How to be a star by not giving your all

Lee was not even considered for the role. For months, Celine Song, the writer and director of “Past Lives,” had been watching other Noras and other Hae Sungs. “They cast it with two other people,” Lee said.

According to Song, the surveillance had little to do with Lee himself. The film’s story is loosely based on the true reunion of Song, her American husband and her Korean school friend, which took place when the director was 29. and meaningful,” Song said. “So I was trying to find someone in their 30s, or even in their twenties, and Greta, of course, was in her late thirties.”

“It was really stupid,” Song admitted.

AFTER THE SONG CAME TO HER SENSES, she contacted Lee. A year had passed since Lee first read the script, but she still remembered it: her soulmate movie, she called it. Would she be able to meet Song via Zoom that day? After a video audition that lasted two and a half hours, with Lee reading key scenes while Song played the two male leads (“Celine is an excellent Arthur and Hae Sung,” said Lee), Song offered Lee the part on the spot . .

The shooting of the film started in the summer of 2021. To give the actors the feeling of being reunited with someone after 24 years, in which you only communicated via Skype, Song Lee and Yoo kept apart as much as possible. “She told us you can’t touch,” Lee said.

For Yoo, “during the rehearsal process, the instinct is to say goodbye naturally, with a hug,” he said. “And Celine was like, no, no, no, guys, don’t touch.” I am they were allowed to touch and cuddle, she told them, but Yoo and Lee were chased away when they tried.

Song insisted that the actors were all there and that she never had to berate them to keep them in line. “Is that what they say?” she asked laughing. “No no. I think they wanted to join the trick.”