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How did you feel when you wrapped the film?<\/strong><\/p>\n YOO<\/strong> First of all, there was a tremendous sigh of relief. I felt this heavy burden was lifted off my shoulders because I\u2019m not at all a person like Hae Sung: I don\u2019t live with a lot of repressed emotions, so it was really, really hard to live in that bubble for those seven, eight weeks. But there was a scene we shot in St. Mark\u2019s Place and one moment in between takes where we didn\u2019t go back into our trailers. We were cherishing the moment because each and every one of us were, at one moment in time, working in that neighborhood as struggling actors and bartending somewhere around the corner. And now we were all leading actors with our names tagged to the back of our chairs in an A24 film in the middle of New York City.<\/p>\n Teo, you came to New York as a young man to study acting but didn\u2019t see opportunities there to play characters you could relate to. How does it feel to come back and star in a film like this?<\/strong><\/p>\n YOO<\/strong> It feels like a dream come true, who am I kidding? To be an East Asian actor and not have to lean against tropes like martial arts and comedy, but to be a romantic lead and be accepted as that with the power of my talent? That\u2019s really something to me. I\u2019m really, really lucky, and I don\u2019t take it lightly.<\/p>\n How close is your current path to the one you imagined you\u2019d be walking?<\/strong><\/p>\n MAGARO<\/strong> Not this at all. I think a similarity between me and Teo is that you\u2019re from Cologne, I\u2019m from Ohio \u2014 we\u2019re from places where this didn\u2019t really exist. I went to school, I stumbled ass-backwards into agents in New York, and I thought maybe I\u2019ll work in regional theater or something like that because the idea of film was so alien to me. I try to keep a level head because it\u2019s weird to work with people who you had posters on your wall of, you know?<\/p>\n YOO<\/strong> Totally.<\/p>\n MAGARO <\/strong>And when you get to work on films like this, it\u2019s surreal. You are part of this magic that you grew up loving and not knowing how to reach. And even for a moment, you get to peek in and touch it and taste it. I\u2019m getting emotional, actually, saying this. It\u2019s beyond words, but no, I never expected this.<\/p>\n YOO<\/strong> Me neither. I mean, in a faint way, in the distance maybe you dream about it and you hope for it. But initially, after my studies in New York, I thought I would be a street performer in Europe, to be honest with you. I really thought I would be performing in parks for children, doing juggling acts. My wife helped me to set my mind into a different trajectory to go to Korea and then get cast in film and television, but I had my mind set on something like a nomad lifestyle.<\/p>\n I guess that\u2019s where we all are coming from: If the industrialized world wouldn\u2019t have had invented the magic of light and cinema, we would still be on the back of a carriage going from town to town, from village to village, gathering people around and telling stories. Now, we just do it in a more heightened and luxurious way.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n