The Academy Award nominated film The Holdovers was a beloved film in 2023 starring Paul Giamatti and gave Da’Vine Joy Randolph her first Oscar win, and was a breakout role for actor Dominic Sessa. The film, directed by Alexander Payne, follows a cranky history teacher (Giamatti) stuck at a remote prep school over the holiday with a grieving cook (Randolph) and a troubled student (Sessa).
Jim Kaplan who plays Ye-Joon Park, a student at the prep school in The Holdovers, told Popternative how his shared theater background with his co-star Dominic Sessa bonded them and what Dominic said that he’ll never forget.
Jim said, “Well Dominic also comes from a theater background which is something we talked about, and he said something to me that I’ve never forgotten because it was so fascinating. He told me that one of his favorite mediums of acting is blackbox theater because it’s this kind of hybrid between film and like a big theater where you get to be so subtle but still in a theater environment, and it’s really like acting for the camera but on a stage. And after that I was like ‘oh my God, that’s so interesting’ and I did these acting intensives over the summer where we got to work in blackbox theaters and I was like ‘no he’s so right. This is so interesting’.”
The Holdovers is streaming now on Peacock.
Watch the full conversation with Jim Kaplan below.
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Amber Dover is a multimedia journalist with over a decade writing about pop culture. Cat mom with a deep love of horror, you can follow Amber at @Glambergirlblog on Instagram and X.