Remember the star of award season 2021? Award season is all about stars but last year, one little star made the biggest impression: Minari’s Alan Kim. Alan won the Critics Choice Award for Young Actor last year and… well… it’s been a minute since you’ve seen this so maybe you’ve forgotten. But I’m going to show you again, your reaction will be the same as it was twelve months ago. He broke and rebuilt our hearts in under a minute. 

 

Alan returned, in person this time, to the Critics Choice Awards as a presenter, and met Squid Game showrunner Hwang Dong-hyuk, and cast members Lee Jung-jae, Jung Ho-yeon, and Park Hae-soo on the carpet. This is a moment!

Lee Jung-jae, Hwang Dong-hyuk, Alan Kim, Jung Ho-yeon and Park Hae-soo attend the 27th Annual Critics Choice Awards at Fairmont Century Plaza on March 13, 2022 in Los Angeles, California
 

And Squid Game keeps winning. The critics chose Lee Jung-jae as their Best Actor in a Drama series and Squid Game as the Best Foreign Language Series (the name of this award should be changed, non?) and this isn’t the end of award season for the show either because Squid Game is still eligible for the Emmys, which Netflix will likely keep pushing. I don’t know by then if the series’ momentum will still hold but it’s proven that it can take on Succession so it’ll be interesting if it can keep that energy for another six months. 

But let’s go back to Alan. Because it’s been a minute since we’ve seen him and kids, they grow up so fast – and usually in entertainment, you come back from a commercial break and that child you were just watching has suddenly become a teen. Hollywood can often truncate a person’s innocence. Alan, however, still looks like a kid and he should! He’s not even 10. Nobody needs to rush his maturity. 

 

Here’s Alan being 100% kid on the red carpet: 

By the way, Alan has some big work lined up. He’s in John Krasinski’s IF, starring alongside John himself and also Ryan Reynolds. Steve Carell and Phoebe Waller Bridge are also part of the cast. Alan, however, is pretty honest about which one of those stars he’s most looking forward to hanging out with: