Steven Yeun: On The Walking Dead, "I felt beige with Glenn" and "I felt cramped"

Slate

Yeun, who is promoting his new South Korean film Burning, tells Slate the AMC series limited him to the "American white gaze." "I won’t speak for other Asian American actors, because I don’t know what they’re being offered. But for me, it’s like: nice guy, dependable, supportive, benign. Beige. And as a Korean man, I am not beige. Was he playing beige on The Walking Dead? "Yeah, I felt beige with Glenn," he responds. "That was a little bit of the frustration that I could never explain to the wider society, to fans of the show. Am I incredibly grateful, and did I have a wonderful time on that show? Yeah! I wouldn’t take that experience back at all. I made lifelong friendships. I got to learn so much. But I will say that I felt cramped. I felt like there wasn’t space for me to fully spread all of who I was, and that was partly due to me, too, because when I started, all I was trying to do was to work within the parameters that they were giving me. And then, over time, I just outgrew it."