With Hugh Jackman’s latest X-Men outing The Wolverine set to open in cinemas this week, Ozzy Armstrong chats with Will Yun Lee about his role as Harada…
Ozzy Armstrong: Could you tell us a little bit more about you character?
Will Yun Lee: Yeah sure. I play a character named Harada, one of the characters going after the Wolverine. All I can say without giving too many spoilers away for those who haven’t seen it is that the character is finding this line of what the warrior code is and you have to go to the end of the movie to see what side of the line he falls on.
OA: One thing I noticed when I watched the film is that your character is quite different from the original comics.
WYL: Yeah definitely. It’s a different approach but I think you know in terms of what James Mangold wants to do with all the characters is kind of not be so straight on and head on with all the characters. He really wanted to make sure that all the characters’ relationships all played out and were a little more complicated. Yeah definitely some changes but people who watch the movie will be pleasantly surprised.
OA: I just wanted to also go into a little bit of your background as well. You come from a martial arts background as your father is a Grandmaster in Taekwondo and I was wondering whether that background helps you prepare for roles such as this?
WLY: Yeah sure. I’ve been fortunate enough to train for most of my life. The great thing though is that I get to work with 8711 [stunt team] on all the action in the movie. I’ve worked with them a couple of times on a couple of different projects and you know they really do all the heavy lifting and I just show up. I’m lucky that I’ve trained for many years but they point me in the direction of what I need to do and they make it much easier for me.
OA: Well we know that you’re a very mysterious character in the film and, without giving anything away, it must be hard for you to portray this character seeing as how we don’t find out much about you for much of the film.
WYL: Well yeah. You know, I knew what we were working up to including my relationships with the characters towards the end of the movie. That was the difficult part. We shot most of the movie in sequence and the end of the movie we shot close to the end of the shoot. In terms of what I needed to think about, I was there in terms of character and what was unfolding.
OA: Obviously in this film you played opposite Tao Okamoto and considering that this is her first film role and the fact that your characters share a history, how was it playing against her?
WYL: I loved working with Tao as she’s got such a sensitive honesty which she is as a person and it definitely comes through on camera. You know, I think I was just as nervous as she was for her first film because we had to shoot so much of the film in Japanese, and I don’t speak Japanese (laughs). I just wanted to make sure that I did the scene justice you know. I had the entire Japanese cast with headphones on monitoring my Japanese to make sure it was right as I think the whole film was this big team effort and all I did was my best to pull it off.
OA: The action in the film seems fairly full on and for the most part grounded. Did you have to spend much time in the green screen or CGI process?
WYL: My character wasn’t involved too much in the CGI because we did all the rooftop scenes where I’m chasing down Wolverine in Japan and for me that was fairly practical. I was definitely scared for my life (laughs) but I definitely think it paid off in the end to capture the scope of Japan.
OA: You touched on Japan a couple of times there and I have to ask what it was like filming in Japan?
WYL: Yeah, I love shooting there. I’ve shot there once before and it’s one of the rare places you know that, if you look to your right and left you see a Starbucks or a McDonalds and you can be anywhere but when you’re in Japan, you know you’re in Japan. And, sometimes when you get lost, you really do get lost (laughs). It was such a beautiful place to shoot also in terms of the clash of traditional architecture along with the modern part of Japan. I mean, it’s such a cool contrast.
OA: In terms of Harada and the Silver Samurai and the new X-Men movies, if there was the possibility of playing this character again, would that be something you’d be interested in?
WYL: There’s always a possibility so all they would have to do is tell me where and when and I’d be there.
OA: Further to your film work, you also have done some recent console game work. Could you just tell me the difference in preparation for things like The Wolverine and Sleeping Dogs?
WYL: Well yeah. I worked on Sleeping Dogs with Tom Wilkinson, Emma Stone and this incredible Asian cast. I think that all the kind of digital mediums are starting to meet in the middle so we kind of shot that as if it were a movie. And, um, I kind of approached it the same in terms of looking at the character and what he was going through. The only difference is that my scenes with Tom Wilkinson or Emma Stone, they recorded their voices separately and I would act opposite their voices (laughs), so it was a little different.
OA: You were also in the documentary The Slanted Screen which is about Asian actors in Hollywood and my question is do you think that a film with such a great Asian cast like this is a benefit to Asian actors in Hollywood or is there still a little way to go?
WYL: You know I think there’s always a way to go but number one, being in a big summer movie like this is always beneficial and two, I think just the light that Hugh and James Mangold brought to the Asian culture and the Japanese culture is really special and they did it in a such an acceptable way that you know it really does help with the momentum [of Asian actors in Hollywood] going forward.
Many thanks to Will Yun Lee for taking the time for this interview.
Ozzy Armstrong is a Stargate and Rocky superfan. Follow him on Twitter.
The Wolverine is released in UK cinemas this Thursday (July 25th) and opens in North America the following Day. Read Ozzy’s ★★★★★ review here and check out our previous interviews with Rila Fukushima (Yukio) and Tao Okamoto (Mariko).
Originally published July 24, 2013. Updated April 11, 2018.
