It's something endearing seeing a 60-year-old's eyes still light up in the presence of a toy. Suhaimi Subandie, grandfather of the local punk scene, co-founder of the May The 4th SG and proprietor of Pop Culture Punch Collectibles, still speaks about toys with the same sort of reverence as a zealot.

With an impressive collection of over 3,000 toys, made between the 60s to the 90s, they offer a fascinating window into Suhaimi's past. There are the likes of Master of the Universe figurines; Kenner Star Wars action figures, still in their pristine packaging; still-sealed boxes of MASK vehicles fill a shelf in a display cabinet.

Then, there is Suhaimi's Japanese toy collection.

After the Second World War, Japan saw the embodiment of wakon yōsai, which applied Western learning to Japanese traditional spirituality. It was a period where science fiction became a way to explore postwar Japan through a creative medium. Companies saw a way to capitalise on the nation's fascination with sci-fi, anime and manga industries by producing lithographed tin toys.

Godzilla was popular, borne out of the fallout of nuclear devastation; mechas came about from Japan's rapid industrialisation. Kaijus; Super Robots; Super Sentais, these and more would find their way into the hands and imaginations of children in the 60s.

Suhaimi's first exposure were the anime and tokusatsu (Japanese for live-action shows with practical special effects). Mesmerised by the flashing colours and derring-dos of the heroes, his focus shifted to the toys from these Japanese shows. Suhaimi recounts that shopping malls like the defunct People's Emporium, carried "a lot of toys from Japan".

As a follower of all things UFO and cryptid, it was a time when the first instance of UFO sightings occurred around the world that further piqued Suhaimi's interest in anime.

"I love everything that's robots and monsters," Suhaimi enthused. "I was a fan of Mazinger and when they decided to do a spin-off called [UFO Robot] Grendizer, I became a fan of that as well."

Grendizer had equal spades of monsters and mecha and the anime had a hold on a young Suhaimi. "I remembered that the cartoons were either dubbed in Malay or Chinese but the visuals and sound were so good that you don't need to speak a certain language to understand the story."

The premise of Grendizer is Prince Fleed leaves his destroyed world in the UFO Robot Grendizer, a powerful war machine. He lands on Earth and fights alongside his new human friends against the enemies who were behind Prince Fleed's ruined home planet.

Watching Prince Fleed interact and attach to Spazer (the flying saucer-like support vehicle for the Grendizer), to Suhaimi it was the coolest thing he'd witnessed.

He would gather a few Grendizer toys. There's a miniature die-cast Spazer that Grendizer can fit in, a still mint 15-inch vinyl figurine from Marmit and there's even the odd 12-inch watering can. He remembered how high-quality the toys were at that time. "Their quality is unbeatable, unparalleled," Suhaimi says. "They do very detailed work; you hold the toy in your hand and you know it is quality from the weight or how it feels. This makes the play value of the toys more [enticing]."

Over time, Suhaimi would lament about the drop in quality as Japanese toy houses moved its productions out of the country. "Made in Japan toys are more expensive, yes. But that's because of the quality packaging, quality toys, quality design. How the toys are made goes beyond what normal toys are produced."

His first Japanese toy was a bootleg Ultraman blow-up doll that his grandmother bought for him when he was two. "I think I threw a tantrum when she wouldn't get it for me," Suhaimi recalls with amusement. "I was rolling about on the floor. Then, she finally gave in." Back then, that 16" high knockoff was worth SGD2, "But we were from the kampong," Suhaimi adds, "so that was quite expensive."

Plastic was a new material at the time. Prior to that, toys were made out of tin or wood but with plastic, production became affordable. A subgenre would emerge from the plastic boom: sofubi, which are vinyl toys usually handcrafted by independent toy makers or artists. Usually based on superheroes, Japanese folklore and other Japanese pop culture icons, companies like Marusan, Bullmark and MARMIT were producing sofubis in large numbers. Some of the companies were family businesses, operated by family members.

"They'd have a workshop in their homes where, maybe, the brother-in-law makes the mould, the wife is doing the packing and the mother is spray painting. That's why those companies can't produce too many in a year."

Suhaimi has a soft spot for these independent toy makers, often supporting their businesses. After all, he hailed from the punk DIY culture. He created his own t-shirts using wax paper, he built his own skate ramp from scratch.

His backing for the underdogs also extends to the shows he watches. The main programme is exciting but the inner workings of the show... ah, to Suhaimi, that is far more interesting. "You'd want to know about the unsung heroes, the people behind the scene. It's like appreciating a meal; you'd want to know who the cook is. You taste his food and then you think, this guy is such a genius; who is this guy?

"I like Godzilla," Suhaimi says. "I especially like the actors, the stuntman and the director, especially Eiji Tsuburaya [co-creator of Godzilla]. He practically started the whole monster genre even way before Ray Harryhausen." He gestures to a loose figurine of Tsuburaya, which was part of a set from Tsuburaya Productions to promote the director's 100th Birthday.

You might be surprised to know that even with such care given to his collection, Suhaimi understands that he can't take it with him when he passes on.

"A few years ago, I was sick and when you're sick, there's only one thing on your mind: to get better. So, I told my wife to sell off whatever toy I have—those that can be sold easily; the faster, the better—in order to pay for the medical expenses."

Suhaimi became better but the incident brought clarity to his attitude towards materialism. He declared that when he dies, the collection will go to his wife; his family. They have carte blanche; they can sell it, keep it, give it away. "But," Suhaimi adds, "I want half of the money to be donated.

He cites Sadaqah Jariyah, the act of ongoing benefits for future generations. You plant a seed and that seed grows into a tree and it provides shade, food and a home to animals and people. It's a gift that keeps on giving. At the end of the day, these toys are just... things. They may cost a pretty penny but it's Suhaimi's approach to giving back that is priceless.

Photography: Jaya Khidir

“New York City Misses You Too.” It’s presumptuous but effective, as advertising slogans go, in that it prompted in me a nagging question: did I miss New York? If so, how much? Enough to do something about it?

The above legend was emblazoned across an illuminated billboard, skyscraper-tall, backed by a photo of Manhattan by night, lights atwinkle. I passed it on each occasion I took the Westway into central London and back home again—several times each week, during the months and, now, years following the peak of the pandemic. I had plenty of time to stare at it, to register the fact that circumstances in the travel industry remained so grave that even the second greatest city in the world was reduced to pleading, presumptuously or not, for British tourists to visit.

From the mid-1990s until five years ago, like so many people, I made regular pilgrimages to Manhattan— at least once or twice a year. Initially, entirely for pleasure. Then, for business and pleasure. Latterly, mostly for business. But in the period preceding the pandemic the trips became less frequent, and since 2018 I hadn’t been at all.

Feedback from those who had was not uniformly positive. Friends and colleagues, and some permanent residents, too, reported that the city seemed to have suffered more than most from the lockdowns and their aftermaths. The way they told it, the bagel had gone stale. New York, I was told, was tatty, bedraggled, even humbled. Hard to believe—and I didn’t, quite. But still my informants persisted: the subway was overrun by crazies; rats the size of sheepdogs had taken control of Central Park; and the whole place stank.

