Andrew Schulz on playing Dan Hibiki in ‘Street Fighter’: ‘It’s like choosing an MLS team on FIFA’

From discovering that Dan Hibiki was designed to humiliate opponents to beating the ‘Street Fighter’ game director with him, the stand-up comedian discusses childhood arcade rivalries, Hollywood’s video-game obsession, the cast’s actual fighting abilities and why his own contribution to the film was best left to comedy rather than abs

Published - October 13, 2026 06:08 pm IST

Andrew Schulz as Dan Hibiki in ‘Street Fighter’ | Photo Credit: Legendary Pictures

Andrew Schulz is such a charmer. Mere seconds into our chat, it was already apparent that the American stand-up comedian, actor and podcaster knew exactly how to work his crowd. Before I could thank him for taking the time out to speak with me, he beat me to the pleasantries: “Ayaan! It’s great to see that hair on video, man!” This was a first for me: an interviewee who had actually done his homework on me before the interview. “Anything for The Hindu, man. I saw you interview Christopher Nolan, dude. Thank YOU for taking the time.” I blushed.

What’s funny is that anyone familiar with the New Yorker’s stand-up specials will know that an almost pathological disregard for playing nice are central to his comedic style. It’s probably why he was recruited for Legendary Pictures’ new adaptation of Capcom’s iconic fighting-game franchise Street Fighter — what better character for Andrew to play than Dan Hibiki?

Introduced in Street Fighter Alpha, Dan Hibiki is a gag character addition to a franchise populated with self-serious martial artists; a brash, overconfident wannabe whose actual abilities rarely justify his inflated self-belief. Andrew was unfamiliar with the character when producer Cale Boyter approached him about the role. “I didn’t know anything about Dan. I’m old, so I played the early iterations of the game,” he said. A little research revealed that Dan had been created to poke fun at a rival videogame franchise, making him an especially humiliating choice in a competitive match. “If you choose Dan, you’re basically saying that the guy that you’re playing sucks so bad. It’s like you’re playing FIFA and you choose an MLS team. That’s what Dan’s the equivalent of. (Shout out to the MLS, we’re doing our best).” What appealed to Andrew though, was that Dan remains blissfully unaware of his shortcomings. “He thinks he’s as good as the rest. He thinks he can do a little bit of it all.” His charm, Andrew reckoned, lay in precisely that delusional optimism, which he felt his own comedic instincts could bring to the role.

Andrew Schulz as Dan Hibiki in a still from ‘Street Fighter’ | Photo Credit: Legendary Pictures

First released in arcades in 1987, Capcom’s Street Fighter helped define the fighting-game genre, with its sequel spawning a global arcade obsession that would eventually face competition from franchises such as Mortal Kombat and Tekken. Andrew’s own relationship with the game however, began long before any of that mattered. “I played Ryu. We called him ‘Rai’. I think it wasn’t until I was in the movie that I realised it’s been Ryu the whole time.”

Growing up on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, he remembers being repeatedly thrashed by Sagat and managing to defeat Vega exactly once, a victory he still seems reluctant to overstate. “There was this thing in the earlier iterations of the game where Vega, the character with the claw, would climb on the fence when he was starting to get low on power. I remember as a kid, you had to attack while doing that flying upper-cut. And I just could never manage to get it.” His eventual victory over Vega offered little respite, since Sagat proceeded to dominate him for hours. By middle school, the obsession had migrated to Marvel vs. Capcom, which he and his friends played at a deli near 70th Street during their 40-minute lunch breaks at Wagner Middle School. Andrew would pilfer coins from his parents’ change saucer, buy an 80-cent buttered bagel and spend whatever remained on the arcade machine. “It was just the best game ever.”

A still from the ‘Street Fighter’ arcade game | Photo Credit: Capcom

The 2026 adaptation isn’t Street Fighter‘s first trip to the big screen. The 1994 film, starring Jean-Claude Van Damme as Guile, has since acquired cult status, although Andrew hasn’t felt compelled to revisit it. “I’ll be honest with you. I didn’t watch it. I just remember it being horrible.” He does, however, have a soft spot for Raul Julia, whose performance as M. Bison was informed by the actor’s terminal cancer diagnosis and his desire to make the film for his children, who loved the game. “He just gave everything to the role. So there’s some cool lore to it.” His reservations about the film’s casting, meanwhile, are considerably less sentimental. “Guile can’t have a foreign accent. This is the American guy. He’s literally wearing an American Army outfit. And he sounds like he’s from Luxembourg.” Andrew reckons the new film has at least got that much right.