Lim Yu-Beng on family reactions to his [spoiler] scene in Zack Snyder’s Rebel Moon; teases upcoming ‘sweet, adorable’ US project

SPOILER ALERT: This article mentions plot points, including the fate of a character in Rebel Moon — Chapter 1: Chalice of Blood.
Back in December 2023, 8days was really stoked about speaking to Singaporean actor-singer Lim Yu-Beng about his latest project: Rebel Moon, Netflix’s highly-anticipated sci-fi magnum opus from Man of Steel director Zack Snyder. 
Inspired by Snyder’s love for George Lucas’ Star Wars and Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai, Rebel Moon follows two farmers on the agrarian moon Veldt (Sofia Boutella and Michiel Huisman) as they enlist a motley crew of badass freedom fighters (Djimon Honsou, Charlie Hunnam, Ray Fisher, Bae Donna, Cleopatra Coleman and E Duffy) to help defend their town against the Motherworld — Space Nazis! — where Ed Skrein (Deadpool) serves as its unflinchingly sociopathic emissary Atticus Noble (trust me, there’s nothing noble about him).
The tale is so epic that it’s split into two instalments, Part 1: A Child of Fire, and Part 2: The Scargiver. Per IMDB, Yu-Beng plays a character named Heron and very little is known about him then.
And it would stay that way for a while: A Child of Fire dropped on December 22 but Yu-Beng’s footage was all left on the cutting room floor (even though he was briefly in the trailer), at least in this initial milder, shorter, and family-friendly iteration.
Cue to eight months later, August 2 to be precise, Heron, sorry, King Heron, finally sees the light of day in the longer, bloodier, more bonkers director’s cut of the saga, now rechristened Chapter 1: Chalice of Blood and Chapter 2: Cure of Forgiveness.
With that, balance is finally restored in the universe and everyone can rejoice and get back to their lives. “Well, thank you very much, first of all, for that sentiment,” Yu-Beng, 58, tells me over Zoom.
Yu-Beng is no stranger to American productions. He’d also appeared in the Chow Yun-Fat-Jodie Foster-led historical epic Anna and the King, the David Carradine-starring Kung Fu Killer, and an episode of martial arts crime drama Max series Warrior.
The only difference is “[Rebel Moon] was the first one that was actually shot on US soil [in Los Angeles],” he adds.

Family ties: Yu-Beng promoting the latest winter wear with his screen family, (from left) Rayne Bidder (as Queen Maia), Maeve Garay (daughter Calliope), Keira Wheeler (daughter Clara), and Sky Yang (son Aris).
Yu-Beng’s Heron turns up early in Chalice of Blood, where he’s seen making a valiant last stand against the Motherworld forces that have invaded his kingdom.  Defeated, he comes face to face with Atticus Nobel and meets a horrific demise. Remember that scene Steven Yeun gets his melon bashed to bits in The Walking Dead? Heron’s death is reminiscent of that: An excruciating watch. 
Which is probably why he doesn’t want his parents to see it, Yu-Beng says. But the rest of his family — including ex-wife Tan Kheng Hua and their daughter Lim Shi-An — have seen it and are cool with it. “My family is kind of a film family,” he quips. “We’re all quite used to all the [make-believe] stuff. We know how it’s done. And so we just enjoy the craft.”
Yu-Beng also shares that his scenes, filmed in 2022, were shot over eight days spanning a few months, and involved animatronic creature effects, tons of stunts and one dummy double.
“All the fight scenes are all me,” he points out. There was, however, one moment which required his stunt double and action choreographer Victor Thi Lopez (“marvelous, marvelous guy”) to step in. 

Grin and bear it: “There were many scans of me, but this was specifically for the dummy, with special focus on the head, which had to get smashed on set,” says Yu-Beng. And speaking of dummy…
Crash test dummy: “The very meticulously created dummy of me, which gets it’s head smashed in,” says Yu-Beng. “The scanning and digital capture required to make this was amazing.”

Seeing double: “Victor Thi Lopez, who was my stunt double, but more importantly, he choreographed the fight sequence that I did, which was conceived without a stunt double because it’s one continuous shot, so the fight is all-in-one,” says Yu-Beng. “An absolutely magnificent guy.”
When he wasn’t filming, Yu-Beng was busy putting the finishing touches to his debut album, Notes to Self, a collection of nine songs he’d previously performed live in 2015.
He had been putting off the recording for year and just when he was about to lay down the tracks, he got the call for Rebel Moon.
“I was sort of working on it from LA while my co-producer was here in Singapore,” he says. “We were communicating and sending drafts to each other. So all that was happening simultaneously [with the Rebel Moon shoot].”  
Notes to Self came out on January 30 this year.
Next on Yu-Beng’s slate is another American production: Worth the Wait, a romantic-comedy which marks the US directorial debut of Taiwanese filmmaker Tom Lin Shu-Yin (the Golden Horse Award-feted The Garden of Evening Mists).
Filmed in Vancouver and Kuala Lumpur, Worth the Wait centres on the interconnected lives and romances — a la Love Actually — of an all-Asian ensemble cast.
Yu-Beng says the movie will surprise viewers who only knew some of the actors from action flicks — notably, Sung Kung (the Fast & Furious franchise), Elodie Yung (Daredevil) and Andrew Koji (Warrior).
“These people [have played] killers and they’re doing this sweet rom-rom, and it’s so sweet because all these guys have that in them,” Yu-Beng enthuses. “It’s so adorable to get all these action guys doing this — it’s amazing!”
Other cast members include Ross Butler (13 Reasons Why), Lana Condor (To All the Boys), Osric Chau (Supernatural), Karena Lam (American Girl), and — this is interesting — Tan Kheng Hua.
But that’s another story for another time. 
Watch my interview with Yu-Beng here where he talks more about being on Zack Snyder set, his character’s brutal exit, and how scary — and terribly sweet — Ed Skrein really is.
Rebel Moon — Chapter 1: Chalice of Blood and Chapter 2: Cure of Forgiveness are now on Netflix. Notes to Self is on Spotify. Worth the Wait has no release date yet. Watch more exclusive 8Days interviews on Mediacorp YouTube Channel.
Photos: Netflix, Lim Yu-Beng