Frankly, this all seemed a bit rich to me: these were the same people who had complained for decades that New York had been gentrified into submission, Downtown had been Disneyfied, Brooklyn’s edge had been blunted. Now urban archivists who had long mythologised a lost demi-monde of junkie punk poets were holding their noses and coming over all suburban about... littering. What happened to the concrete jungle where dreams are made of?

Local press confirmed that New York is suffering. Crime is up. Rates of fatal overdoses are skyrocketing. An influx of tens of thousands of asylum seekers is putting an almighty strain on the public purse—and, it seemed to me from talking to friends there, the public patience. (Aren’t poor, huddled masses what New York was built on?) There is a housing drought and a glut of empty offices. Midtown is uncannily quiet compared to pre-pandemic levels, as people continue to work from home and businesses shutter or downsize or relocate. Tax revenue from commercial real estate has plummeted. The tech sector is in retreat. Adding idiocy to injury, to widespread consternation the mayor, Eric Adams, recently authorised a redesign of Milton Glaser’s iconic “I Heart NY” logo. (It now says “We Heart NYC”, in a sans-serif font, with a decidedly emoji-looking heart. In a word, it sucks.)

All desperate and depressing. But I confess, in my superficial way, that the thing that really hit home was that even my most elegantly dissolute Manhattanite friend, a perennial booster for the more dubious seductions of his adopted home, sounded defeated. Incredulity curdling into dismay, he told me that the dark art, at which he was a veteran practitioner, of scoring a last-minute reservation at the hottest restaurant, or a seat at the most exclusive bar, had lost its magic these days. It was too easy. The competition had either upped sticks for Westchester or retired into early-onset senescence. Perhaps, he suggested, those two are the same thing.

Everyone who remained, he said, voice dripping with glassy disdain, ate early and scuttled home to watch Netflix, as if they lived in Kansas or Ohio, rather than in what was once the greatest going-out city on Earth. (The hottest of hot new dining rooms in the West Village, where my friend lays his head, has the promising name Libertine. He reported that the place was packed but everyone was being scandalously well behaved.) Maybe, he suggested, I should come and see for myself, if only so he’d have someone to drink with, after hours?

I resisted. I could take his word for it. I had more than enough on my plate keeping London’s tottering hospitality industry afloat to lend a hand in someone else’s city. Especially at those prices.

Then, last spring, my wife decided she wanted to visit her friend, yet another former party person who’d lately quit the city (in her case for a big old doer-upper in Connecticut), and we should take the kids and make it our summer holiday. With all due respect to the Constitution State, I did not intend to spend my (our) summer holiday in Connecticut. Perhaps a couple of days there, a few days visiting other friends on Long Island, and either side of that: NYC?

Friends were sceptical. My wife was sceptical. I was sceptical. I’d never been to New York as a dad. I mean, I’ve been many times since I became a father, but I’ve never taken the kids with me. This would be a family holiday to a city I’ve only ever visited with less wholesome activities than sightseeing on my agenda. There would be no opening nights, no after-parties, no dive-bar lock-ins. What does a family of four do for fun in New York in the daytime?

I took advice. We should stay in Midtown (really?), because then you can walk to all the main attractions. When it came to those, you should book ahead, to avoid disappointment. Spontaneity has its place, but in New York, with the family in tow, you need to have a plan. Even, though I shudder at the word “itinerary”.

Twenty-plus years ago a regular bolthole of mine was 60 Thompson, on the edge of SoHo. It’s now part of a chain, owned by Hyatt. We booked into the Thompson Central Park, on West 56th Street. It maintains some of the spirit of Downtown—hidden behind a velvet curtain at the back of the lobby is a recreation of a grungy, graffitied burger joint (it’s called Burger Joint)—while offering the more chi-chi amenities one would expect of a luxury hotel. Our rooms were stylish and comfortable, service was warm and efficient, and the proximity to Fifth Avenue, Museum Mile and even Times Square turned out to be a boon.

New York City hotel rooms tend to be smaller than average, not only because space is at a premium but also because you’re in New York City: why would you spend any more time than necessary in your hotel room? (The old me—by which I really mean, the young me—would have had a smart-arse answer to that question, but he’s not here to argue.)

So, then, three full days in the city. Four people, all with wildly differing interests and priorities. Call me a curmudgeon, but I’m not, unlike Penelope (age 13), all that fussed about visiting the “biggest Sephora in the world”. Her mother, meanwhile, would rather be looking at contemporary art than researching and reporting a detailed list of the best pastrami sandwiches in the city, which is what Oscar (age 11)—and his gluttonous father—was focused on. (He was rewarded for his patience at the Guggenheim-Frick-Met-MoMA with an excitingly late-night screening of the latest Mission: Impossible.) Propping up the bar at Fanelli’s, on the corner of Mercer and Prince, will always be among my most cherished New York activities, but I must begrudgingly accept that daytime drinking in darkened watering holes is not the summer holiday the rest of the family was hoping for. (They got sun, sea and sand later in the week, in the Hamptons.)

And yet, despite all the kvetching and schlepping, there were moments of unexpected harmony, and these were a joy. Wandering Dimes Square with Penelope, on a sweltering afternoon, checking out the latest outpost of Lower East Side cool, drinking bubble tea, getting her nails done in a Korean place, checking out vintage T-shirts and second- hand books. A morning jumping in and out of cabs with Oscar, shopping for merch—Mets hat for him, trainers for me—while snacking on strawberry-liquorice twists from Russ & Daughters. Dirty Martinis in the bar of the Thompson with Danielle while, safely upstairs in bed, the kids watched Idris kicking arse, or perhaps ass, on Apple TV.

All four of us walked the length of the High Line on a sultry evening, from Hudson Yards through Chelsea and down to the Meatpacking District, where we watched the sun sink behind the skyline from the roof of the Gansevoort Hotel, while eating sushi from the outdoor omasake bar at Saishin.

All four of us lined up at the counter of the terrific S&P sandwich shop, opposite the Flatiron, being thoroughly spoilt by the funny young staff. All four of us enjoyed the view from the top of the Empire State Building. (Honestly, who knew?) And then a triumphant visit to a Broadway show, Wicked. (It really is.)

Yes, we saw crazies on the Subway. Yes, we saw rats in the park. Yes, we smelt weed wherever we walked. Not in a good way. Yes, it was clear that in recent years the city has taken knocks. Who hasn’t? And isn’t that yet another reason to declare, in solidarity: We Heart New York?

Our last night, a Friday, we went for cheeseburgers at JG Melon on the Upper East Side. The line outside was forbidding but the charming man on the door took pity on the hungry British kids and their hectored British parents and guided us through the throng to a prime table for four at the back. The place was buzzing, and I happily blew a week’s wages on another round of drinks and desserts. (Not going to lie, as Penelope says, New York right now is expensive.)

There’s a new billboard on the Westway, a pink background behind an image of the Statue of Liberty. New slogan, too: “It’s time for New York City.”

