hanyeri:He’s concerned that one actor isn’t seeing enough appreciation: Yeri Han, who pl

hanyeri:

He’s concerned that one actor isn’t seeing enough appreciation: Yeri Han, who plays Monica, the anxious wife of Steven Yeun’s idealistic Jacob. “In the editing room, she was the one who we were always centering our emotional story around,” Chung said of Han. “It’s her face, it’s her looks, and the way she picks at a bedspread because she’s upset. These little, subtle things that we knew: ‘This is making the film what it is.’” He paused. “And unfortunately, it’s invisible.”

InMinari, Han navigates tricky, emotionally nuanced territory without the sort of melodrama or outsize performances that Hollywood tends to reward. “There are no loud speeches or anything,” Chung told me. “It’s just her being.” That’s the work that all actors do: the very act of being, which can range from emphatic to muted, animated to lethargic, impassioned to impassive. Asian performers are certainly versatile enough to capture that range—and yet tropes such as the “inscrutable Asian” have caused some casting directors to think of Asians as “not very expressive.”

The pervasiveness of such casually racist myths—the inscrutable Asian, the perpetual foreigner, the racialized horde—is foundational to the invisibility of Asian actors during the Hollywood awards season. Given this backdrop, it’s little wonder when a quiet performance like Han’s is overlooked.

— Shirley Li: ‘Minari’ and the Invisible Stars of Asian-Led Movies