Lost actor proud of show for putting Asian characters front and centre

LEE-ANNE GOODMAN Mon Sep 19, 3:34 PM ET



TORONTO (CP) - Daniel Dae Kim, a key character on ABC's Emmy-winning drama Lost, is delighted to be working on one of the most acclaimed shows on television.

But it's not just because of the accolades and awards that are coming Lost's way, most notably the best drama Emmy it picked up on Sunday night as it beat out equally revered fare like Six Feet Under and 24.
Kim is doubly grateful because the show is one of the few on television with Asian characters in integral roles - a welcome development that had Kim in Toronto this summer to promote the castaway drama weeks before its second season premiere Wednesday on ABC and CTV.

"I'm really proud of the fact that they have two Korean characters as series regulars," the fit and handsome Kim, born in Korea and raised in Pennsylvania, says as he sips on ice water at a downtown hotel.

"I'd like to do whatever I can to promote this kind of television, this kind of programming, and if I can promote diversity on television in any country, I'm happy to do it."

Kim plays Jin on the drama that tells the stories - both past and present, and most of them heartwrenching - of a group of plane-crash survivors stranded on an eerie South Pacific island.

Equal parts Robinson Crusoe and Amityville Horror, the show delved into Jin's background last season as a would-be Korean businessman who, along with his wife, Sun, was making a desperate attempt to escape his evil father-in-law when Oceanic Flight 815 went down. Now he's battling new and mysterious enemies amid the island's ominous beauty.

Jin and Sun, who's played by Yunjin Kim, become estranged in the aftermath of the crash, adding to Jin's troubles as he struggles to survive as one of the few people on the island who doesn't speak English.

The couple's scene in the season finale, reconciling tearfully - in Korean with English subtitles - before Jin sets off to sea aboard a raft in the hopes of finding help was one of the series' most moving moments. It's no surprise Kim's resume includes extensive stage experience in addition to recurring roles on shows like 24 and ER.

In stark contrast to his understandably tortured character, Kim, 37, is effusive as he wonders why Canadians view Toronto as their own version of a strange and hostile island.

"'Why is it that Canadians are so self-deprecating about their country?" Kim said. "I really like Toronto and everyone I've said that to here is like: 'I don't buy that for a second.' But I really do."

"I had a big, long conversation with some friends of mine over dinner about how cool this city is - it's totally ethnically diverse, it's a major metropolitan centre, you have arts and you have culture but it's not too big to be unmanageable and it still feels like a smaller city in some ways," he said.

"It's a really great city. I find it so funny that Canadians don't seem to recognize that."

Toronto's multiculturalism was one of the reasons he was so happy to come north to promote the show, says Kim.

"I know that there's a big Asian-Canadian population here and, especially here in Toronto, there are a lot of Asian-Canadians working in the theatre scene and doing a lot of film and TV and I like to do what I can to support them for what they're doing, as well."

As for what's in store this year on Lost, Kim says he's in the dark almost as much as viewers.

The show ended last season with horror on the high seas as a band of scruffy, pirate-esque strangers kidnapped a young character from the raft that the crash survivors had painstakingly constructed.



"When we get scripts we all sit down and read through them furiously because we want to find out what's happening as much as the audience does," Kim says.

"We learn a lot of things by reading the script. Major things we'll know about maybe a little bit ahead of time, but week to week, we're still learning what happens to our characters - we're only a few weeks ahead of the viewing audience."

The cast is often as astonished by developments as Lost fans, he adds. "We'll read stuff and I'll get on the phone and say: 'Did you read that stuff? Can you believe that? What's going on?' So it's kind of cool, it's a little bit of a puzzle that reveals itself week to week to the actors too."

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