It’s a familiar feeling walking into the Quah household for the first time. Tea-stained photographs of children plaster the stairwell leading to the second floor, chronicling a family’s history. A faded couch, likely a long-time resident of the living room, bears the burden of years of lounging. The sound of barking dogs in the back garden adds to the comfortable clutter of everyday life, speaking of days spent together—the beautiful mess. You would’ve never guessed this home houses three Olympians. That is, until you catch a glimpse of the three professional portraits of athletes proudly hanging in the living room.

For many Singaporeans, the Quah siblings are household names. Chances are, you've found yourself glued to the television, heart racing, as you cheered them on in international competitions. They are some of Singapore’s most accomplished swimmers, representing us on the world's biggest sporting stages. For the upcoming Olympics in Paris, however, despite their best efforts to compete together for the first time in an Olympic setting, only one of them has qualified. Eldest sister Quah Ting Wen and Quah Zheng Wen have been fixtures in the swimming world for more than a decade, yet it is their little sister, Jing Wen, who secured a spot.

At 27, Quah Zheng Wen finds himself in an unfamiliar position—watching from the sidelines as his sister prepares for her Olympic debut in Paris. “I feel sad; sad that I'm not there to experience her debut at the Olympic Games,” he confides, seated diagonally from me on his living room couch after a long day of filming. “I very much wished that this would have been the games that all three of us could go to together,” adds Quah, his eyes reflecting a mix of pride and wistfulness. “But I'm more proud than disappointed that I'm not there.”

He recalls his sister's tireless efforts to qualify for the previous Olympics in 2021, repeatedly attempting the gruelling 200-metre butterfly event before failing to qualify. “I felt incredibly sad that I was going without her,” he adds, “I remember thinking if there were an option to give up my spot for her, I would have.”

It's clear that family is of paramount importance to Quah. His greatest fear, he reveals, is the thought of losing his parents. This fear, he explains, has been a driving force in his life since he was young. "It's a big reason why I kind of want to start moving forward in my professional career, start being able to contribute more to the family so that my parents can kind of relax, retire, you know, do the things that they like, travel and enjoy life."

Confronting Time

As an athlete closer to the end than the beginning, athletes like Quah face a unique challenge: the accelerated passage of time in their careers (and everything bad that comes with it). While the average person may not confront the physical effects of ageing until their hair greys and knees sore, athletes often hear whispers about their age by 30. Can Zheng Wen keep up with the younger swimmers? Zheng Wen should consider retirement to give the younger swimmers a chance. Quah is already past his peak. It hardly seems fair to label a 27-year-old as ageing, yet I’d wager this reality forces athletes to mature much faster than the average person.

"It's quite crazy," Zheng Wen begins, "your life as an athlete is compressed." He recounts his journey from being one of the youngest on the national team at 15 to suddenly finding himself the oldest male swimmer on Team Singapore. “I now stand almost completely alone at the age of 27,” he confides. “Even right now as we are speaking about it, that idea still seems foreign to me."

My Generation

At only 27, it seems odd that Quah is already the oldest male swimmer on Team Singapore, especially given that this age often marks the peak for athletes in sports like basketball and football. When asked why this was, Quah attributes it to Singapore's intense academic culture and the corporate rat race where everyone’s racing to be ahead of each other. “To a lot of people, when you’re between 20 to 26, it's wasted time if you spend it doing sports because there's no money for one, there's no real progression, there's no kind of pathway out of sports into the working world.”

Perhaps this is why Quah finds himself in a situation where his younger counterparts are retiring as early as 18. Or maybe it’s due to the fact that no one younger has been able to outswim the UC Berkeley alum yet. “That’s one of the reasons why I'm still in it. I mean, if I can't be the best here, then I can't be the best anywhere, right?”

In the world of competition, it’s tempting to look at someone younger and feel a need to be better than them. The natural inclination is to believe that your greater experience and longer track record of winning should give you an edge. Plus, it's all too easy to imagine what these newcomers were doing when you were their age and write them off.

Quah, however, takes a different approach. Reflecting on his time training at UC Berkeley alongside Olympians and world record holders, he remembers the first time a younger swimmer outpaced him. “Even though they're younger, I never saw them as less of a threat, you know, I respected all of them equally.”

A mindset like this was vital during Quah’s journey through National Service. A series of deferments meant he was conscripted several years later than his peers, placing him in a platoon filled with individuals six years his junior. "It felt odd at first," Quah admitted. "I mean, you know, a lot of my sergeants and superiors were guys younger than me." However, Quah's experiences in competitive swimming where he'd learned to respect all opponents regardless of age prepared him well for this unusual dynamic. With a chuckle, he adds, "Men, you know, we don't really grow up too much, right? Men will always be boys."

Sports, Metaphorically

Life imitates art, but is it a stretch to suggest that life also imitates sports? At 16, he set a national record in the 400m individual medley and made the Olympic squad, fighting to prove himself in London. By 20, he became the first Singaporean male to reach an Olympic swimming semi-final, placing 15th and 10th in butterfly events. Later, he’d forever etch his name into the front page of the history books, becoming Singapore’s most-medalled male swimmer.

Yet in 2024, despite the achievements, Quah finds himself, once again, needing to prove his worth after missing Olympic qualification. It’s a cycle akin to the human experience: bare and vulnerable we arrive, bare and vulnerable we depart; just as athletes begin and end their careers battling to prove themselves. In the case of Quah, silencing pundits isn’t his only hurdle, he’s also racing against the decay of time—which begs the question: with Father Time as his challenger, how fiercely will he swim this final lap?

“The older, more experienced and better at the sport you are, the harder it is to find those small things to change that get you that little fraction of more time,” he says. “But undeniably, I have to try, I have to try extremely hard."

His voice carries a mix of determination and wonder, "But that's the beauty, right? We never know the limit, we always believe that there's that 1 per cent we can change, that can make a difference to bring out a performance better than any you've ever put out before." True to his words, in his most recent swim before this interview, he achieved his fastest time of the entire year. “I'm proud to say that I never gave up.”

What Lies Ahead

Given Quah's mindset, one might naturally expect him to pursue a spot in the 2028 Olympics. Yet, reality intrudes. “I think it's hard to say, in four years I’ll be 32,” he says with a tinge of wistfulness. “I do want to be able to contribute to my family financially and have my parents be in a comfortable spot but I think right now unfortunately in Singapore we're just not in a spot where we're able to push athletes for that long of a period.”

In that case, what’s next? Having studied neurobiology at UC Berkeley, Quah had aspirations of eventually becoming a doctor like his father but his perspective has shifted. “It was a long-time dream of mine,” he admitted. “But I just don't think med school is in the cards really for me anymore.” Quah appears content with this shift, adding, "I've learned to be okay with that."

To adapt and find peace in letting go speaks to a deeper maturity, one that Quah attributes in part to the life lessons swimming has taught him. “I used to think that winning was everything,” he admits. “Results were everything and anything less than that would be a loss.” This mentality drove him towards excellence for years.

Yet, as he’s matured as an athlete, he’s come to realise that the countless hours spent training with teammates chasing the same goals, the camaraderie—the journey, is equally as important. But perhaps the most valuable lesson swimming has taught him is gratitude. "Cherish every moment," he says, "because once it's gone, it's gone forever."

