Happily Ever After star Shuhua Yeh might be a fresh face in the acting world, but she’s no stranger to the global stage. Making her acting debut in Feng-I Fiona Roan’s sophomore outing, which is having its world premiere in Toronto, she’s finally achieving a goal that’s been in the cards for her since her high school days.
“I was aiming to become an actress at first,” she tells The Hollywood Reporter on a late night — actually, early morning — Zoom call from her home in Seoul. Yeh, who grew up in Taoyuan, Taiwan, and attended an arts high school in Taipei, where she majored in drama. She spent much of her young life believing her career in entertainment — which was always a certainty — would begin with acting and then she’d branch out. Things didn’t quite go to plan.
Yeh ended up moving to Korea and began training to become a K-pop idol under Cube Entertainment. She debuted in the girl group I-dle, formerly known as (G)I-dle, in 2018. The group found quick domestic success and has continued to rack up hit after hit in Korea and beyond.
Despite her brief interlude from acting while amassing international success as a pop star, Yeh hasn’t found the transition to be that difficult. K-pop tends to lean into plot-based album concepts, so she had the opportunity to develop her craft while working on music videos.
“It somehow feels like picking up something from my childhood,” Yeh says. “It feels exciting rather than very challenging. I can finally demonstrate the things I have in my toolbox.”
In Happily Ever After, Yeh plays Kitty, one of the two sisters at the center of this family-focused film. Kitty’s the younger sister and the ideal daughter — depending on your definition — alongside Xuan Chen’s Claire. When a stray cat wanders into their lives, long-dormant tensions bubble up to the surface. The film explores the burden of expectations that families can place on young people.
When Yeh first read the script, she wasn’t sure which of the two roles was intended for her but felt that Kitty’s personality was quite the opposite of her own — a prospect she found exciting. She wanted, she says, a bit of challenge and more room to play with.
Yeh initially met up with Roan and a producer to discuss the film, where the director shared the story of her family and her sisters. Sisterhood sits at the center of the film and Yeh, herself the middle child of three sisters, found it easy to relate the material to her own life.
Throughout the process of making Happily Ever After, Yeh not only drew from her own family experiences — she also came to see her own family in a new light. “I sometimes find that I’m not used to straightforwardly facing my own family issues,” she says. “Sometimes I just move forward through life. During this process, I saw the different perspectives of the different sisters, the younger one and the elder one, and also myself, my own perspective.”
The new outlook is a continuation of her ever-evolving view of her own sisters as she’s grown into adulthood. She’s started to see her sisters as their own individuals, outside of her own perspective as merely younger and older sisters. It’s an observation she likely wouldn’t have made in her younger days: “In the past, when I was still a student, I think I was more egocentric and more of a rebel.”
Yeh went to work in Korea a decade ago, still a teenager, having trained for two years before she made her K-pop debut. She says working at such a young age made her grow up faster than her sisters. “Sometimes when I go back to see my elder sister, I sometimes feel like she’s kind of childish,” she says, lovingly taking a jab at her older sibling. “Growing up brought me a different way of perceiving my sisters.”
She’s noticed that her younger sister, on the other hand, has changed in the years she’s been away. “I can see she’s also becoming more mature and more considerate to other people,” she says. Yeh’s still active as a K-pop idol, even if she’s about to make her TIFF debut as an actress. She and I-dle released new music earlier this year, and the group experienced one of the most significant stages of their career this summer, performing at Chicago’s Lollapalooza.
The other women of I-dle — Miyeon, Minnie, Soyeon and Yuqi — have been by her side throughout every major moment of her career, including her move into acting. “My members know that taking part in a film has been one of my deepest wishes, and they always wish me the best of luck,” Yeh says. The other members of I-dle will often ask to see clips of the movie or anything she can share with them. Yeh’s a bit nervous for them to see the final product, especially since at the time of this Zoom conversation she had yet to see it herself.
Yeh’s quick to admit she’s not afraid to be in front of the camera or in the spotlight — it becomes second nature when it’s part of your daily life, one has to imagine. But the thought of standing onstage at her own movie premiere has her feeling something new.
“When I start to imagine that I’m standing on the ground of TIFF, I don’t actually feel nervous,” she says. “But as the days are coming closer — I’ve started to see all the marketing and the press talking about this — it’s been a constant reminder that it’s happening. It’s really happening.”
Still, “nerves” isn’t quite the word she would use to describe how she’s feeling. “Instead of being nervous, I would say my heart’s pounding for it. I feel excited, and I really would like to embrace this experience.”
Yeh’s hoping audiences at TIFF and beyond will embrace Happily Ever After too. This film and this story, she says, have deeply touched her and the rest of the cast and crew. She’s hoping that will resonate with a global audience.
She also has a more selfish wish — that audiences will see more than just Shuhua the K-pop idol and be open to the fact that she’s trying something she loves. Says Yeh: “I hope, of course, that the audiences can finally see me as an actress. I constantly encourage myself to grow in terms of self-discovery and challenge myself. I won’t let myself down.”
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