'No need to compare with De Niro': Choi Min-sik and Han So-hee on Korea's 'The Intern'

Choi Min-sik and Han So-hee play silver intern Ki-ho and CEO Seon-u in the Korean remake

A chemistry that transcends a 30-year age gap, on screen and off

'Comparison is inevitable — we just had to show what's ours'

A scene from "The Intern" [Warner Bros. Korea]

Opening Wednesday, the Korean remake of "The Intern" draws on the beloved 2015 Hollywood film that starred Robert De Niro and Anne Hathaway. The Korean version is a warm, low-key office comedy centered on Seon-u (Han So-hee), the young CEO of a fashion brand called WOO22 that has grown to 10 billion won ($7.47 million) in sales within three years of its founding, and Ki-ho (Choi Min-sik), a veteran "silver intern" with 37 years of work experience. The chemistry between the two leads, separated by more than three decades in age, extends well beyond the screen.

Ahead of the film's release, Han and Choi sat down separately for interviews at a cafe in Jongno-gu, Seoul, yet both spoke — almost as if by prior arrangement — about the same moments on set: learning from each other, respecting each other. Their experience of becoming a team despite a gap of more than 30 years mirrored, naturally and without effort, the story of Seon-u and Ki-ho that the film tells.

Every remake is born with the fate of being compared to its original. For better or worse, the benchmark is always the work that came first. That pressure only multiplies when the original is as beloved as this one, and when the characters to be inhabited were played by two Hollywood icons.

There was pressure. But it was never a reason not to try. Both actors gave the same answer, almost in unison: "We just thought we had to show what's ours."

"If you flip it around, it's actually a simple matter," Choi said. "Being compared to the original was something I anticipated from the moment I decided to do this. If it's unavoidable, I thought, let's just work hard and show what we've got."

He drew an analogy from music, citing singer Han Young-ae's cover of "Bonguri," a song by the late Kim Min-ki. "She didn't sing it with a competitive spirit or fear of having to outdo the original, yet the emotion it carries is every bit as powerful," Choi said. "Isn't that the difference between an original and a remake?"

Han So-hee, for her part, deliberately kept her distance from the original before filming began — a conscious choice to build her own version of Seon-u without being anchored to what came before. "Being part of a remake of a great original is, from my perspective, an honor," she said. "But I felt that the moment you try to imitate the original, it stops being a remake. The drive to interpret it in our own way was strong."

That effort shows. Ki-ho and Seon-u, as Choi and Han play them, resemble their Hollywood counterparts — Ben and Jules — and yet they don't. The warmth Ki-ho radiates carries the distinctly Korean quality of a familiar ajeossi, something quite different from the polished, cosmopolitan middle-aged cool that De Niro brought to Ben. And the loneliness and anxiety that flicker beneath Seon-u's ambition and drive set her apart from Hathaway's more settled Jules.

"We're built differently — why would I try to follow in that man's (De Niro's) footsteps?" Choi said. "I knew I had to find an emotional distinction. Rather than the aura of a sophisticated Western man, I tried to capture the particular warmth of a Korean ajeossi looking at a younger colleague like a daughter."

"The perfectionism that comes from anxiety, the instability of wanting to do more than you're capable of — I think that's where Seon-u and I are alike," Han said. "The moments of pushing yourself to the edge under the pressure of having to get this right felt familiar. But when I saw Seon-u's boldness and drive, I thought she was more of a grown-up than I am."

The age gap of more than 30 years was a shared theme for two actors who also inhabit different generations in real life. The film's message — about the value of experience and wisdom, about listening across generational lines and never stopping to learn — proved just as relevant on set. On a set full of younger actors, Choi approached it with the spirit of wanting to "play together," while Han in particular followed him around, building their off-screen chemistry in their own way.

"Young actors today have a particular flexibility and naturalness about them," Choi said. "When I find myself getting tense and rigid, being around them actually loosens me up. Like water taking the shape of whatever container it's poured into — I tried to be water. I went in with the mindset of just having fun together."

"At first I was intimidated by him," Han said of Choi. "I made a lot of effort to get close through script readings even before filming started." But she said Choi set a warm tone on set. "He was always there, even without saying much, and he'd tease me whenever he got the chance. We ate together and I just followed him around everywhere."

Both actors also spoke warmly about working with director Kim Do-young. "The director has this girlish quality but with a real charisma underneath," Han said. "Being an actor herself, she was very clear from our first meeting about the kind of performance she wanted." Choi echoed the sentiment. "Because she's been an actor, she understands how an actor thinks and gave us a generous space to work in," he said. "I was grateful that whenever I suggested trying something, she took it on board naturally, without resistance."

The film's central message — that we live and grow together, not alone — resonates with both actors personally. They know better than most that nothing they have built, or will build, comes from individual effort alone.

"The world has changed a lot, but I think the fundamentals are the same," Han said. "We live in a society together, and the need for good elders, good sunbae and hoobae — that doesn't change with time. Even being an entertainer isn't something you achieve on your own. It's completed by the staff and the company that have been with you for a long time."

For Choi, who appears before audiences with a warmer face than the intense genre roles he has been known for, the interview ended with a quiet wish: to keep making good work until the very end. Now in his mid-60s and almost always the most senior person on any set, his hunger feels as fresh as ever.

"It doesn't matter whether it's an art film or an entertainment film," Choi said. "Indiana Jones isn't a bad film. My goal is to keep doing work with high cinematic quality without being confined to one genre. Getting older is actually a good thing as an actor — things I couldn't see before, I can see now. In work that looks deeply at the joys and sorrows of life, there is definitely a depth that an older actor can express."

A chuseok season rich with Korean films returning to movie theaters is on the horizon. Both actors closed the interview with the same hope: that all the films do well together.

"It's been four years since I've put out a film, so I'm nervous," Choi said. "The fact that Korean cinema is greeting audiences with such a varied spread after a long time feels like a real opportunity. More than anything, I hope audiences come out to the movie theaters."

"I don't think of it as film competing against film," Han said. "So I genuinely want all of them — 'The Assassins,' 'Tazza,' all of them — to do well. A packed movie theater is just a good feeling in itself."

balme@heraldcorp.com