Our Foundation

At present, Quah hopes to use his platform to encourage the younger generations of swimmers and to progress sports in Singapore. “In the past, I would’ve been like why would I want to do this (8-hour shoot)? I’d rather train, I’d rather be eating, I’d rather be sleeping. I could hang out with my friends,” he reflects, then adds with a self-deprecating chuckle, "Okay, not so much that one lah because I didn’t have a social life.” He goes on, “but I think this is an opportunity for me to share my experiences and show that it's possible to swim longer than five years.”

Singapore is quick to applaud its sporting heroes but tends to forget them when they stumble. In a sport like swimming, where losses far outnumber wins, is it fair to expect athletes to excel consistently without adequate support during challenging times? One can’t help but wonder: Is there a world where Singaporean athletes are rewarded when they win and supported when they lose?

Perhaps in that world, this interview might have taken a different direction—I would have asked him about the Olympics in 2028. Maybe Quah would have felt more confident about his Olympic future; spoken with optimism and determination about his training plans and goals for the next four years.

Regardless, there is no use dwelling in hypotheticals—the focus must remain on the present and the tangible future. Whether or not Quah competes in the 2028 Olympics, his influence on Singapore's sporting landscape is undeniable and will continue to be felt long after he hangs up his goggles.

Director of Photography: Jaya Khidir
Director and Editor: Nowo Kasturi
Creative Direction: Asri Jasman
Grooming: Christian M
Gaffer: Fang Yuan
Grips: Amos Elijah Lee, Ern Quek, Guo Wei, and Timothy Lim
Production Assistants: Ng Kai Ming and Syed Abdullah
Watch: Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra⁠
Locations: Hideout and COMO Orchard
Animation: Joan Tai

It's hard to believe a decade has passed since Lauv recorded his first single, "The Other", one of the many songs of heartbreak that he, as a music industry veteran, has come to be known for. But even before that tune was birthed from a 2014 split, Lauv could harness turbulent waves attached to romantic relationships before actually being in them; this kid was penning break-up bangers back in school. His ability to reach in and excavate raw emotion landed him a publishing deal upon graduation, with tracks snapped up by the likes of Cheat Codes, Demi Lovato, and Charli XCX, no less.

"It took me time to get the confidence to put out my own song," Lauv said, "but 'The Other' was different. It was a really personal song about a break-up. That feeling of when you know in your gut it's not right, but you're also not sure how to explain it in your head. On paper, it should be good."

"The Other" would act as a soft launch while Lauv (aka Ari Staprans Leff) busily pedalled hit after hit for other artists. But soon he'd join their ranks with a slew of hits, most notably, the 2017 hit "I Like Me Better" became an international smash. Inspired by his move to New York City and a romance that swiftly ensued, the electropop number became a soundtrack for summer lovers (as it did too for Netflix rom-com, To All the Boys I've Loved Before). It stayed on the US Billboard Hot 100 for over six months and broke Lauv across Europe, Asia and Australia.

"I was wondering if anything was going to happen in my music career... if it was going to go anywhere. Then I finally released 'I Like Me Better' and within the first hour of refreshing the YouTube page, the views and comments went up like crazy. Life became extremely busy, really fun but also super stressful. It became a lot of touring, interviews, artwork, making content and more songs, and quickly turned into 'this is my full-time thing now."

That September, Lauv joined British superstar Ed Sheeran on his Divide Tour in Asia. First stop: the Singapore Indoor Stadium. "I remember the city was so pretty, so clean and so vast. I had chilli crab, chicken rice and stuff like that, but I do need to delve more into Singaporean food. Success in APAC swung Lauv back and forth east on the regular. Lauv even collaborated on tracks with Lay Zhang, BTS, and TWICE.

"I still have to process the weight of some of these collabs. They've been so much bigger than I could have imagined," he muses. "Another cool aspect of it all has been being able to play some awesome shows in Korea, and meet tonnes more K-pop artists."

Lauv was in Japan promoting the compilation, I Met You When I Was 18, when we first met and I asked him to describe what it felt like being in love. “It’s awful!” he said in 2018, based on that experience, the one which shaped his acclaimed debut. He maturely echoes that sentiment today.

“Looking back, I feel like my first relationship maybe wasn’t the healthiest. Not necessarily the best match, but it was such a high just knowing you had somebody and feeling like you had a partner to rely on, especially at that age when I was at the end of high school, so shy and feeling pretty lost. Falling in love for the first time was magical.

“Now I’m in a place where I’m so single and really afraid to let in love again. It’s something I’m working on because in my 20s I’ve had a lot of career success but I’ve also had a lot of personal issues.” He admits, “I feel like in a lot of ways I don’t really know myself, trust myself or love myself fully. I needed to stop running to other people to fix that or band-aid that, and instead to learn to love myself and the right partner will come along.”

Emphasis on “partner”. “I don’t really have any particular answers yet, other than it’s something that I’m exploring in my music and exploring in my mind, and I’m going to be exploring in my life,” Lauv said in a 2013 social media post.

He reveals about where he is with that exploration. “It’s been a really awesome and exciting journey but it’s also been so hard for me. Two months ago I stopped taking all of my medication for my mental health stuff because I was feeling like it was numbing me a little bit and I felt ready to address my deeper issues and work them out in therapy.

“This is my decade to be myself and live my life for me and not for any outside anything. There’s no turning back from where I’m at right now, so I have to embrace all the parts of myself and learn how to be comfortable in my own skin."

“Now I’m doing a tonne of therapy multiple times a week to work through all of the deeper stuff I have going on. I’ve also been so lucky to have so much support from people around me: friends, family, and even my team. They’re like ‘Don’t rush yourself in this process, don’t rush to label yourself, and you don’t need to do this for anyone else except for yourself.’"

“Potential”, his first song released a year after the social media post, marks the beginning of what he calls the most authentic chapter of both his career and life to date.

“This is something that’s happened to me too many times in the past year or two, where I’m looking at friendships and being like ‘Wait...maybe these feelings aren’t just friendship feelings and maybe they’re way deeper for me'. 'Potential’ is a song exploring that.”

The colourful accompanying promo to “Potential” shows Lauv and dancers in start-to-finish choreography for the first time, expressing those emotions to a rather attractive love interest.

“Shooting the music video was really fun and such a positive experience. Everybody on the shoot had such a loving energy that made me feel very safe to explore something on camera that I’ve never really explored on camera.”

In 2019, Lauv joined forces with out-and-proud Australian pop singer, Troye Sivan, on the number three single on the Singapore chart. Lauv explains how Troye has been a constant source of support in this life following their at-first professional encounter.

“We were actually just texting yesterday, I miss him as it’s been a minute since we’ve seen each other. Troye was amazing from the moment we met, during the peak of crazy anxious times for me. Working together was such an easy process and then doing promo, shooting content, making the video...he’s been somebody I’ll forever be grateful for, who took the time to talk me through stuff. A couple of times in the past few years, I’ve hit these points of extreme self-questioning and feeling very lost, and he’s always been there, and been somebody who has been very... non-judgmental, accepting, kind, and patient. He puts me at ease.”

