Greta Lee wasn’t all that optimistic when she first received an email about a potential role in a new movie called Past Lives. “I got an email in my inbox and I think it said something in the subject line like, ‘Korean? You speak it?’” she recalls now with a laugh.

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She had never heard of the writer of the script, playwright Celine Song, and wasn’t really sure if this was a role that might be limiting or stereotypical in some way. Lee, after all, has spent her career making sure she’d never put in any sort of box, often bringing to life off-kilter and interesting characters in TV series like Russian Doll and The Morning Show after first starting out her career on Broadway.

But then she read the script, a sweeping yet personal romantic drama about a writer living in New York whose childhood sweetheart from Korea comes to visit her after decades apart. “I cried my eyes out,” Lee tells Little Gold Men. “There are so many things that struck me immediately and it was clear like this is this will be something really special, and I was terrified of it.”

Lee auditioned with a self-tape—and then didn’t get the role. “After so many years of doing this, that’s part of this, but on occasion there are instances when it really hurts, and it’s hard to let go. And this was one of them,” she says. There was even an added stumble when she got a random call from an assistant about setting up an important meeting. “I just assumed, for whatever idiotic reason, that I got the job. And then it turned out that that phone call was actually for Greta Gerwig,” Lee says. “It could not have been clearer that I didn’t get this job.”

But a year later, Song, who was also directing the project, reached out because she had decided to recast her film, and offered Lee the lead role of Nora. In Past Lives, which is Lee’s first major lead role, she delivers a simmering, nuanced performance as a woman whose past, identity, and marriage are all knocked off their axis by the arrival of her childhood sweetheart Hae Sung (played by Teo Yoo). The film, which was released in theaters in June by A24, has forever changed Lee (who has already earned a Gotham Award nomination for her work), and what she hopes to do next.

Vanity Fair: How did you prepare to play Nora?

Greta Lee: I think I started working from a place of fear. This is one of those scenarios where when the script is so good and certain elements are so good, really dreamy, it feels like it’s yours to mess up. After 20 years of waiting for something like this, I didn’t want to mess it up, I didn’t want to waste it. There was so much for me personally that was riding on doing this, it’s full justice, on my terms, finally, you know?

So, it’s kind of unsexy, but there was a ton of prep that went into this. Immediately there’s a language component. I’d never done a movie in Korean, let alone any other language. I want to remind people: Acting is hard to do in English, and I was really worried that I wouldn’t be able to access my full facility, the things that I have, if I had to do it in another language. Because of who Nora is and because of this story, it meant something really specific. Instead of going this more conventional route of getting a dialect coach, someone who can wipe my voice clean of its American-ness and make me sound like a certain idea of a woman from Seoul, that would not work for this. So I was so grateful to convince them to let me use Sharon Choi, who I think most people would know best as [Parasite director] Bong Joon-ho’s translator.

Sure, she’s a celebrity in her own right.

Mega superstar. She is so rad. She has this rare gift of traversing both separate cultures, that is so much bigger than just language. I remember the first time I watched her translate some of director Bong’s jokes in real time, and as a comedy person, I became obsessed with her then.

There was this idea that for this movie, we could be really specific about the language, because language is identity. It’s so fluid. It’s so slippery. And we had this dream of, even within one scene, what if we could really take this opportunity to figure out, after years of not speaking Korean all the time, how would she sound speaking to Hae Sung as a young adult for the first time in many years? Sharon was really instrumental in that, in helping me understand, not just like, sound, but the cultural context of all of this.

You’ve mentioned the high stakes for you on this project. By the time you were on set, were you able to shed those pressures so you could just shoot? What was the actual state of mind during production for you?

I never forgot. I can’t make light of that knowingness at this point in my life. It’s sort of like going to your own funeral and making peace. It sounds super intense, but what I mean by that is a certain acceptance actually that maybe I’m not going to end up having the type of career that I had set out to have when I was first starting out as a young person. We’re actors. You’re not entitled to any of this. And it would feel disingenuous if I didn’t acknowledge that there were some real tangible inequities just in terms of what was available. This is why this is all so wild to me. I’d already made peace—and it’s not really tragic because I don’t identify as a victim of my own life. I’ve loved the people that I’ve gotten to play. But now that I’ve had this chance, it’s kind of ruined everything, because now I might feel differently.

Like Nora, your own parents are also immigrants. Did diving into the story change your perspective on your own upbringing?

Yes, maybe even in a slightly uncomfortable way. I remember the first time my parents saw the movie my mom was almost inconsolable. I was not prepared to receive that emotion from her, specifically. I didn’t have that kind of relationship with my parents in terms of them consuming the things that I make. But I got a call from her several days afterwards and she said, “you know, I am Nora.” Which I loved, then I understood what she’s talking about. But I think that’s still something that I’m trying to figure out, right? I have my own kids now, and like, what is lost? Not just for immigrants and for women, but just for anyone who’s left home or has made a certain choice that you can’t take back because we only have this one go-around.

We’re able to talk today because this film has a SAG waiver and you’re able to do interviews even though the actors strike is ongoing. What has that been like for you to be able to get out there and talk about this film?

I gotta be honest, at first I felt very conflicted and confused and there were a lot of questions about what was appropriate. I am a longtime SAG member and a WGA member and I absolutely stand in solidarity with my union. I think because this movie was like a surprise gift to me at this point in my life and career, and I’m absolutely certain that I wouldn’t be sitting here talking to you if it weren’t for the independent film structure, if we didn’t have people championing creators, filmmakers like Celine, I can’t take that for granted. And the whole idea that we need to keep fighting relentlessly, really, to ensure that we'll keep having movies like this at all.

You’ve mentioned how this experience is shifting what you hope is to come in the future for you. Has that changed already since the movie came out and was this a huge success?

I don’t know if it’s a result of this movie or if it is a result of a constantly changing landscape. I feel compelled to also point out that there’s a part of me that still feels like this is all absolutely a miracle. In terms of next jobs and things, I mean, sure, I will acknowledge everything is different. It’s so weird. I think that now having had this process of making this movie, it’s reinforced for me the whole reason why I started doing this, it’s because of movies like this. I certainly don’t want to wait until the end of my career for another chance like this. And I certainly don’t want anyone else like me to have to wait and possibly never get a chance.