a wildly creative bit staged inside a bathroom (more on that with Episode 6!). And early on in the season, the duo engages in a balletic fight sequence that leaves a library in ruins while also illuminating just how well matched these two are. All despite their very different approaches.

“That is very much what we found in being very specific about the fight styles for each one of the characters,” agrees Brandon’s co-showrunner Jennifer Yale, who praises the stars for elevating their stunt work. “Simu actually was the one who said, ‘I do not want to do anything that would appear to look like my fight style that was in Shang-Chi. So he worked with a military person as well, to really learn what he would have learned as Special Forces.”

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

Well, that certainly sounds like a fun way to Test us!