At ease including that of speaking openly and honestly about his crushes. When asked how that feels, a noticeable weight appears lifted off his shoulders.

“I’m at the point where once I started admitting it to myself, I found myself being so inspired and writing all these songs about different guys in my life or fantasising about a potential lover. It felt so beautiful and natural to me. I do feel like in terms of life experience I have so much more to unpack and experience. I’ve gone through the phase of allowing myself to talk about this and admit these feelings, dream and write about them, and now it’s like ‘Let’s go Ari,’ and I’m like, ‘ahhh!’”

Ari is his birth name. Ari Leff. Lauv’s stage name was coined from his Leo zodiac sign and his mother’s Latvian heritage (“Lauva” is Latvian for “Lion”). Lauv turns 30 on 8 August; a milestone birthday, which he describes as an opportunity to start fresh, not start over.

“This is my decade to be myself and live my life for me and not for any outside anything. There’s no turning back from where I’m at right now, so I have to embrace all the parts of myself and learn how to be comfortable in my own skin. I’m also trying not to put too much emphasis on only career since a lot of my 20s were so career-focused, however, at past points in my life when I’ve felt most at peace with myself, I’ve made music that I really love.

“Now I want to dig back into family, friendships, and living just as ‘Ari’. Not worrying as much about ‘Lauv’ and letting that follow suit however it does.”

With that in mind, what are his plans for the big 3-0?

“I’m not going to have a huge party. I’m going to do something intimate with people that I care about, who have been there for me and I want to be there for, just coming together and having a nice wholesome celebration together.”

Of course, Lauv’s not Lauv with a pinch of excess thought.

“I am nervous though,” he finally admits, “It’s wild turning 30!”

Photography, Digital Imaging and Retouching: Jayden Tan
Styling: Asri Jasman
Grooming: Emma Wendorff
Photography Assistant: Brian Neo

All right, it’s been done to death to deem a celebrity—who also happens to quite literally be tall, dark and handsome—as down to earth. The rationale is perfectly understandable. You look a certain way, make a living in a world that mostly operates like a separate stratosphere... and of course maintaining an objective grip on reality automatically becomes a feat.

That’s not to discount Taylor Zakhar Perez. It’s not so much the absence of airs about the actor but the sense that, vocation aside, he could make a sincerely valuable friend in your life. I’m coining it Cool Dude Energy: positive yet pragmatic.

The 32-year-old comes across as a tad younger than his actual age with a somewhat unjaded disposition for someone who has been in this trade since his teens. Yet between affable rambles, a time-honed maturity slips through every so often. Living nearly half his life in Los Angeles meant some trial and error finding the balance of confidence sans ego, or preserving self-belief without giving in to an industry-induced god complex.

“I’ve always taken the slow and steady, consistent approach. That’s just how I grew up, where everything’s regime and you build a solid foundation before you build the house,” he shares casually, “I think a lot of people like building the house first because it’s pretty and something to show for, but when it comes time to get that inspection, when you really have to dig deep, there is no foundation.”

Setting the scene

Born in Chicago and raised in Indiana as the sixth of eight children, the Midwesterner identified more as an older child than a younger or middle growing up. The household dynamic had Zakhar Perez effectively functioning as the eldest of the youngest segment. Given his career trajectory, catching up with his older siblings now occasionally lends to him doling out business advice too.

He speaks fondly of his late sister Kristy, who the family lost to colorectal cancer. Though 12 years apart, their bond and her influence on his life are evident through his heartening dedication on social media. Of Kristy’s many wise counsels that he adopts is to just keep going; as restarting anything after stopping is usually much harder.

This guidance was further substantiated by his stint as a varsity swimmer. Funnily enough, throughout the decade-long tenure, he was never truly fond of swimming (he still surfs though). “It was the discipline of it and the camaraderie that I loved,” he admits, “I was team captain for two years in a row and I liked being a leader, and that sense of community that I might not have had if I stopped.”

Training to never lose the groundwork created for himself eventually shaped his acting mindset as well. One he abided by even later in life waiting tables for actors on the other side of the coin; seemingly powered by sheer conviction. Whose certainty that they were going to succeed, despite having never seen them on any screen, was highly persuasive.

“It was interesting that I thought they were going to make it because they thought they were going to make it,” he recalls, “but I kept to the educational [route] because I knew from my experience as an athlete that that’s what you’re going to have to do. It’s practice after practice. Competitions. Win, loss, year after year; and that’s how I equate it. Acting is a sport.”

It only took finishing university to pursue his dreams. When early admissions to some of the best bio-chem programmes (the initial ambition was to be a dermatologist) came with the caveat of a swim scholarship, Zakhar Perez turned it down to attend UCLA as part of the appease-the-parents deal.

The evolution from theatre to commercials, however, was a steep learning curve. “It was cool to see yourself on TV in the beginning, but then you discover that there’s a technique behind it, which you have to invest in for it to convey on screen,” says the man who was not spared the trope of a small towner meets big city.

“Having acting coaches tell you like it is, but you don’t want to believe it because ‘Oh man I was the best in my high school so I’m going to be the best here’ and realising oh my gosh I’ve so much work to do.”

Defining the character

Cutting his teeth as an assistant for five years under his uncle, an art department director and set designer for commercials and advertising (“I was basically a glorified mover the first week”). The stint was another invaluable masterclass. It entailed being one of the first people involved in the process by sourcing props and prepping sets, to being among the last ones to leave after breaking down the sets. A far cry from simply showing up to shoot your scenes.

So it was impressive then, to witness actors who exemplified inspiring conduct. “They didn’t bring any of their insecurities on set, handled everybody from photographer to personal assistants so professionally, never made anyone feel less than but made everyone feel like they were part of this magic that was happening,” he enthuses, naming Hugh Jackman, Jennifer Anniston and Cate Blanchett for laudable behaviour he now emulates.

“I was like, Wow! You are an incredible storyteller and you also have an incredible presence about you that makes people want to work with you. As opposed to say, 70 per cent who were not the ideal talent. It makes you have compassion for your below-the-line creatives. So I’m very grateful because you can’t pay to have that experience but I was paid to have that experience.”

Other names in the game whose performances stay in his head rent-free include Michael Fassbender, Tom Hiddleston thanks to a recent watching of The Night Manager, and James McAvoy; whom the actor had the pleasure of acquainting.

“He was so sweet. Sometimes you think people are unapproachable and you can’t ask them what you want to, but he was so open and wonderful about it,” eyes gleaming as he recounts, “The Brits have a way of working in the details and these guys are such dynamic actors. The specificity, the continuity... it’s impeccable and just lights my fuse.”

As far as he’s concerned, there was no Plan B going into this gig all those years ago. “I remember one Christmas where my [other] uncle kept asking me what my backup plan was, and I said I don’t have one. And he went ‘Ah! Nephew! You should really have one, man. I’ve been out there; I know what it’s like. It’s hard to make it.’”

