Charles Melton goes to Hell and back in his latest film

Melton plays the aforementioned GI, named Private K, a soldier who doesn’t so much enter into Tokyo’s criminal underworld as much as he explodes onto it, seeing every bit of exposed flesh as an opportunity to eviscerate and brutalize with fists, brass knuckles, knives, and swords alike, as he searches for his missing daughter. It’s easy to draw comparisons to other projects in which Melton has put his body on the line, from Bad Boys for Life and Warfare, to even some of the stunts he had to pull in the final episodes of the latest season of BEEF. Yet the laconic Private K also has shades of Melton’s more dramatic roles, such as embodying the closeted rage of Joe Yoo from May December. In many ways, Private K feels like a culmination of the work Melton has had to do prior, combining the physicality we’d expect with the tenderness we’ve grown to love. 

It’s an exciting launch point for where he might go next and for Melton, the role coincided at an interesting point in his own life. As he tells me, “Right before the scene where Private K meets his daughter, I was FaceTiming with my wife, and I heard my daughter’s heartbeat on the ultrasound for the first time, and then I filmed that scene. I was meant to go on this journey with Nic. I think everything we do is to explore the roles, to explore the shadow self, and it only takes an author like Nic to turn that unreality into a reality or the reality into an unreality.” 

I spoke with Melton about his emotional entry point into a character defined by his stoicism (and the surprising anime influences of the film’s sanguine fight scenes), the gift of working on projects that have explored fatherhood, and understanding the hearts of his characters through the ways they smoke cigarettes. 

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Zachary Lee: I know that you incorporate painting as part of the preparation for your work. There’s so much visual beauty and striking elements in Her Private Hell, and I’m wondering if you ended up painting anything as you got ready to embody Private K or if that’s a practice you’re still keeping up?
Charles Melton: When I paint for those roles, I’m not painting anything structured. It's very abstract, and I've done it, I think, ever since I was preparing for May December. I could articulate it with poetry or journal entries, but there’s an element of painting that unlocks something different and places me in the role I’m doing. There’s something freeing in it. I can go through five to six canvases in two hours because I didn’t have the patience to wait and do another layer. I remember when I was filming May December, one of the actors, who was my stand-in, saw me throwing away these canvases. He asked if he could have one; I was like, “Yeah…really?” I think his really wanting them made me think, “Hey, I should keep a couple of these.” It remains another form of expression that allowed me to just move through the working of my character. 

ZL: You already have your kimchi business, but now you can have a painting one too. I understand that the script for the film could change on the day and that so much of Nic’s direction, while it could be practical, can also be conceptual. I’m curious what that translation process is like for you as an actor. Like when Nic told you for the first time that you met on Zoom that “cinema needs heroes,” how did that manifest in your performance? How do you translate that in your performance? It feels like an act of transubstantiation.
CM: I mean, when Nic says something like that, I get goosebumps. What a gift, honor, and privilege to have that be a part of his vision. In regard to transubstantiation, I feel like every job is different. I think there's an immersion that happens, but it's also keeping a separation from the reality and the unreality that you're bringing to reality in the work. So you're creating a ritual for each job. 

The methodology changes for each and everything. Every actor has a process, and the joy is discovering the equation in the process of the work leading up to when you show up. I think about Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore; they have their process behind closed doors, but when it comes to the set, they enter, and then they're the incredible women they are. They’re mothers, they’re powerhouses, and exist in a state of the craft and the art and the work. I love creating rituals, and that helps keep me aligned in my work even if those rituals differ per project. 

ZL: When I asked this of you at Cannes, you talked about Private K as a character of containment. From his outfit to his body language, something is simmering. I’m wondering if you can talk about your entry point into that containment. Watching the film, I was thinking “I don’t think I’ve seen Charles blink once.”
CM: The uniform is a metaphor for this container, this rigidness, and meticulous control that permeates every aspect of his life, from how he combs his hair to his Batman-esque utility belt. I think just when it came to these fight sequences, there's so much power in silence and I think there's a desensitization you have to trick your brain into, especially when you're immersing yourself in these 10-minute-long takes with Nic. I remember the master shot. We did 20 takes, and it was five minutes per take, and I was smoking these prop cigarettes, but they weren’t burning right, so I smoked 50 real cigarettes. 

