Love Hurts' Ariana DeBose and Ke Huy Quan on living and loving authentically

“Hiding ain’t living," Ariana DeBose’s take-no-prisoners character Rose repeats like a mantra in the action/comedy/romance Love Hurts. From director Jonathan Eusebio, the film stars Oscar-winner Ke Huy Quan as Marv, a happy-go-lucky suburban real estate agent whose past comes back to upend his life and drag him back into life as a trained killer with his kingpin brother Knuckles (Daniel Wu). Meanwhile, Rose, previously a lawyer for Knuckles, is ready to “flip the table,” Debose says.

(Editor's note: the below contains spoilers to the film Love Hurts.)

Glossy, fun, and teeming with killer fight sequences, Love Hurts’ also leans into second chances and living authentically. While Marv falls in love with real estate and finding homes for people to build their lives, Rose, who conspired to cheat Knuckles out of money, resurfaces to finish business with his shady business associates and with Marv, who's in love with her and set her free rather than offing her per his brother's orders.

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“You’re meeting a woman who's very clear that she had taken a path that was questionable and was given a second chance by [Marv]. But I think you're meeting her when she has made the active choice to flip the table and ask questions later. And I really liked that. I thought it was liberating. A little unhinged, totally unhinged,” DeBose says. “But she's doing it from this space of, not only do we deserve a second chance, we deserve a second chance to live in the fullness of our personhood. And you only get to do that when you acknowledge your past.”

Ariana DeBose as Rose in Love Hurts Courtesy Universal Pictures

Having left a life of organized crime behind, Marv is the picture-perfect boss at his firm, doling out heart-shaped cookies for Valentine’s Day and looking out for his assistant, Lio Tipton’s sardonic Ashley. The notion of second chances resonated for Quan, a child star in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and The Goonies, whose role in The Daniels’ Everything Everywhere All at Once catapulted him back into the spotlight and landed him the Best Supporting Actor Oscar in 2023.

“[Marv] wants to build homes for people. And aside from wanting to redeem himself, he really wants a second chance. And it shows when you see how passionate he is in his really very mundane life, it was nine to five doing the same thing over and over again,” Quan says. “But it is that second chance that I really resonate with and relate to because on a personal level, I certainly wouldn't be here if The Daniels didn’t give me my second opportunity and bring me back. So that's what I love about this movie.”

Ke Huy Quan as Marvin and Lio Tipton as Ashley in Love HurtsCourtesy Universal Pictures

Love Hurts has staged suburban homes, comedy from heavies Marshawn Lynch and Cam Gigandet, and a pair of love stories set around Valentine's Day. One blossoms between Ashley and the professional killer/poet The Raven (Mustafa Shakir) and the other between Marv and Rose. But the latter couple must come to terms with their pasts before they can fully love one another.

For DeBose, who in 2022 made history as the first queer woman of color to win an Academy Award for her role as Anita in West Side Story, Rose’s ethos, "Living ain't hiding," is weighted, especially at this political moment when LGBTQ+ people are the target of increased attacks from the new administration.

Lio Tipton as Ashley, Ke Huy Quan as Marvin, and Mustafa Shakir as The Raven Courtesy Universal Pictures

“There's so much I want to say about this. It's very loaded. You never know when a film is actually going to be given to the world,” DeBose says. “So I find it intriguing that it's being given to the world right now as an individual. I subscribe to Rosa's ethos. “Hiding ain't living. And I actually don't think that anyone should have to hide who they are.”

“I understand, given the way the world seems to be wagging at the moment, stealth is a choice made from safety, but it's not what you deserve. You deserve the opportunity to embrace all of who you are, all of your personhood, to go and live a full life. And I think Rose in her own way, that is her whole pursuit of just trying to balance the damn scales.”

"You are watching a woman who has done maybe some questionable things in her past. She has been given a second chance. But you watch the world push her to a point of having to interrogate others in a certain way just to get an answer," DeBose says. "How many women, people of color, queer people, feel like they're pushed to a limit just to get an answer these days? I think there's many ways to relate to her, even though she's giving unhinged, but behind it all, there's an intelligence and there's a real genuine, just love for another person that's like, we all deserve better, we deserve more."

Love Hurts is in theaters now.