Meet Greta Lee, the Star of Past Lives
4:56 a.m. ET
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Ive played a lot of larger-than-life people, Greta Lee said. This is entirely different. I was really attracted to what that could be, and whether or not I could pull it off.
Credit...
Chantal Anderson for The New York Times
Greta Lee shines at playing the entrancing oddball, the scene-stealing weirdo you cant take your eyes off of.
Over the years, the actress has channeled Soojin, an entitled, self-absorbed gallerist who thinks shes poor but isnt (Girls); Hae Won, a nail salon technician who can party with the best of them, in this case, Tina Fey and Amy Poehler (Sisters); and Maxine, the free spirit on Russian Doll caught in an inescapable time loop with her best friend, played by Natasha Lyonne.
What Lee hasnt gotten to play much are characters who are, to use her word,
restrained.
For many actors, restraint is not necessarily something to strive for. A lot of times, as performers, were fighting this unspoken desire to show you can do something, she said. To show that you understand the assignment.
Audiences will get to see a bit more restraint and a lot more of what Lee can do in the A24 drama Past Lives, which opens June 2. After years of making the most of small parts, the actresss talents have long been there to see for anyone with eyeballs, whether she was performing on Broadway (briefly) or in some of TVs most groundbreaking comedies. All that was needed for Lee to move up was the right role in this case, her first leading role, one that almost didnt come her way.
In Past Lives, she plays Nora, a Korean Canadian playwright who reunites with the childhood sweetheart she left behind in Seoul when her family immigrated 24 years before. The film also stars Teo Yoo (
Love to Hate You
) as Hae Sung, the man who still wonders what might have been, and John Magaro (Not Fade Away), as Noras husband Arthur, a writer forced to wonder what might have been, too, when Hae Sung comes to New York for a short but affecting visit.
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Teo Yoo and Lee in Past Lives. Initially the roles went to other performers.
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A24
In many ways, Nora is about as far from Lees roster of scene-stealing roles as you can imagine: measured and still rather than riotous or offbeat; the humor, when it comes, wry. Its a breakthrough performance in a film that has already earned rave reviews (The Times described it as a gorgeous, glowing, aching thing) after it premiered at Sundance and played the Berlin Film Festival earlier this year. The Los Angeles Times called her turn a
extraordinary depths
of her portrayal of Nora.
Ive played a lot of larger-than-life people, Lee said. This is entirely different. I was really attracted to what that could be, and whether or not I could pull it off.
The role almost eluded Lee, an experience she related one afternoon in a coffee shop in the Highland Park neighborhood of Los Angeles. I felt absolutely certain that it was not going to go my way, she recalled.
IF NORA IS NOTHING LIKE many of Lees previous party-girl characters, neither is Lee herself. Shes a mother, for starters, of two young boys with her husband, Russ Armstrong.
On set, Greta is like a Hunter S. Thompson-meets-Fellini character, Natasha Lyonne said in an interview. Shes a total original.
And while Lees characters can seem infinitely too cool to be seen with you or your friends, she herself isnt above getting excited about all sorts of things, including how kind and receptive everyone has been about this latest movie of hers. Im going to show you, she said, pulling out her cellphone. She played a tiny clip she had shot on her phone of the blocks-long line at a recent screening of Past Lives. It keeps going! Still going. Still going. Isnt this completely wild?
Lee, now 40, was born in Los Angeles and spent most of her childhood here. The daughter of Korean immigrants and the oldest of three, she experienced much of her early life as a series of firsts. I was the first kid to be an American citizen in the family, the first to go to school here, just navigating all these things, she said. I always had a burning fire to prove something, either to myself, or to whatever authority figure there was in my life.
Growing up, she loved sports (there are Olympic wrestlers on my dads side) and musical performance. She played the piano, studied opera, sang Liza Minnelli numbers at the local mall, took modern-dance classes, competed in classical music festivals (and won). I know a lot of Italian arias and German art songs, she said.
After high school, Lee attended Northwestern University in the hopes of going into musical theater. Back then it was Miss Saigon, South Pacific, The King and I, she said. Its kind of sad to think about now. It was so limited in what it could be. But it was still enough for me to feel like there was something here that I deeply want to be a part of.
For a time, she hustled for any type of role or gig. I was meeting rejection and obstacles, and I remember feeling constantly like I was falling behind, she said, recalling the five-year stretch when she booked just a few TV episodes.
Still, all that auditioning paid off. In 2010, Lee found herself on Broadway in a revival of La Bte, a comedy in iambic pentameter set in the 17th century and starring David Hyde Pierce and Joanna Lumley. Even then, she was multitasking. I would do that play, and then change out of my corset and walk around the corner to MTVs TRL studios, where I was a VJ.
Supporting parts in celebrated series like High Maintenance, Girls and Inside Amy Schumer followed. In 2019, Lee landed regular roles on the streaming series Russian Doll, which finished its second season last month, and The Morning Show, which has been renewed for a fourth season.
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I think the path I took, as an Asian American woman, was different from what is conventional, Lee said. Certain points in my life during this journey didnt always make sense to other people. But it makes so much sense to me now.
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Chantal Anderson for The New York Times
Lee read the script for Past Lives the following year and was immediately captivated. It really stood out in terms of what a romantic drama could be, she said. Its not a conventional love story or love triangle. And the woman at the center of the story is really different from others Ive seen in other films.
Not long after that first read, I got a phone call from an assistant, asking if I was available for an important meeting at a restaurant in the Village, she said. I assumed I had gotten the job! But the assistant had the wrong number, and it turned out the message, unrelated to Past Lives, was for Greta Gerwig.
In fact, Lee wasnt even being considered for the part. For months, Celine Song, the writer and director of Past Lives, had been looking at other Noras, other Hae Sungs. They cast it with two other people, Lee said.
According to Song, the oversight had little to do with Lee herself
Wednesday, May 31, 2023 at 8:56 am