But we see this container of this deep emotional pain, this animalistic pain. I think it’s something people can understand. I said this when we were at Cannes, but I understood Private K and the idea of a man going to hell and back for his daughter, but now being a father and having a daughter, I truly understand. I think the metaphor of this costume, you kind of see this unleashing of all this pain; he’s wanting to inflict it on people who aren’t good; he’s trying to find worthy vessels. I think that maybe there's some sort of satisfaction to some audience members because there’s like this wishful revenge thinking, which taps into certain aspects of Korean cinema that I love. 

ZL: When you do a jump punch in this, it felt very Memories of Murder coded.
CM: Yes! Song Kang-ho is one of my favorites. In my fight scenes, I think out of the 13 stunt guys, only two spoke English: Tatsuro Koike and this prodigy and translator, Taka. We spent every other day with each other. I would have them come over to my house, and we'd train. I would tell them about my favorite anime and the influences I’d want to reenact. Like for a sequence where we only see the silhouette or a shadow on the wall between Private K and the Leatherman, I wanted it to be like Itadori from Jujutsu Kaisen. 

ZL: Private K doesn’t speak much, but when he does, he says one of the most profound lines: “memories and bodies bow to time,” but “time bows to love and love only.” What has that line come to mean to you?
CM: I think the first thought is, if my time were to end, or maybe if I think of a loved one's time nearing the end, my love for them still transcends and carries on even in this reality. I would hope my daughter, when I'm long gone, her love for me still carries on. 

ZL: I’ve loved hearing you talk in interviews about your recent roles, because you’ve had the chance to be a part of projects like Her Private Hell that have come to you when you’re a new father, but also something like Warfare, which helped you understand your own dad. What has it been like to be a part of projects that speak directly to where you’re at in life?
CM: I feel so lucky with what I get to do. I mean, this is going to sound woo-woo, or wa-wa, or maybe too serious for some people, but I mean there's such a deep spiritual connection to anything that I do. I see my roles as echoes of memories or future memories. 

Private K was an echo of a future memory of being a father and daughter, you know what I mean? BEEF was an echo of the past of a Korean American trying to find himself in a world where he felt like an outsider and being confronted with his own Koreanness. Then doing Warfare was an echo of understanding memory and time because my dad was in the army for 26 years. Then I had an understanding of my own version of the intersection of responsibility and repression in May December. My conviction is that everything I do is a part of my soul, whether I’ve lived it or not.

Back to the character of Austin in BEEF, that’s who I was maybe 15 years ago. So now I could look back in the future as myself. Her Private Hell was the most physically demanding thing I've ever had to do, even compared to sport.

ZL: Even with Warfare?
CM: Warfare was easier because I wasn’t alone. I had my brothers. With this film, I was alone, I was isolated, and I was in a dark room with beautiful neon light, atmospheric smoke, and music playing. It does something to your brain. It creates some sort of synapse. So then I think if I were to apply as an actor, when you're embodying a certain character, it's like when you go to the gym, you're lifting weights or running, you're going to feel sore and feel the effect and tiredness of it when you come home. So it's a matter of creating for me a meditative space to just rest and not overexert myself so I could come in and then inhabit or be inhabited by something. 

ZL: What you’re saying about the cigarettes bit is making me think about your smoking scene in May December, how Joe in that moment is smoking for the first time, and how different the body language is there versus you ripping 50 of them here.
CM: When I think of Ryan Gosling, Mads Mikkelsen, I love all these pieces of them that I get to see in their work, and the range, and the vastness of their work—and even filmmakers too, how they can transcend different genres. That's why I love Korean cinema, because when you look at projects like No Other Choice, Oldboy, Train to Busan—that’s the only zombie movie I ever sobbed in—they have so many different genres in one film. It’s great not to be limited to just one sort of thing. I know what I’m going to do next on paper, but after that, it’s exciting to see how future roles might echo.