Constantly advocating his aspirations was not easy but like a movie cliché, Zakhar Perez insisted he was all in and nothing was gonna stop him. The memory is special because said uncle subsequently apologised, acknowledging that he was projecting his own worries and failures out of fear that his nephew might meet a similar outcome.

“And that was before any sort of success came my way,” he reveals, “So I thanked him for being so transparent with me, and as soon as I got rid of that ‘I’ll show you’ mentality, the world opened up for me.”

Hitting the stage

Currently recognised off Netflix and Amazon Prime, Zakhar Perez counts himself lucky for his divvy of co-stars. The natural rapport he carries with Joey King and Nicholas Galitzine, as well as his admiration of Uma Thurman, is clearly visible in interviews.

He appreciates that on top of their obvious flair, they’re equally proficient at embracing a childlike element of play at the moment. It ties to his bias towards rehearsals. It’s the portion many actors dislike due to repetition getting stale, but his theatre background thoroughly relishes it.

“That’s the time you get to improv, and you get to explore where these characters are coming from,” he explains. “It’s freedom because you’re not going to get told you’re wrong. The worst you’d be told is that it’s inaccurate given the circumstances. It just strengthens everything before you get on set to take that audience on a journey.”

While he would certainly not mind returning to theatre should the stars align for it, Zakhar Perez thrives with the medium he’s in. He’s obsessed with camera work even though he feels unqualified. “I only know my way around maybe a point and shoot, but I love being behind the DP and seeing their vision lining up a shot, because nine times out of 10, it’s totally different from how I’m reading it.”

Together with writing, he regards these as skillsets he’ll probably never fully acquire, but leaning into them better informs his dexterity. For now, he’s gleaning plenty from Oscar-winning producers on a handful of projects. Besides lighting and treatment, one key lesson is getting over watching his own performances. Letting go of professional perfectionism to objectively view it according to plot development.

Above the technicalities, he finds it a blessing that these project partners are adept at hiding the medicine in the sugar. This is an aspect Zakhar Perez deeply resonates with, like the genres he enjoyed watching in adolescence. Sure, he delighted in buddy-style comedies, SNL (Fred Armisen’s Regine absolutely kills him) and superhero action, but the original X-Men films spoke to him personally.

“It really had a message on its mind and makes you rethink [your perspective],” he muses, circling back to the topic, “These projects have completely shifted my entire mindset on the industry. I think people tend to forget that acting is just a sub-category of the entertainment industry at large. It’s a business.”

Sharing the spotlight

There are things he wished he knew when he started out. Expertise that was never actually taught in school (personal finance!) which could genuinely hold back an individual without it. It is why helping the future is something that has always interested him.

“There are two paths, right? You can be an egotistical maniac, or you can reach back and lift somebody up, and that person reaches back and lifts the next person up,” he tells of his philosophy which he practises towards greener actors. Whether new cast or juniors met in passing, there’s no hesitation to take their calls.

“It’s not like I’m trying to be everybody’s mentor but nobody ever did that for me. I know that there are so many questions you’re afraid to ask on your first day and honestly nobody can put you at ease on how it’s going to go than a fellow actor.”

This harkens back to a programme he did many moons ago. The brief was to add a socially impactful cause to your life that you thought you had no room for, as a means to hold yourself accountable since it’s easy to be engulfed in the daily grind. Zakhar Perez decided to boost creativity in youth, in light of the US defunding of many art-related programmes. It seemed a fitting choice.

“Art was my favourite class as a kid. Being able to create solo but also collaborate with friends and have a teacher guiding me in the right direction... that was such a formative time in my life. And I saw what was lost through the years of getting older and having papers to write and deadlines to hit.”

“So I had a tent at this farmers market by the LA Zoo, brought tons of arts and crafts and every week kids would come,” he tells with a huge grin. “A friend and I would ask what they’d want to make that day and we’d be cutting up snowflakes, painting, using markers.”

“Their parents would be shopping, then come back to pick them up... It almost felt like a daycare sometimes,” he laughs, “But you know what? If the kids are activated and excited about this, then that’s all that matters. You make time for things in your life that you find meaningful.”

Who knows? Maybe, just maybe, out of these little seedlings sprouted a few for whom these very sessions lay creative soil; forming a fresh base for an upcoming flourish that will one day come around to do the same.

Photography: Lenne Chai
Fashion Direction: Asri Jasman
Art Direction: Joan Tai
Styling: Marc Eram
Producer: Guoran Yu at APEX COMMUNICATIONS
Executive Producer/Casting: Even Yu at APEX COMMUNICATIONS
Production Design: Kelly Framel
Grooming: Rachel Burney
Digitech: Dante Velasquez Jr.
Photography Assistants: Tatiana Tate and Carly Hough
Styling Assistant: Mikey Vargas
Production Assistant: Sky Xiang

No one batted an eye when the shoot date with comedian Atsuko Okatsuka was scheduled on April the first. Perhaps, we were too absorbed in making the appointment happen; maybe we never considered the possibility of Okatsuka not showing up. Looking back, the signs were there for a probable no-show: the slow back-and-forth via e-mail with Okatsuka’s management; a last-minute confirmation on the location and timing.

Ten minutes past the scheduled 1pm and a text saying that they weren’t able to find the studio, felt like a lead-up to someone jumping out from the closet, screaming “sike”. But Okatsuka and her husband, Ryan Harper Gray did show up. Of course, they did. Can the story happen in any other way?

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After touring her next special, Full Grown, in America, Okatsuka embarked on an international tour that would take her from London through Southeast Asia before ending in Australia.

For her stop in Singapore, she only found out that she was performing at a cinema when she hit Asia. “I thought Cineleisure was a cute name for a theatre,” she reasoned. But venue withstanding, her opening night here went off without a hitch. After the opener had warmed up the crowd, Okatsuka came bounding out and leant into not knowing that she was performing in a movie theatre. Then, seeing the spotlight trained on her, she immediately mimed being an escaped convict being caught in a searchlight. The room broke into laughter and for the next hour, she had the audience eating out of her hand.

It’s the same effect even when it’s at an intimate setting like an interview. She is amiable, a cut-up. When she laughs, it reminds one of a Sesame Street puppet—somewhere between a felted growl and a chuckle.

“The men in our lives have either died or left,” Okatsuka says, describing her upbringing as “matriarchal”. Mostly raised by her grandma, who also pull double-duty looking after Okatsuka’s schizophrenic mother; Okatsuka’s family didn’t fit the mould like the others. “My dad divorced my mom; my grandma, mom and I were undocumented; my mom has a mental illness. Whenever I watch other Asian comics joke about how their parents want them to be a doctor, lawyer, engineer... I can’t relate because that was not my family.”

Her mom’s schizophrenia was not diagnosed at the time so Okatsuka assumed that this was just another one of her mood swings. She would create a fuss or throw a plate or anything within reach. After an episode, Okatsuka would notice a frailty whenever her mother calmed down. “I felt bad for her. I’d see her shaking her head like she was shaking out the negative voices. I’d talk to her and still treat her like my mom.”

