Stunt Driving & Afternoon Fries With Hoyeon

Hoyeon is on the move — of course she needs some fuel. “I was like, ‘Oh, I'm not so hungry,’ but [now] I'm eating all the fries,” she says, going in for another handful. We’re meeting for a quick midday pit stop at the Lower East Side’s Corner Bar in the midst of a whirlwind trip just as New York Fashion Week kicks off.

The 32-year-old arrives camera-ready in head-to-toe Louis Vuitton: bootcut blue jeans and a gray knit sweater smartly layered under a quilted leather jacket, much needed in New York’s fickle September weather. Her jet-black hair is neatly tucked back; when she turns her head, the bun, to my surprise, is dyed an electric blue. It’s a striking departure from the dark, blunt bob that became synonymous with Kang Sae-byeok, the stoic North Korean defector she played in Squid Game. Naturally, I have to ask.

“This is actually for my next project called Outback,” she says, referring to the Korean Netflix original series she’s currently filming. “I’m filming that right now, too, so that’s why my hair is…” She trails off before revealing anything she shouldn’t. When I press her on whether it’s another action project, she smiles coyly then covers her mouth. “I cannot say anything.”

The exchange is a fitting snapshot of Hoyeon’s life right now: even as she’s in New York promoting her first feature film, Hope, she’s already in the middle of her next job. Her next day off, she estimates, won’t come until after December. “I just need a good one-month break.”

Hoyeon is used to staying in motion. The Seoul native began her career in 2013 as a strawberry blonde model on Korea’s Next Top Model before making the leap to the Big Apple (and crimson locks) for the high fashion circuit in 2016. She had a few different New York addresses along the way, including stints in the East Village and Midtown, before finding home in Williamsburg. When I ask if she misses it, she doesn’t hesitate. “I keep telling my friends, ‘I’m going back to New York, I’m going back to New York.’” The only problem, apparently, is being booked and busy. “There are so many offers coming in that are not happening in New York,” she says, optimistically tabling it for next year.

Since finding overnight fame in 2021 in Squid Game, she’s become something of a thriller darling. “Personally, I find joy in working in action films,” she says, explaining how she finds the fun in performing scenes she wouldn’t do in her ordinary life. “Maybe [because] I started my career as a model so I'm used to moving around or using my body.” Her most recent foray into the genre, the sci-fi action film Hope, was released on Sept. 9.

Directed by Na Hong-jin, Hoyeon stars alongside Taylor Russell, Michael Fassbender, and Alicia Vikander, and premiered at Cannes earlier this year, where it received a seven-minute standing ovation. Set in rural Korea, the 156-minute extraterrestrial thriller tells the tale of a mysterious creature mutilating animals, murdering people, and wreaking all forms of havoc on a sleepy village. Hoyeon plays Sung-ae, a badass weapon-toting rookie officer that required six months of pre-production weight training. “[Na] wants his actors to do most of our own action scenes. He’s well known [as] a perfectionist,” she says, explaining how she put on 4 kilograms (or roughly 9 pounds) of solid muscle to complete “30-something takes with a 5-kilogram gun in a day.”

And no action-baddie role would be complete without drift sequences. Hoyeon had to learn how to drive a manual car and perform the kind of high-octane J-turns and stunt maneuvers she, a lifelong city dweller, had never attempted before. Her introduction to a stick shift was not exactly confidence-building: while practicing on the road, she stalled in the middle of a highway. A police officer pulled her over to her embarrassment. “My face got red and I remember [saying], ‘Oh, everything is OK. I'm not used to driving manuals. So sorry, so sorry,’” she sheepishly ducks her face into her hands as she recalls the memory.

Though he let her go without a hitch, the experience left her nervous about having to drive on set, especially while acting and worrying about the film-set technicalities of eye line and hitting all of her marks. She then recounted the story to Vikander over a pre-production team dinner. Vikander offered a simple reframing: “You should shift your mindset from nervous or anxious to excited because these are things that you’ve never tried before,” Hoyeon recalls, adding, “One of the biggest joys of being an actor is to try things that you wouldn't ever have tried if you weren't that character.”

That might be the closest thing Hoyeon has to a career philosophy for an actor who, thus far, has fortified her forté in action-packed dramas. “I used to say I'm a very experimental person so I want to do things that I have never tried before,” she says. “But nowadays, I'm thinking, is there actually the same exact character in my career? I don't think so.” Instead of chasing novelty for novelty’s sake, Hoyeon explains that she is learning to follow her instincts, led more by her heart than adding another box to check off on her resume. “If a character or a script is moving my heart, then I should just go for it,” she says. “Don't overthink about, ‘Oh, this character I've done before, so let's prioritize.’ No, nothing like that.”

For Hoyeon, the appeal of acting isn’t simply getting to inhabit someone else for a few months, but to spend an unusual amount of time trying to understand people she might never otherwise encounter. “Being an actor gives you a chance to have empathy or understanding of so many different kinds of human beings, cultural differences, or age differences,” she says. “That doesn't necessarily mean that I can understand everything, but it's just at least I'm trying to understand human nature. I think that's quite a good thing to do in my life.”

It’s a deeply philosophical answer from someone who has spent much of the last few years firing guns, speed-driving cars, and chasing the underworld. But Hoyeon is thoughtful when she talks about her work, pausing often to consider her answers but often circling back to the same idea: The thing she wants most is the thing she hasn’t tried yet.

Which, eventually, she says, may mean Broadway. She’s watched plenty of famous shows (“When I first moved to New York, I went to watch Cats, Chicago, Lion King,” she rattles off), but the idea of performing on stage is still largely theoretical. “I’ve watched many of the famous Broadway shows, so maybe one day,” she says, noting that a dramatic play is more her speed than a musical. She confesses she has never acted on a stage, which is precisely what intrigues her. “Some people told me that once you're an actress on stage, you can’t stop,” she says. “It's not so much about the editing or directing. It's more heavyweight on actors.”

I point out that she seems to like a challenge. She pauses. “Yeah, I think so,” she says with a laugh.