What happens when you give Ji-young Yoo too much time to prepare for a role in the middle of a pandemic? “I did ridiculous [stuff] like learning to do things with my left hand,” says Yoo, who in her television debut stars opposite Nicole Kidman in the Prime Video . Her character, Mercy — an American drifter living in Hong Kong whose life has been defined by misfortune and fraught relationships — wasn’t left-handed on the page, but the detail helped Yoo with her process. “My mom is left-handed,” she says, “and her family forced her to learn how to use her right hand because in the period that she was growing up in Korea, it was considered unlucky to be left-handed.
I felt like that would have added a lot more animosity between [Mercy] and her mother.” That level of commitment exemplifies the seriousness with which Yoo undertook her task, not only holding her own as a lead among a cast of veterans but also embodying a character that some viewers might have trouble getting behind. It is under Mercy’s watch that Margaret’s (Kidman) youngest child goes missing one night, and Mercy doubles down on her guilt by taking up with a married man (Jack Huston).
“I had to trust that everyone else was too good and too talented to waste their time on someone who’s going to waste their time, so I did everything I could to control what I could, which was how much I prepared and the options I brought to the table and how present I could be in the moment,” says Yoo, wh.
