Steven Yeun
IS SCOPING OUT NEW FRONTIERS…
Before Steven Yeun’s Glenn Rhee died, he made a promise to his lover: “Maggie, I’ll find you…” Instead, the 37-year-old actor has devoted the time since his years as The Walking Dead’s big-hearted zombie survivor to finding roles that upend expectation, delivering him to a richer sense of what he can be. If Glenn had begun to resemble a repository of goodness rather than a complex character, Yeun wanted more: “I’ve got to feel full,” he told GQ. “I’ve got to feel real.”
That pursuit of fullness is paying off big time. Lately, it has steered Yeun to the first Best Actor Oscar nomination for an Asian-American man courtesy of Lee Isaac Chung’s quietly profound Minari. In this sensitive pioneer drama, Yeun brings an acute and unforced sensitivity to the role of Jacob Yi, a father and farmer who moves his family from ’80s California to Arkansas in search of the American Dream, a quest filtered through the immigrant experience.
For Yeun, the role vindicates the off-piste choices he’s made post-Glenn, whose death came as such a shock that even some hardcore Deadheads felt the show lost direction afterwards. Since then, Yeun has turned to indie/arthouse movies, from his union organiser in Boots Riley’s Sorry To Bother You to his unpredictable animal rights activist in Bong Joon-ho’s Okja. Most notably, Yeun lit a stealthy sizzle under Lee Chang-dong’s superlative art-thriller Burning, offering a slippery spin on his good-guy reputation by playing a charming sociopath.
More spins will follow shortly. Yeun will soon be seen alongside Amy Schumer and Richard Jenkins in the Thanksgiving-set family story The Humans, adapted by Stephen Karam from his own play. Yeun also fronted one of Ana Lily Amirpour’s episodes (‘A Traveler’, 2019) of the rebooted The Twilight Zone, whose exec producer Jordan Peele has signed the actor up for his next film. Little is known about Peele’s project, though Yeun’s ever-questing presence is one more reason to get excited for the latest from the director of Get Out and Us. “I think he’s a multifaceted actor with many faces,” said Bong of Yeun. Looks like we’ll be seeing a whole lot more of them. KH
ETA | 22 JULY 2022 / UNTITLED JORDAN PEELE HORROR WILL BE RELEASED NEXT YEAR. THE HUMANS IS TBC.