Whenever her mom starts to “act up”, Okatsuka would play the clown to diffuse the situation. She’d bust a move or pretend a stick was a magic wand that can ward off evil. Her mother would laugh at her antics; the voices in her head fading into echoes.

In a way, her mother was Okatsuka’s first audience.

“I have to be a cheerleader for her,” Okatsuka adds. “I have to put on a song and urge her to dance. Mom, repeat after me: I am worth it. I am strong. There’s a darkness happening but I’ve to be cheery for her. I know it’s a crazy scene—someone is losing their mind and someone is tap-dancing in front of them. But that’s the only way I know how to handle the situation and it is with some light.”

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The pandemic kept Okatsuka and her husband indoors, masked and responsible; all in an effort to protect her mother and grandmother living with them. While it was a period of “general sadness”, it’d prove to be the occasion that would shape Okatsuka into the comedian that she is today.

There were two critical points: one, she started to be introspective and write about topics that were hard to talk about before like her mother’s schizophrenia. It became an eye-opening entry into a different side of the comedian.

She had created Normalise Everything, a stand-up show that consisted of comedians who have parents with mental illness. The hour-and-a-half show was livestreamed and the money raised was donated to Painted Brain, a mental health organisation.

The second point is her social media game. Other than her stand-up bits, her TikTok has videos of her dancing, most of them either with her grandmother or with Gray. The innate silliness of her videos was a balm during COVID. In one of her dance uploads, she accidentally created the #DropChallenge, where Beyoncé’s bass-heavy “Yoncé” plays in the background, Okatsuka halts in the middle of her activity in Little Tokyo and drops, twerk-style as slowly as possible before rising again. All these happen with her grandmother in tow. That video had one million likes and her fanbase exploded.

One of these fans was Mike Birbiglia, a veteran comic, who asked her to open for him on his tour. During the tour, Okatsuka related to Birbiglia about an intruder being breaking into her house three times in a day and wondered how she could incorporate it into a special that she was working on. Bowled over by the story, Birbiglia worked with her on her special that would eventually become The Intruder.

The Intruder was Okatsuka’s first HBO special and she was also the second Asian-American woman to have a stand-up special with the streaming giant. The first? That honour goes to Margaret Cho, who, in a roundabout manner, inspired Okatsuka to pursue comedy when her friend passed her a DVD of Margaret Cho: Notorious CHO during a sermon in church.

Okatsuka had never seen stand-up before. At the time, she was an immigrant sharing a space with her mother and grandmother in her uncle’s garage. She kept her head down, only exposed to the things that her “immediate family [were] into”. Cho’s special blew the doors open into a larger world. Not only was a woman, who looked like Okatsuka, cracking wise, but there was a confidence that spoke to her. In a cover story in The New York Times Magazine, Okatsuka says, “I often wonder what it must feel like for her, knowing who she is since she was born. It took me probably 10 years to figure out my voice.”

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You've read the stories about how her parents met on a Japanese dating show. Or how when she was eight, her grandmother kidnapped her from her father and stowed her away to America. Or how her grandfather died at the hands of the Kuomintang during the White Terror in Taiwan. These and many other incredible instances are peppered into Okatsuka’s life. They would be wellsprings of material for her comedy but before the age of 19; before the recommendation from the community college film professor whom she was dating to try stand-up, these chapters amounted to just another day in her life. Because of her immigrant status, Okatsuka just wanted to blend in and not make waves.

Growing up in America, she wanted to change her name but said that she wasn’t “creative enough” to come up with anything new. She had gone by “Stacey” for a little bit. “And then that song by The Ting Tings came out,” Okatsuka said, “That was a fun wake-up call. They call me Stacey. They call me Her. That’s not my name. That’s not my name. And I was like, yeah, why am I trying to be white? That’s not my name.”

She had struggled with fitting in all her life. When she lived in Japan, she had to deal with the lack of warmth from the locals because of her foreign status. Whenever her mother had her schizophrenic episodes, Okatsuka had to push aside her own needs to tend to her.

“When I was four and under, I had the bowl cut,” Okatsuka said. “And I was trying all sort of ways to fit in. Maybe adopt a long hairstyle, like Jennifer Aniston or Angelina Jolie. Maybe being blonde is the way to go.

“But when I finally found my voice in comedy, I wanted the bowl haircut that I had when I was a kid. When I was young, I didn’t feel like I could completely be myself. But now I can. This is a second chance at being my childlike self again.”

She finds it important to hold on to the spirit of playfulness. “Because as you grow older, you have to deal with paperwork and rules; more doctor visits... technical things that are very serious. I want to continue embracing that childlike joy.”

The bright colours, the haircut, the comedy—all these and more are Okatsuka’s better sequel to her childhood. “Part two is gonna be better than the sad, dramatic childhood.”

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The moment the industry is ready for someone like her, everything else had to happen before that.

“In America and everywhere in the world, honestly, representation in the media has not always caught up to the number of people who actually want to do a certain art or have been working at it,” Okatsuka explains. “For example, in America, when I first started, there was Margaret Cho and then Ali Wong. We didn’t have many people before us, who did it and who were embraced by Hollywood, who were embraced internationally. Of course, you don’t have the self-confidence to think, oh, I could do it too.”

It was 2018: Ali Wong’s second special came out and Fresh Off the Boat was already a TV show. More Asian-American representation was rife in the landscape. Okatsuka had been doing stand-up for a while; her comedy got better and she started to see more people turning up to her sets. “That was when I thought that I didn’t have to walk dogs any more or teach film at a community college. I could quit those and focus on stand-up comedy.” She doesn’t do accents in her act. “I’m not good at them, I feel you can tell a story without doing them and I don’t want to be taken the wrong way. Especially with Western audiences, they might laugh for the wrong reasons and not listen to the story, setup or punchline. They are just laughing because there’s an accent. See, Asian accents are choppy and silly-sounding. That’s why it’s funny. That’s so... old school now. That was the old way of laughing that I don’t think is funny any more.”

When asked about her first impression of her husband, she says “Oh, I’ve always wanted a sister, you know. We’ve started to dress alike; we joke similarly, and we laugh about a lot of things, it’s like I’ve found a sister that I’m also attracted to. So, that’s special.”

It’s a joke, of course. Ryan Harper Gray is more than that. He helps her with her skits, her production, her schedule. He’s her Guy Friday with added spousal benefits. They met through a mutual friend’s shoot and just fell hard for each other. In one of her bits in The Intruder, Okatsuka describes the moment she found out that Gray had a schizophrenic mother. “And I was like, Oh my God. My mom too. And we had the craziest sex ever.”

But even in the comfort of each other, there are still some things that are verboten. “Being a comedian is hard but it’s harder for their loved ones,” Okatsuka says. “Because we talked about everything so what’s safe to talk about on stage? There was one time I talked about him having stomach issues, like diarrhoea stuff and after the show, a fan saw Ryan and screamed, Hey, that’s the diarrhoea guy. Ryan says, oh, no, that’s gonna stick. Can we not tell that joke any more? I said, of course. I don’t want you to be known as that ‘diarrhoea guy’.”

(And to Gray who is probably reading this—a sigh already forming in his throat—apologies for retreading this incident up again.)

