Lee Isaac Chung’s “Minari” follows a family of Korean-American immigrants who try to reboot their lives on a farm in 1980s Arkansas. The semi-autobiographical drama finds Steven Yeun essentially playing Chung’s father. But when we discussed his role earlier this month he revealed he had to face his own preconceived notions of his own father to ground the character.
READ MORE: Steven Yeun holds on in the exquisite “Minari” [Sundance Review]
“This character, in my first stab at it, was just so conceptual. He was just not a real person. He was just a concept of a confluence of my own knee jerk reactions to what a man like this is supposed to be,” Yeun says. “He stands like this. He talks like this. And he has like a potbelly or something. And then to do the emotional work, to like, understand that like, “Oh yeah, I actually don’t really understand my father,” and to acknowledge the disconnection that happens in some ways, through immigration and the separation from your parents that happens as an immigrant kid from two cultures. It was painful. I think that was painful and it was scary because I think I felt the pressure of like, “Do I serve as a caricature of this character because people will try to nitpick that this isn’t their dad?” Or do I say, “I got to play just Jacob as his individual self” And of course we know the answer to that, but the journey to get there was difficult because I was unpacking something that was very personal to me.”
Our interview began the day of the 2021 SAG Awards nominations which saw Yeun become the first Asian-American to land a prestigious Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role nomination and we began discussing the three overall nods for the Oscar contender.
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The Playlist: Congratulations on the SAG Award nomination.
Steven Yeun: Thank you.
How did you find out?
I was making breakfast for my kids and my wonderful publicist called me and told me the news. It was pretty cool.
Did you think it was possible?
Perhaps I knew it was possible. I think it’s hard to avoid news these days. We’re all so self-aware. I don’t know what’s happening, but I know. Also, the backdrop of the reality of the pandemic really is sobering.
Yeah.
So I’d love to have had the space to been like expecting or like excited or like wanting it. And I, and don’t get me wrong, I’m honored, but yeah, it was mostly just making breakfast for the kids.
Beyond your individual nomination, how do you feel about the cast earning a SAG ensemble nod?
I think that’s, to me, the most important nomination. That was the coolest feeling, was knowing that the cast is up for ensemble. That to me is the spirit of this thing. Like the thing is, we all do have, there are so many wonderful individual performances, Han Ye-ri, Yuh-jung Youn, Alan [Kim], Noel Cate Cho, Will Patton, so many people, but really it’s just like a confluence of all of our things collectively. I think that’s the spirit of the story. I think that’s the spirit of how the production worked. What I remember experiencing was just like separate artists and energies coming together and servicing this thing and it was beautiful that way. So that was really cool.
When I talked to Isaac, he said that he had reached out to you after he had finished this script, but that he had originally not thought about doing so because you guys are related or tangentially related.
My wife is his cousin.
Ah. But do you remember how you found out about it and what you thought when you first read the script?
We have a shared agent in Christina Chou and she was like, “Hey, I represent your cousin.” And I was like, “Who’s my cousin?” She was like, “Oh, Isaac Chung.” And I was like, “Oh, shit, I didn’t… Oh, that’s so crazy.” And I guess she just signed him. She sent me a script and I immediately read it. But he and I had never talked about working together nor really talked that often. I watched his first film, “Munyurangabo,” when my wife and I first met in Chicago, which was very bizarre to come full circle like that. His first film was out in theaters the year that my wife and I met.
Oh, wow.
Yeah. And then we met at two weddings, ours and another family members and that’s it. And when I read the script, he wrote something very true. He wrote something very honest, and I think he wrote something that was very confident from its own point of view and was kind of beyond and void of a juxtaposition or like, it didn’t need to define itself through any other parameters but itself and through its own story. And I think that was really refreshing to read. That it wasn’t defined by its oppression of the family. It wasn’t defined by the suffering of this family. It wasn’t defined by an identity struggle. It was just, this family knows who they are and they’re just trying to do their thing. And it happens to be a family perhaps that you haven’t seen have that type of a story before.
He also said that when he first gave it to you he said to give me another couple of weeks or months so he could rewrite the role in your voice. Do you remember any specific changes?
I’ll be honest with you, I don’t remember a very big difference. Yeah. Like I think for me it wasn’t like a voice issue. I think what it was, was that I challenged him because I was so scared to take on that role of playing my father’s generation. I was like, “What if I played the son? And what if you like, split the story, like back and forth, like halfway and like it’s from the future, and I play the older version of the son?” And like all of that was dumb. And luckily he didn’t listen to me, but that was me just trying to avoid having to do what was going to be difficult work.
What was the most difficult aspect of the role for you then?
I think what scared me the most was deconstructing the image that I have of my own father and his generation. And understanding that the way that I see him through my gaze is not a humanity that they intrinsically carry. And that was necessary from Jacob’s point of view. That is kind of under-serviced in the Hollywood community. The ways that we talk about our parents collectively is like, “Oh yeah, Asian dads or Korean dads are like this. And like, Korean dads talk like that.” And that’s all the totems we have of those people. And so then, this character, in my first stab at it, was just so conceptual. He was just not a real person. He was just a concept of a confluence of my own knee jerk reactions to what a man like this is supposed to be. He stands like this. He talks like this. And he has like a potbelly or something. And then to do the emotional work, to like, understand that like, “Oh yeah, I actually don’t really understand my father,” and to acknowledge the disconnection that happens in some ways, through immigration and the separation from your parents that happens as an immigrant kid from two cultures. It was painful. I think that was painful and it was scary because I think I felt the pressure of like, “Do I serve as a caricature of this character because people will try to nitpick that this isn’t their dad?” Or do I say, “I got to play just Jacob as his individual self” And of course we know the answer to that, but the journey to get there was difficult because I was unpacking something that was very personal to me.
