A creature to melt hearts
Walking Dead star Stephen Yeun tells James Croot why he signed up to save a super pig.
Finally freed of battling flesh-eaters on The
Walking Dead, Steven Yeun is back on screens this week in a very different role.
He plays K, an animal rights activist seeking to save a little girl’s beloved super pig from destruction, in Netflix’s new bigbudget movie Okja.
While on a recent flying visit to Sydney to promote director Bong Joon-Ho (The Host, Snow piercer)’s sci-fi tinged eco-adventure, which also stars Tilda Swinton, Jake Gyllenhaal and Paul Dano, the 33-year-old South Korean actor spoke to Stuff.
What was the attraction of Okja for you?
Just any chance to work with Bong Joon-Ho. He’s one of the masters in my eyes. It was an incredible privilege, especially knowing that he was going to do something meaningful.
Tell us a little about the character of K?
He is someone who is very uniquely in a specific place. He’s someone who is Asian who doesn’t identify with being Asian. He’s an Asian-American who serves as the group’s translator, but the Korean people around him don’t understand him and the American people that he’s around don’t necessarily assume he’s one of them. I spoke with director Bong Joon-Ho about what makes a person such as this join a group like the one that he’s a part of. We went into a lot of detail about that, which was great.
Does a role like this then allow to bring your psychology skills to the fore (Yeun has a degree in psychology from Michigan’s Kalamazzo’s College)?
It’d be really nice to assume that I’ve made any use of that, but I don’t know that I have. I think though that psychology lends itself to an understanding of people. What’s really great is the empathy that comes from playing someone different, or very similar to yourself.
What was it like working with young Ahn Seo-Hyun (who plays Okja’s young heroine Mija)?
She’s wonderful, She’s such a professional, fantastic actor. She carries the whole scene.
Okja itself was created digitally, but I hear you had physical stand-ins called ‘‘stuffies’’. How did you find working with those?
The operators were amazing and able to convey pretty good emotions for something that wasn’t lifelike. Bong Joon-Ho also shared images of what Okja was going to look like and the ‘‘stuffie’’ was dimensional similar, so we kind of knew what we were dealing with.
What I wasn’t prepared for when I saw the finished product though was how intricate the emotion was coming out of this animal. When you look at the eyes of that creature, they kind of bring you in and all of a sudden they take you back to every single animal that you’ve maybe bonded with in your lifetime.
Speaking of bonding, did you actors playing the activist group engage in any team bonding while you worked together?
Yeah, we did and it was definitely very helpful to the final product to be quite honest. Daniel (Henshall), Paul (Dano), Lilly (Collins), Devon (Bostick) and I, we all hung out quite a bit and I think that bled into the work. We wouldn’t rehearse anything, we’d really just go into it.
It was if we were the characters living things for the first time. I guess I was really lucky to be working with really giving, classy, professional actors.
What about working with Netflix?
I think this showed what’s great about them. They didn’t put their hands on anything, they just let director Bong enact his vision.
On that note, tell me about what makes him such a great director?
He’s adventurous. I think he’s very thoughtful, detail-oriented. He’s already fully rendered the idea that he wants in his brain and then he executes that to a T. A lot of directors go into situations and they feel it out, they see what passes the screen and flow with it. I’m not saying that he’s rigid or doesn’t go with the flow, but he has such a pure idea that you get a very unique thing at the end. I think that’s something everyone is trying to reach for.
Although you’d obviously done plenty of stunt-work as part of playing Glenn Rhee on The Walking Dead, was there anything particularly challenging that came up here?
They weren’t like any crazy stunts – although hanging out the truck while it was moving was interesting. I think the stunt where I’m coming out of the Han River was especially disgusting, although kind of fun at the same time.
Continuing on The Walking
Dead theme, did you, like some others, only discover your demise via a knock on the door and a bottle of whisky?
No. I had a close understanding of how the story was going to go for some time. There wasn’t any surprises. It was really organic. Scott (M Gimple, one of the show’s executive producers) was really wonderful about leading me through the process and having me be a part of it as well.
And you had an appropriate send off?
It’s always sad to leave family, but it was really beautiful, wonderful and I think everyone felt a feeling of completeness. That was nice.
Okja‘s ending suggests potential for a sequel. Is that something you’d be up for?
Never say never. I had a really wonderful time with everybody. If it all makes sense, then who knows?
Finally, what do you hope viewers take away from the movie?
I think there’s a lot of layers to this film. Really you could take anything you want from it. You could take the corporate angle, our relationship with nature, talk about food, what it’s really like to love someone or something, our bond with each other, or the nuance of what it is to be good or evil – even if there is such a distinction.
I mean people are just them and they just do what they want to do. Even my character and his friends, they do questionable things for their cause.
I feel that’s the beauty of this film – that it’s more a window or a mirror to the audience and whatever you take from it is whatever you take from it. ❚ Okja is screening on Netflix now.