DIVA VELEZ CHATS WITH THE STARS OF THE KOREAN BLOCKBUSTER FILM
Song Kangho
LMD: In our last interview, we spoke of the difference of emotional levels between Hollywood actors and Korean actors. You said, “Korean actors try to shake the audience’s emotions; they try so hard to express their emotions. So, good actors in Korea, they hide their emotions, like Song Kang-ho. When he acts, he doesn’t show his emotions, and I think people like that.”
So, tell us what you learned from working with him?
CW: Having this kind of experience on the set, it was almost like the best lesson. It was like school, almost. I learned many things from Song Kang-ho. This time I learned that he’s always in character. It’s not like method kind of style, but he tried to be very focused even though we are like laughing behind the scenes, but he’s always on point, always on the edge, focused. So, you know, he’s one of those figures that you can just go watch him acting, and it’s like watching a five hour lesson.
The term “God of Acting” gets thrown around pretty freely these days. However, LMD got to meet the real deal.
In his fourth collaboration with Bong Joon-ho, (after MEMORIES OF MURDER, THE HOST and SNOWPIERCER), South Korea’s superstar, Song Kang-ho, exclusively revealed the common man appeal of the Palme d’Or-winning PARASITE, why the director’s relentlessness keeps him coming back for more, and stops to praise a certain interviewer along the way.
(PS: Be warned! – Song reveals a PARASITE spoiler midway through the second question.)
Dig it!
The Lady Miz Diva: I was the first person to interview Director Bong Joon-ho during his first US press for THE HOST ten years ago, so I feel like I have been waiting a long time to meet you. Please tell us what is special to you about your collaboration with Director, and how it has grown or changed from MEMORIES OF MURDER through PARASITE?
Song Kang-ho: Director Bong has received more than twenty years of love and attention from the industry in Korea. What I really like about him is his realism; his worldview on the society and the people that we live with. I feel like his views have become more relentless, persistent, and meticulous over the years, and I think PARASITE is really the concentrated result of all those years of effort.
LMD: Are you an actor who has to find the humanity in, or be able to identify with your characters? What did you find in Ki-taek that you clung to to create him? What was the aspect of him that stood out to you most?
SKh: Ki-taek appears to be a bit indecisive, not very able. He’s certainly not an able provider for the family; but I suspect that he wasn’t like that from the beginning. That he, like everyone else, always had hoped to provide for the family, to give them a comfortable environment, just like any average guy. But unlike his intention, or desire to do so, the world was difficult to fight, so he was sort of left on his own, and the odds weren’t in his favor.
So, I think this pessimism on his part, which you really see in the gymnasium scene, where he tells his son that no plan is the best; I don’t think he’s always been like that. This sort of pessimism comes from a sense of defeat on his part, because he’s never been able to win in the society. So, from my perspective, Ki-taek is actually very average, very ordinary. So, he might seem like a strange, special character, but I think there were are a lot of aspects in him that are very relatable.
Even his very sudden violence at the peak of the film, stabbing the owner of the house; that looks out of the ordinary, but even that, I felt that there was a certain way in which his actions made sense. That when his pride was hurt -- the last remaining bits of his dignity and his pride were hurt by the owner’s words -- it wasn’t really out of hatred against the owner, but it was really out of this desperate sense of trying to grab onto the last bits and pieces of his dignity. It was an expression of that.
LMD: You clued in on my favourite shot in the movie: It’s the scene after the flood, in the gym/shelter; Ki-woo and Ki-taek are talking in the dark. Ki-taek, defeated and depressed, tells his son “There is no plan.” Ki-woo says “Dad, I’m sorry for everything.” In that scene, I felt like I didn’t see Song Kang-ho and Choi Wooshik anymore; you had transformed into father and son.
I’ve always been fascinated by your acting technique. Mr. Choi said you stay in character’s frame of mind pretty much for the whole filming. Does staying in the frame of mind of the character help you to melt into that character’s skin the way you do so beautifully in your films?
SKh: It’s a trade secret! {Laughs}
LMD: I’ll write it in English, so nobody in Korea can understand it!