When I spoke to Yuh-jung Youn she said Isaac didn’t give her a lot of sort of feedback on the character. Did you feel yourself wanting Isaac to tell you more of what he wanted or did he really just let you go off and do your own thing?
He did let me go off and do my own thing. I would kind of ping stuff off of him. I would kind of get to a consensus about Jacob because I think both he and I could relate to that kind of father figure, being fathers ourselves, and also, try to connect to our fathers. And, I think I trusted his experience and his opinion too, but I think mostly he really just kind of left me to humanize this character from my own point of view. Where I felt like I found Jacob, was when I realized in some ways that I am my father and I didn’t play my father by any means. They’re very different people, but I understood that my own natural intentions are not that far off from my father’s intentions. And the humanity that exists for me also exists for him, and that I need to stop thinking of him as this concept, but that I am an extension of his own reality, of his own self as well, in some way. We have a shared experience that way as human beings.
Has he seen the movie?
Yeah.
Was that awkward?
No. I was really excited for him to see it. I was, maybe I was a little bit afraid that they might be like, “Ah, it could have been better,” But [my parents] always been so supportive. I think the really profound thing and really wonderful thing of that experience was turning to him and his kind of acknowledging and putting his hand on my shoulder. We were just hugging and sobbing, and I think it was a real reconnection to him. Things that couldn’t really be spoken, but only kind of told through feeling, was done through this film. And I think for him to have been able to experience that there, in that context next to me? Crazy.
What’s really interesting is, in another timeline, in another world, this movie would have been released months ago. There would have been audience Q and A’s and you would have gotten feedback from people like your dad, or people like Isaac’s dad or related to all this. You haven’t had that opportunity because of the pandemic, but it’s finally coming out in some manner. Are you looking forward to non-industry people finally getting to see the film?
Yeah. I think this has many levels to it. I think this film, for a certain community, namely, the Korean-American community will have its own intrinsic value. I think it’ll, if it does at all, it will be for me it serves as kind of like an acknowledgment of the separation in which we do see generations and that’s a nice first step to reconnection. I think that’s really cool. It is also nice on a level to just be seen, in some way, to like see images of things that you recognize, but have never been really acknowledged in popular culture, on a larger societal scale. It’s just nice to be like, “Well, there’s a movie. And like that rug is my rug or like that dish is my dish.” But I think on a larger scale, what I’m really excited about is – in the confidence that I was speaking of, of Isaac’s script – just having it told from its own perspective and not requiring a juxtaposition to like a white gaze or an American gaze or anything like that. We were really trying to just tap into the humanity of these people. And the feedback that I’ve been hearing from all people, from all walks of life, has just been like, I” can see myself in this family” or like “I deeply relate.” And that’s really what we’re after, different movies for different reasons. I think the backdrop of the pandemic in uch a weird and terrible but beautiful [way] contextualizes this film. We’re all kind of together, whether you’re an actual immigrant or not, living an immigrant-like existence in isolation. The film, the story, and the journey of these people is like an assimilation to each other and not necessarily to a place, but like to each other as human beings, and so maybe that’s the feeling that we’re putting out.
I did want to ask one it’s a silly question, where those real chicks your character is checking?
Yeah, those were real chicks, yeah.
Was that strange? Were they uncontrollable?
No. I mean we learned the technique. My wife’s parents did that for a living and so did Isaac’s parents. So, they gave us tips and pointers and we had a great animal kind of, I’m not sure what the title is, but like, oversight or-
Wrangler?
Yeah, wrangler, that helped us to know how to delicately handle these animals and handle the chicks. I guess it was rough in some ways to know what their real life is. And we were kind of just like navigating like the delicate nature of like having these living creatures, but also, yeah, I don’t know if it was fun. [Laughs.]
The last question I have for you is about the fire sequence. Obviously, you’ve done a lot of action sequences with “The Walking Dead,” but this is an independent movie. In theory a much smaller thing. Isaac said he had “one shot to film it.” Did you feel pressured to have to pull that off?
I don’t know if it was a walk in the park per se, but I think, we shot this film in like 25 days and I love doing single takes because it keeps you honest and on your toes. It also makes me realize that I can really trust the director and the highest praise I can give to Isaac from my point of view is I have utmost confidence and trust in him. We actually just did a lot of takes in one take and a lot of stuff, we just stole shots. You know, the shot of Jacob smoking in the field, and like half praying was like us after a long day, the DP Lachlan Milne was like, “I’m going to grab some sunset B roll.” And I just walked over with him, just like, ’cause I’m like Snoopy like that. And then Isaac turned to me, he was like, “Hey, can we shoot you right now?” And I was like, “Yeah.” And I was like, “I’m going to smoke a cigarette and I’m going to be in character.” And then that’s just stuff just naturally happened, and we used it. So there were a lot of moments like that because this was really just independent filmmaking, like just pointing the camera at places and things and situations and mapping out loose strategies and ideas, and then everyone just really being prepared and on point. I loved it.
“Minari” is now playing in limited release. It will be available on PVOD on February 26.