“I didn’t expect the movie to get this much attention from the audience or from critics,” Youn tellsOscars
“There’s a lot of immigrant stories, but Isaac’s point of view was a ‘level-up’ for me,” she says. “We see immigrants [in other movies] as people who are suffering, discriminated against in America, but ‘Minari’ isn’t just about that. It’s like a bridge between Korea and America. The beauty of this film is that we see how people learn to live with both the American- and Korean-ness.”
Her interpretation of Soonja drew inspiration not only from Chung’s Korean grandmother, but the actor’s lived experience as a single mother of Korean American children. During her short-lived marriage with Korean singer Jo Young-nam, the couple settled next to a Baptist church in St. Petersburg, Fla., where Youn birthed and raised two sons. “That was when I didn’t think about what work was good or bad; I just did it to survive.