PopHorror Let's Get Scared
I don’t need to tell horror fans to stay out of the woods. If you don’t know that by now, do you even watch horror? The new original Peacock show, The Girl in the Woods, a drama with monsters based on a series of shorts from Crypt TV, reminds me why I stay out forests. They’re big, full of weird noises and even weirder stuff, and there are way too many places to hide. Not for me to hide, but like, for scary things to hide. To celebrate the release of the show, I chatted with star Will Yun Lee about preparing for action, his favorite part of filming, and seeing The Exorcist in the theater as a child.
PopHorror: I really enjoyed the show, so I’m excited to speak with you.
Will Yun Lee: Oh, cool, cool. Where are you calling from?
PopHorror: I’m in Phoenix, Arizona.
Will Yun Lee: Oh nice! I’m in Vancouver, Canada.
PopHorror: I want to go there so badly. I get so jealous of the greenery and the weather. We don’t get that here.
Will Yun Lee: It’s beautiful for sure.
PopHorror: So what intrigued you about The Girl in the Woods and made you want to be a part of the project?
Will Yun Lee: I think it’s a combination of things. First, when I heard the title and I heard it was from Crypt TV, I was like, “Okay, I wonder what kind of horror this is?” So I saw the short with Kal Penn, and I thought it had a lot of potential. It was a fun short. And then I read the scripts, and actually, the amount of humor in them was fun. You’ve got an unlikely trio of monster slayers, and the way they all come together in their banter was, for me, a fresh take on this genre. I keep saying their dialogue felt like it wasn’t written by some like 55-year-old man from Pasadena, California. It felt real and grounded. And then lastly, besides the scripts, it was Krysten Ritter. My first conversation with her we had on Zoom, and 10 minutes into the conversation, I loved her, and I loved her vision, and I loved her energy. I’ll shoot anything with her.
PopHorror: She’s delightful! Were you a horror fan before?
Will Yun Lee: No, I get scared easily and that kind of stuff. But the last two horrors… I don’t know if you would classify Get Out as horror, but kind of a mind scare, and then IT. I loved IT. But I don’t chase after them.
PopHorror: I would absolutely call them both horror. I find that it’s the people that don’t really like them and that get scared the most are the ones that make the most of the genre. I find they make more horror movies. Was there anything that you were adamant about bringing to the character after reading the script?
Will Yun Lee: It wasn’t so much adamant because we were always in sync between Casey the writer [J. Casey Modderno] and Krysten and Jacob [director Chase]. It just was such a collaborative effort. I said what I don’t want this guy to be is a baddie, and that’s it. He needs to have some layers, and it needs to be anchored in his love for this person, which is Carrie. But the thing that gets interesting is what Reed Diamond’s [PopHorror interview] character, the mission he puts me on puts me in conflict with that love that I have for Carrie.
PopHorror: This show is a lot of fun to watch, and I’m sure it was fun to make. What was your favorite part of filming?
Will Yun Lee: My favorite part of filming? It was so much of it. Every location we had was like an hour drive, and you would just enter this green… It was something I had never seen before, the amount of greenery. It was everybody I worked with. Between Krysten, Casey and Jacob, just their energy, constantly coming up with different ways to approach a scene, and doing it together. I got to do action again. I haven’t done action for a minute, so it was nice to move, and I feel at home in that space. I’ve been on The Good Doctor for almost… this is our fifth season. I love the comforts of The Good Doctor, and then I love on breaks going in and getting beat up and withstanding the cold and fighting and all that stuff. I get the best of both worlds.
PopHorror: With this being a more physical role, how did you prepare for shooting?
Will Yun Lee: Stretch! I’m getting older now. I remember how I used to shoot action, and I was like, “Oh, we’re shooting action? We’re shooting action tomorrow?” Now I’m like, “You need to give me three months notice before we shoot action.” And I start prepping and doing all of my stuff. So I had been prepping for at least a month and a half, almost two months. Just a lot of gym time.
PopHorror: With this show and The Good Doctor, what is up next for you?
Will Yun Lee: I did a series called Blade Runner that’s coming out in November, I think. It’s by some legendary Japanese filmmakers, and we did this series for Crunchyroll Adult Swim. I’m excited about that. It’s really cool to do.
PopHorror: That sounds fun! I’ll have to keep an eye out for it. And just one last question for you today. What’s your favorite scary movie?
Will Yun Lee: I would say, in recent years, it’s IT. Here’s the thing. My parents, they newly immigrated when I was a kid, they didn’t really understand what horror movies were. The second movie that I was ever taken to, I must have been six years old, was The Exorcist.
PopHorror: Oh, wow!
Will Yun Lee: And I was so terrified that I never wanted to see another scary movie in my life. It wrecked me.
Thank you so much, Will, for taking the time to speak with us. You can catch The Girl in the Woods on streaming on Peacock now!
