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After working with some of the top directors in the region like South Korea’s Yeon Sang-ho and Japan’s Hirokazu Kore-eda, Uprising‘s Gang Dong-won told Deadline that he would like to work with directors Bong Joon-ho and Guillermo del Toro in future, among others.
In Uprising, Gang plays a slave named Cheon-yeong, who develops a close friendship with his master (and nobleman) Jong-ryeo, who is played by Park Jeong-min.
Uprising premiered on Netflix this week after screening as the opening film at the Busan International Film Festival (BIFF).
Netflix’s Uprising is set in 1592, against the backdrop of Joseon’s war against Japanese invasions. King Seonjo flees the capital to escape from the advancing Japanese army.
Gang got involved in the film after veteran director Park Chan-wook — who co-wrote Uprising with Shin Cheol — gave him a call. Gang admitted that he was curious about the project but wanted to find out more about Kim’s background.
“I wanted to ask Park Chan-wook about the director Kim Sang-man, because the director has made only three feature films and the last one was 10 years ago, so I wanted to ask why Park gave him such a big project like this,” Gang said. “Park said that he thinks that Kim is a real ‘genius director.’ I know that when Park says someone’s genius, he must be a real genius, so I agreed.”
Gang said that Park appeared twice during the production of Uprising: once at the very beginning of the shoot, and another time for a dinner with the film’s staff and talent. “He was always rewriting Uprising for us and if we had a new idea during the shoot, we will tell him and then fix it together,” Gang said. “We were developing the ending scene during the shoot, so he was always communicating with us through the director.”
Director Kim added that while Park was very busy shooting HBO’s The Sympathizer, Park would send over “very detailed notes, like a teacher” when Kim had questions about the script or wanted to make adjustments.
Gang, who was born in Busan and still has family living in the city, said that BIFF always brings feelings of nostalgia for him and that it was a meaningful experience to have his mother and some of his friends in the audience at the festival premiere of Uprising.
Gang said that another reason he chose to appear in Uprising was the chance to work with Park Jeong-min, who he calls one of the “best young actors” in Korea.
Uprising is Park Jeong-min’s first historical period work. “I was very surprised at how uncomfortable the makeup and wardrobe was for a period piece,” Park said. “I also had to be more careful with the dialogue as we have a lot of historical records and I had to make sure that nothing was distorted. A lot more effort went into approaching and reading the script and I had to constantly ask myself, ‘How am I, who lives in the modern day, going to meet with Jong-ryeo, who lives in that period? The process was very enjoyable, but also quite challenging.”
Park said that initially, his interpretation of Jong-ryeo was a more villanous character, however, through discussions with director Kim, the character took on more positive qualities.
Uprising marks Kim’s first film in 10 years and Kim said that he never harboured any goal to become a director when he first entered the film industry.
“I majored in design and while I sometimes had to do projects like creating video commercials as part of the school curriculum, I never had any intention to become a filmmaker,” Kim said. “However, while working on a film poster, this opportunity led me down the path of becoming an art director in the
film industry. I was very detailed with my storyboards and I think that was something that producers thought very highly of. Based on that, one of the producers I had worked with suggested that I should take on a film directing role, and that’s how I became a film director.”
One aspect of Uprising that Kim wanted to stand out was the design of the Gyeongbokgung Palace, the main royal palace during the Joseon dynasty. “There is a very huge, wide road in front of the palace and we wanted to build that to the actual scale in the film,” Kim said. The crew managed to find a huge piece of land in Andong to build the set.”
Park’s next project is HUMINT with top Korean action director Ryoo Seung-wan.
While Park is often known as a character actor that has built his career on a variety of edgy and memorable roles in titles like Smugglers, Decision to Leave and Hellbound, he said that he is not someone that goes looking for challenging roles.
“I just want to add that people sometimes misunderstand me as someone who likes to do something new and take on new challenges because of the wide variety of characters I’ve done, but one of the things that I really hate doing is taking on a new challenge,” Park said.
On the other side, Gang is currently in production for The Tempest series and will take a vacation after wrapping the shoot. The actor has representation in the U.S. through CAA and Range Media Partners. While he was set to be part of an American project five years ago, the title did not come into fruition. In June this year, Gang was invited to become a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
When asked about what he would like to do for his next project, Gang said that he is looking to do a comedy title soon. “I would like to do a comedy movie again, because my recent projects have all been so serious and I want to do something fun,” Gang added.
