Dear Gossips,
One of the unexpected stars to emerge from this recent award season was not, technically, a star at all. But she definitely is now. Award season is over but we are still obsessed with Sharon Choi, right? Not surprisingly, after Parasite’s successful Oscar run, everyone wanted to talk to Sharon. She’s declined almost all interviews deciding instead to write an essay, published in Variety yesterday, about her experience over the last year. I teared up when I read it the first time last night and I just broke out into a sob reading it again this morning.
This isn’t a piece about being in the spotlight and it isn’t even a piece about putting her own work in the spotlight eventually. This is a piece relating who she is and the work she’s done and continues to do to the film that made history – so even after the trophies have been won and the record books have been changed, Sharon Choi is STILL interpreting. And how did this job relate to her other jobs, her burgeoning film career? And her identity? My GOD these two sentences:
“Switching back and forth between languages has never been my job; it’s the only way of life I know. I’ve been my own interpreter for 20 years.”
This is the goal, isn’t it? We should all get the opportunity be our own interpreters, and tell our own stories. We’re not there yet, of course not. But more and more people are claiming their right to interpret for themselves. Sharon, eventually, will share the interpretation of her own story with us. That, hopefully, will be another gift of Parasite’s legacy.
Check out Variety to read Sharon’s essay.
Yours in gossip,
Lainey