SKh: {Laughs} Just kidding! To be honest, I’m not the type of actor who really goes out of the way and struggles to try to be the character. But if I am really deserving of such a positive evaluation, which I thank you for, I think it’s less about absorbing myself into the character, but rather I try to understand the larger framework of the film -- the larger narrative. And I try to think about what is the essence, what is the message that I need to send across to the audience? So, I think me looking very natural in the character is sort of like a byproduct of that kind of effort.
Choi Wooshik
In the two years since Choi Wooshik made his appearance in Bong Joon-ho’s OKJA, the sky has been the limit. Choi has rocketed from bit parts in television dramas, to award-winning feature performances in SET ME FREE, and co-starring in blockbusters like TRAIN TO BUSAN, to lie at the center of Director Bong’s Palme d’Or-winning masterpiece, PARASITE.
Having graced The Lady Miz Diva with his very first overseas, English-language interview in 2017, Choi and LMD reunite to talk exclusively about his second time around with Director Bong, learning at the knee of acting legend, Song Kang-ho, and a possible place in Hollywood.
Dig it!
The Lady Miz Diva: When we spoke back in 2017, it was on the occasion of your first Bong Joon-ho experience in a small role in OKJA. You were so impressed and thankful to him for hearing you out and guiding you through your nervousness, then. What was it like to work together the second time?
Choi Wooshik: I was dead nervous when I was filming PARASITE. I had a lot of pressure on my shoulders. But when he first approached me after OKJA, he told me I should stay skinny, because Ki-woo needs to be really skinny and kind of looking vulnerable.
At first, he really didn’t tell me about any information about PARASITE; he just gave me a little bit of a hint. But after that, finding out that Ki-woo plays a very important role in his family, I almost cried because it was so emotional. And when I was reading the script, it was just amazing, the shifts of tone, and all the characters in play, it was crazy. I felt like I was riding on a roller coaster. {Laughs}
LMD: You told me about how detailed he was even with the small part you played in OKJA. Since there is so much more of you in this role, did he have that same level of detail and instruction for this film, or did you have more free interpretation?
CW: I mean, he’s always giving us freedom of performing our characters, but he has very compact and unique and strong storyboards. You know he draws, right? So, his storyboards have a lot of details that we could catch on.
Also, he always mentioned that Ki-woo is not dumb: Ki-woo is a really bright kid, but he wasn’t lucky enough to get into university, or he kind of lacks of vigor. And Ki-woo knows vigor is really important, so that’s why he pretends to be a guy with a lot of vigor, and teaching Da-hye that vigor is really important. But he didn’t have his luck with exams, so his downfall was kind of the exams for university, but he is a really bright kid.
LMD: I’m impressed by the way Bong presents Ki-woo’s family: One might expect them to be kind of sniping and mean to each other, being in such poor and run-down circumstances, but they are completely unified. They adore and support each other.
That depiction is rare because it would be so easy to play that for laughs, but that’s not what Bong does. Not only is that great writing, it’s also excellent chemistry between the actors.
CW: Right. If you are facing some economic or money problems, you tend to be very on edge; you can’t be nice all the time. But this family is always loving, even though they’re facing a hard time with money. But with our family chemistry, it kind of built up just naturally.
In the States, they have trailers for every actor {on movie sets}, right? But in Korea, we don’t have any trailers; we would just stay in the same greenroom, just talking about our daily lives, like real family do. And we would ask Song Kang-ho for advice on some hard or difficult scenes, then he would just give us advice like a real father. He was a real father figure on the set. I mean, Park So-dam, who plays Ki-jung, we still call him "Papa," so… {Laughs}
LMD: You mentioned during a Q&A that you all had stayed on the set for two months. What was that like? Every day would you come in and everybody was just hanging out?
CW: Exactly. Right after you wake up, you go to the set, you get ready for your shooting, and even right before you go to sleep, we were always together, just talking about our daily lives over casual drinks sometimes, like family.
Park Sodam
LMD: The film has been such a huge success in South Korea. A lot of times when you have a film that holds a mirror up to society, society doesn’t like what it sees, but people are really loving this movie. What do you believe audiences are responding to?
SKh: Actually, I think the respect for Director Bong Joon-ho is really huge. There is always anticipation, excitement, for any new work coming from him. And to be brutally honest, I think the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival also helped a lot.
There was almost this national sense of pride that everyone sort of basked in because it was the first time that a Korean film won that prize. But of the two aspects, I think the former; the trust and excitement about the director was actually bigger.
After facing the rejection of 17 failed auditions a month, Park So-dam held to her dream, and is now one of South Korea’s most sought-after actresses.
Receiving worldwide acclaim for her role as the crafty, whipsmart baby sister of PARASITE’s family of scammers, Park spoke exclusively with LMD about working with Director Bong Joon-ho, facing failure, and calling acting legend Song Kang-ho, “Appa” {Dad}.
(PS: Be warned! – Ms. Park reveals a PARASITE spoiler at the end of the third question.)
Dig it!
The Lady Miz Diva: Choi Wooshik told me when we interviewed for OKJA that Bong Joon-ho was the greatest Korean guy he ever met. That Bong was so open and cool and caring about his actors, and didn’t stand on formalities: So much so, that Wooshik said “I don’t think he’s really Korean.” What was your first experience like with Director Bong?
Park So-dam: For me, and any actor or actress in Korea, the name Bong Joon-ho, itself; the presence his name has for us in our profession is huge. And when I first met him, he is also huge in person {Laughs}. Wooshik refers to him as a “teddy bear,” in which case, I agree with him, because he has this grandiose energy and presence within him, but he still has this funny and comical and cute side of him as a person.
And to talk about how he is in a work setting, and on set; because I had met him many times before we started shooting, and in our normal conversation, I still found him very funny and a witty person, but on set sometimes he would even show us physically what he was looking for; whether was dancing, or moving.
But sometimes when I was talking to the other actors or actresses about how to portray this character, Director Bong would always come and tell me that “You are Ki-jung.” Nothing else, “You, as a person, are Ki-jung.”
Those words really meant a lot, and basically provided a strong base for me to just focus on the acting, itself. And from that, I was able to learn how amazing he is as a director, and also as a person.
LMD: Perfect segue. Who is Ki-jung? Please tell us how you first read the character of Ki-jung? What were the points of her in the script that made you able to understand and create her?
PSd: Ki-jung -- the facts are she’s the baby in the family, and she does sometimes come off as the most adventurous and progressive, but also very realistic out of the four Kim family members. But in reality, she’s very saddening, sometimes, and very heart-aching, because the amount of tests and exams, and the cuts that she didn’t make.
She seems like someone who’d never complain about it: Her only outlet was the little pouch that she hid on top of the toilet, with the cigarette case and the money. But she is definitely someone who would never talk to other people about her problems, and in that sense that’s why it was heartbreaking, because she felt that her only outlet was that cigarette box and nothing else.
But when Ki-jung starts going to the rich house, and takes on the role of Jessica, it was very cathartic as someone who was playing that role, because she was finally able to utilise every single skill that she had, and finally was able to use the tools that she’s been wanting to, but was never given the platform to do so.
LMD: Again, perfect segue. I was fascinated by Ki-jung because she is an amazing person: She is incredibly intelligent, talented, charming, and powerful the way she handles the Park mother and son, and their driver. She should be a CEO somewhere with all her brains, yet she is scamming WiFi and forging documents. I wondered why she lived like this? Also, why she seemed pretty okay about it?
Was that part of Director Bong’s commentary about how it’s hard for even very bright people to get work in Korea?
PSd: Really, it’s the reality that we live in, and the society that we live in, especially in Korea, but also anywhere in the world. Even my own brother and sisters, I’ve been on their side seeing them trying to look for a job. I myself had to prepare for the college entrance exams, and go through auditions in addition to building portfolios. It’s a lot.
It’s not just about having a talent. And yes, there are a lot of amazing talents out there with hopes and dreams to become amazing actors and actresses, but the reality isn’t that easy.
And myself, when I graduated from college six years ago, and I decided to become a full-time actress, I would take an average of seventeen auditions a month, and I would fail at all seventeen of them, month after month. I would go through slumps, and I would be depressed, and I would also think about, ‘Do I want this as a career? Is this my future?’
But I do think that Ki-jung is someone who went through that even longer than I have in my real life, and that allowed her to have been more solid background and backbone, and I think it will happen for her in the future…