South Florida Sun-Sentinel Palm Beach (Sunday)
Kim perfect fit for ‘Minari’s’ adorable hellion
Zoom, rotating through a collection of dapper miniature blazers and starched shirts. For this interview from his family’s home in Irvine, California, he is wearing a pastel bow tie and collared shirt embroidered with seagulls and boats. While he may not be used to speaking about himself yet, he is comfortable on video chat. He’s in the third grade but has been doing virtual school since March 2020.
On Instagram, he has “like, maybe 2,000 followers?” — but his parents run his account because “I don’t think I’m responsible enough with it.”
Perhaps it was the adoration he was greeted with in Park City last year, but Alan seemed to have an idea that those numbers might be going up soon. Asked if he expects he’ll be famous post-“Minari,” he answered enthusiastically and without haste: “Yes.”
And how will his life change?
“I will have to stay inside all the time,” he said. Or, if outside: “I would have to wear a hoodie and full disguise!”
In “Minari,” Alan plays Daniel, a boy whose desire to run free through the Arkansas wilderness surrounding his family’s new trailer is restrained due to a heart murmur. He is forced to share his bedroom with his grandmother, newly arrived from Korea, who makes him try traditional herbal remedies he thinks taste revolting. Director Lee Isaac Chung needed a boy for the part who could pull off being both adorable and a hellion — “a kid who pees in his grandma’s tea and still somehow doesn’t come across terribly,” he said.
So with just six weeks, casting director Julia Kim set out to find the perfect kid. She needed a child who was fluent in both English and Korean, and, of course, one who physically resembled the actors who’d already been hired to play his parents (Steven Yeun and Yeri Han).
“As you can imagine, that’s not a long database,” said Kim. Knowing she’d be unable to rely solely on young actors with talent representation, she drew upon her connections within LA’s Korean American community. In Koreatown, Kim visited churches and after-school programs, asking administrators for permission to quietly observe from a distance.
To broaden the scope of her search, Kim decided to visit the office of a local Korean newspaper. The next day, the daily publication ran a notice about the “Minari” casting call that included a photograph of Youn, 73, an actor who is revered in South Korea.
A couple of weeks later, emails started trickling in — one from Alan’s representative at a boutique agency. He’d never acted before, something his audition tape made obvious. In it, Alan’s actions were exaggerated; when he pretended to take a bad-tasting medicine, he scowled and yelled in an over-the-top fashion.
“But I still kept watching his tape because I found him so funny,” said Chung, the director. “I was kind of worried about whether or not he could take direction, and needed to see if he could do things in a more natural way instead of a stage way. And he does. There’s such an honesty to what he’s doing.”
Alan’s mother, Vicky, was on set for the entire 25-day shoot, fanning her son when temperatures soared above 90 degrees and keeping his juice box collection well stocked.
Vicky used hand motions to help Alan remember his lines and reminded him not to rush, “because if the words came too fast, the scene would have to be done again,” he said she told him.
But because Alan’s mother was more comfortable speaking Korean, the film’s second assistant director, Steve Hannan, became another vital on-set Alan-whisperer. Hannan — who has a son around Alan’s age — noticed early on that the young actor was becoming “a little kinetic” between takes during his six-hour days.
“So I took it upon myself to keep him positive about the whole experience,” Hannan said. “I’m a big guy, so I would put him up on my shoulder or let him crawl on my back. But I tried to talk to him like a professional, pointing out things about set etiquette.”
Which isn’t to say that the then-7-year-old got special treatment. Because of his experience working in print advertisements, he knew that being on a set meant “he had to be serious,” Chung said.
“And we had to keep that atmosphere going for him to respect him as a professional,” the director said. “After a couple of days, we set the rule that no one baby talks to him or overly celebrates when he does a great take or something. Treat him like a pro, and he’s going to act like a pro.”
In June, Alan will start filming his second movie, a dark comedy called “Latchkey Kids.”
“The choices he makes now are really important,” said Kim, the casting director. “… If you have a kid like Macaulay Culkin, you keep sending them in for the same thing, and it gets stale after a while. It’s about surprising the audience and letting him stretch his wings as an actor. Alan was the perfect fit for this film, but he also has the chops to have longevity.”