Steven Yeun is final­ly get­ting his dues

There are so many things about Lee Isaac Chung’s semi-auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal dra­ma Minari which make it mag­i­cal. From Lach­lan Milne’s dreamy cin­e­matog­ra­phy, which trans­ports view­ers to the plains of rur­al Arkansas, to Emile Mosseri’s ethe­re­al score which brings togeth­er choral over­tures with lilt­ing piano and gui­tar melodies, it’s a beau­ti­ful­ly-realised sto­ry of fam­i­ly heart­break and hope. Chung’s script, which blends melan­choly and humour with the phys­i­cal and emo­tion­al labour of try­ing to make a home in a hos­tile land, is beau­ti­ful­ly brought to life through the work of a tal­ent­ed ensem­ble cast.

New­com­er Alan S Kim has cap­tured hearts around the world with his per­for­mance as eight-year-old David, while South Kore­an vet­er­an actress Youn Yuh-jung’s turn as the mis­chie­vous grand­moth­er Soon-ja lights up the screen from the sec­ond she appears. In addi­tion, Han Ye-ri is com­pelling as Mon­i­ca Yi, the moth­er and loy­al wife try­ing her best to sup­port her husband’s dreams of pro­vid­ing a bet­ter future for their fam­i­ly. It’s hard to pick a favourite play­er in the year’s finest ensem­ble, but one mem­ber of the cast is final­ly get­ting his dues: the supreme­ly tal­ent­ed Steven Yeun, who has received a Best Actor Oscar nom­i­na­tion for his role as the Yi family’s deter­mined patri­arch, Jacob.

Draw­ing inspi­ra­tion from the rough-hewn rebel­lious spir­it of James Dean in Rebel With­out a Cause and East of Eden, Yeun presents Jacob as a man torn between his dreams and his famil­ial oblig­a­tions. Although he sees his desire for self-suf­fi­cien­cy and a piece of the Amer­i­can Dream as in ser­vice of his loved ones, he fails to con­sid­er how uproot­ing his fam­i­ly from their Cal­i­forn­ian home to the rur­al mid­west takes its toll, and the more he digs his heels in, the more the frac­tures in their tight unit begin to show. Through phys­i­cal labour and moments of hard-won ten­der­ness, Yeun cre­ates a com­pelling por­trait of a man trapped between mul­ti­ple worlds, as he attempts to rec­on­cile his immi­grant iden­ti­ties (as both a Kore­an and West Coast trans­plant) with his desire for prosperity.

Although Yeun has (quite right­ful­ly!) received plen­ty of praise for Minari, his act­ing career has been going from strength to strength for over a decade, since he received his break­out role as the wise­crack­ing Glenn Rhee on zom­bie apoc­a­lypse dra­ma The Walk­ing Dead back in 2010. Over the course of 66 episodes, Yeun por­trayed a for­mer piz­za deliv­ery dri­ver whose quick-think­ing and resource­ful­ness made him a firm favourite among fans. The romance between Glenn and anoth­er sur­vivor, Mag­gie (Lau­ren Cohan), came to sym­bol­ise a glim­mer of hope in the oth­er­wise dark world of the show, and when Yeun’s char­ac­ter was bru­tal­ly killed off in the show’s sev­enth sea­son, many claimed there was a sharp decline in sub­se­quent quality.

But Yeun couldn’t be stopped. The year after he left The Walk­ing Dead, he had a mem­o­rable sup­port­ing role in Bong Joon-ho’s action-adven­ture Okja as K, an ani­mal rights activist and trans­la­tor who assists Mija and her beloved super pig as they go on the run from the Miran­do Cor­po­ra­tion. It’s a piv­otal role: K ini­tial­ly appears to betray Mija and Okja, and receives a hefty pun­ish­ment for it, but proves his ded­i­ca­tion to the cause in the end. Bong is a huge fan of Yeun; speak­ing to Vari­ety he said, ​“Some­times he feels like the guy next door while oth­er times he car­ries this great sense of mys­tery and secrecy.”

The same year, he led Joe Lynch’s hor­ror-com­e­dy May­hem, about a mys­te­ri­ous pan­dem­ic that makes humans lose their inhi­bi­tions. Giv­en Yeun’s back­ground in com­e­dy (he stud­ied and per­formed improv in and after col­lege) he was a per­fect fit for the role of Derek Cho, an apa­thet­ic lawyer who los­es his cool after being set-up by a col­league and, as the virus sweeps through their office build­ing, exacts his revenge on his con­niv­ing work­mates. Styl­ish, dark­ly fun­ny and glee­ful­ly vio­lent, the strong duo of Yeun and co-star Sama­ra Weav­ing make for a win­ning combination.

Stick­ing with the com­ic side of Yeun’s range, it’s more than worth seek­ing out Yeun’s appear­ance in the first episode of the absur­dist Net­flix sketch show I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robin­son, where he plays a par­ty host who runs afoul of a bath­room faux pas. It’s only a short sketch, but remains one of the show’s most memorable

2018 was anoth­er ban­ner year for Yeun, with roles in Boots Riley’s Sor­ry to Both­er You and Lee Chang-dong’s haunt­ing neo-noir Burn­ing, based on a short sto­ry by Haru­ki Muraka­mi. In the lat­ter, Yeun plays Ben, a smooth oper­a­tor who appears to be hid­ing a dark secret. It was a depar­ture from the more com­ic image Yeun had devel­oped and demon­strat­ed his ver­sa­til­i­ty as a per­former. He’s qui­et­ly unnerv­ing but unde­ni­ably charm­ing as the rich, mys­te­ri­ous antag­o­nist to Yoo Ah-in’s Lee Jong-su.

Yeun has also had an impres­sive career in voice-act­ing too, with roles in numer­ous ani­mat­ed series under his belt, includ­ing Voltron: Leg­endary Defend­er and Troll­hunters: Tales of Arca­dia. In 2019 he joined the cast of Tuca & Bertie, cre­at­ed by car­toon­ist Lisa Hanawalt, play­ing Speck­le the robin: a strait-laced archi­tect and the boyfriend of Ali Wong’s Bertie. In one scene, Speck­le has an idea for a spe­cial din­ner, which con­sists of two dif­fer­ent kinds of oven fries; a moment of pure joy. The show was orig­i­nal­ly can­celled by Net­flix, but will return this year thanks to Adult Swim. Mean­while, Yeun is also voic­ing the lead role in Ama­zon Prime Video’s Invin­ci­ble, about a teenag­er whose father (voiced by JK Sim­mons!) is the most pow­er­ful super­hero on the planet.

Still to come this year is The Humans, direct­ed by Stephen Karam based on his play of the same name, and thanks to Minari, it’s like­ly that we’ll be see­ing plen­ty of Steven Yeun in the future. His suc­cess is rich­ly deserved, but it hasn’t hap­pened overnight. With Minari’s release in the UK, we hope that plen­ty more view­ers will dis­cov­er the range and charm of one of the finest actors work­ing today: it’s Steven Yeun’s world right now, we’re just liv­ing in it.

Minari is avail­able to watch at home from 2 April at minari.film