December 7, 2023

Nia DaCosta rediscovered her love of Korean dramas throughout the Covid pandemic, selecting again up with a TV style that she’d particularly been a fan of throughout her teenage years. Associates informed the longer term director of The Marvels that she wanted to take a look at Itaewon Class — a 2020 Netflix collection with a David vs. Goliath story about an ex-con and his associates who attempt to get a diner off the bottom and make it successful in Seoul’s stylish Itaewon district. The lead actor, Park Search engine marketing-joon, ended up wowing DaCosta a lot that she handpicked him when her alternative to direct The Marvels arrived.

“Search engine marketing-joon’s performing in [Itaewon Class] actually impressed me,” DaCosta informed South Korean movie journal Cine21. “After I was provided to direct The Marvels, I believed laborious on who to decide on for the position of Prince Yan. Then, abruptly, Park Search engine marketing-joon got here to my thoughts.”

For these of us who’re always devouring the newest Okay-dramas on streamers like Netflix, that’s a sense we now have no bother understanding. Ask any fan of the style to checklist their elements, and I assure you that PSJ, as he’s generally affectionately referred to, will probably be someplace on that checklist — and more than likely close to the very high. He’s been in all the pieces from Bong Joon-ho’s 2019 movie Parasite to the drama collection File of Youth, in addition to Zen-inducing actuality reveals like Jinny’s Kitchen and Within the Soop: Friendcation.

His most up-to-date roles embrace this yr’s Netflix film Dream, wherein he stars alongside Korean pop star IU as a soccer coach.

In The Marvels, in the meantime, his character Prince Yan has been a bit shrouded in thriller. “We very purposefully didn’t give a lot data [about Prince Yan],” the director stated, talking with Korea JoongAng Every day. “He’s the sovereign ruler of a international planet, and he and Carol [Captain Marvel] have a deep historical past. They each care so much concerning the those who they’re defending, and that’s the place they join.”

PSJ has a mix of film star attractiveness, charisma, and a boyish smile, all of which have allowed him to play all the pieces from romantic results in heartthrobs, associates, and rather more. After watching him in The Marvels this weekend, followers may examine him out in new episodes of Jinny’s Kitchen, that are coming to Prime Video on Nov. 12. For that present, he joined a gaggle of Korean celebrities (together with Tae-hyung of BTS) in opening a Korean road meals restaurant in an attractive city in Mexico. And that components, at the least for me, turned the present into some of the feel-good and enjoyable of the yr.