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At the point of the interview, back in April, Okatsuka wagers that her special, Full Grown is about 75 per cent finalised. “There’s a lot more jokes that I think I can write for it and some I might replace.”

She says that her discipline in comedy is the only adult thing about her. According to Gray, she’d write almost every day.

“I’m not organised but whenever I have time during the day I’ll write. Or at the very least, I’ll be thinking about jokes. If something made someone laugh, I’ll remember it or I’ll write it down on my phone.” She’ll deconstruct the joke later—why was that conversation funny? Why did that person laugh when she said that? How can I expand on it? Okatsuka can be such a nerd about it”.

The first joke that she ever told was at a comedy class that she found online. “Oh, you could tell jokes at an open mic but those clubs are usually open at 10pm to midnight. It was’t very safe for women at that timing.”

The premise of her first joke is about how her name is Japanese and she worked in a Japanese restaurant and she drives a Toyota. “It’s about why everything I do is Japanese-related. It was literally a stupid sentence that just stated facts.”

She’s easily recgonisable but she is also trapped by it, especially her hairstyle. Because Okatsuka acts as well, it’s tricky for her to audition given her appearance. “I can be myself in my stand-up but fitting into other people’s role is a balance that I’m still trying to figure out.”

The easiest way out of this is if someone created a role where the character already looks like her. Or the other option, that she briefly mentioned, is if she created a role for herself. That might be a possibility as she’s talking to TV networks about creating a show based on her life.

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She's a people pleaser by nature. After the initial show in Singapore was sold out, those who couldn’t get tickets were asking if she would add more shows. She acquiesced and created four more shows. Gray says that every time Okatsuka performs, it drains her.

So imagine, during her tenure in Singapore: five performances held over three days. That takes a toll on a person. “This is probably the last time we do something like this,” Okatsuka says.

But still, people are clamouring for more shows from her. She’ll return to tour Asia again and she’ll swing by Singapore to perform on 22 and 23 July. This time it’ll be at a proper theatre in the Esplanade and, of course, both nights will be sold out.

Okatsuka alludes to a lack of mystique to her. “I think I’ve done whatever I could do to show you who I am. Everyone is caught up, I think,” she says. “I’ve pretty much shared so much of my life that everyone has seen it all.”

These days, she uploads once or twice a month. She’s trying not to overload her feed with too much information but, if the likes and sold-out shows are any indication, people are still interested in what she has to say. When it comes to her anecdotes, her premises often start as tragedies: The intruder in the home; a pandemic that saw no sign of abating; a mother with mental illness; a sham marriage. Without punchlines, the set-ups are just... tragic.

And perhaps, that is Okatsuka’s magic. That she can find an avenue away from the expected grief and unhappy endings. When life gives you lemons, you make lemonade. And then, you wonder if lemonade is just lemon piss and so you do a spit-take because that is a funny reaction.

In today’s climate, choosing to be happy is such an audacious act. And with Atsuko Okatsuka leading the charge on this, we will gladly follow.

Photography: Shawn Paul Tan
Styling: Asri Jasman
Hair: Sha Shamsi using OUAI via SEPHORA
Make-up: Kenneth Chia using SISLEY
Photography Assistant: Xie Feng Mao
Styling Assistant: Chua Xin Xuan

ESQUIRE: When I think about your collaboration with Tiffany & Co., the first thing that comes to mind is the heart-shaped sunglasses that Alexandre Arnault posted on Instagram. You revealed those sunglasses last June saying, “You would know that I’m engaged to Tiffany. This is just the start of the many things we’ll be doing together.”

PHARRELL WILLIAMS: Those sunglasses are special. Generally, jewellery and accessories are must-have items in my style. That’s why I really enjoyed the process of working on that project. Thanks to the love those sunglasses got, we were more excited to release Tiffany’s new Titan collection. I’m close friends with Alexandre Arnault. So, getting the opportunity to create the Titan collection with Tiffany was an honour, and I’m thankful for it. 

ESQ: What did you want to express with the designs at Tiffany, and was there anyone or any incident that inspired that?

PW: I’m very inspired by water. The design of this collection and the name “Titan” were inspired by Poseidon, who is the king of Atlantis (a fictional city under the sea) and the ruler of the sea. “Atlantis” is also the name of an area in Virginia Beach where I grew up. Also, titanium was named after “Titan”, and you can call it “titan” for short. It is also a name that emphasises our use of black titanium, which we used in this collection to physically embody the beauty of the colour black. 

ESQ: I think it was a great idea to pair yellow gold with black titanium, and it felt fresh to me. 

PW: [The reason for that was] because it is different from tradition, and something unheard of. We wanted to make something beautiful yet different at the same time with this collection.

ESQ: You’ve even mentioned that “jewellery is the punctuation mark of a person”.

PW: Jewellery makes a person. We even remember a person by their jewellery. I can never forget the ring that Slick Rick wore a long time ago. I remember trying to look for the same ring he wore. 

ESQ: There was a dinner party hosted in New York to mark the launch of Tiffany’s Titan collection. Please tell us more details about that party.

PW: I was really happy that my friends and family came and supported me. That was the first time I saw other people wearing pieces from this collection. I was able to give life to this collection while working very closely with Tiffany’s in-house design team, and it’s such an honour to lead Tiffany into a new generation. It was at the New York flagship store (which looks down into Central Park). Launching the collection there made it feel like everyone came back and got together in their hometown.

ESQ: There was a Tiffany Wonder party in Tokyo recently. 

PW: Firstly, I love Tokyo. It’s one of the cities I love, and the food is amazing. It was great to be able to celebrate 187 years of Tiffany in Tokyo.

ESQ: How would you describe the style of this collection in one word? And tell us why.

PW: People. That’s because everything I create is for the people. It doesn’t matter what your gender, race, ethnic group, or anything else are. I hope people of different classes can wear this collection.

ESQ: I recently checked out your collection “Son of a Pharaoh” which you put up for auction on the auction site JOOPITER, which was launched a few years ago. Everything was great, but the BBC Varsity Jacket was especially interesting. It was an item that expressed a politically correct message in a very cool way.

PW: I really love that jacket. Women are our future. I think it’s important to use one’s art or platform to spread love and talk about injustices. Ultimately, it’s because we are all people. I’ll also be launching a very interesting auction on JOOPITER this coming autumn during Frieze Seoul. I don’t want to say much about it now, but I’ll be revealing more details soon, so look out for it. 

ESQ: You’ve been active for over 30 years. How have you been able to stay on the front lines of trends for such a long time?

PW: That’s an interesting point. It’s because I’ve never put in much effort into trying to stay afloat of the trends. I just do what I think is right. I’m also lucky to have worked with interesting people from designers to artists, musicians, and all sorts of other geniuses. I’m learning from them every day.

ESQ: I’m curious as to how you would differentiate something good from something bad.

PW: We can never know what is good, or what people can relate to. You just have to feel that it’s right. Whenever I’m creating something original, or whenever I’m pushing myself to do something that nobody else has done before, that’s when I create "something good". Nobody might like what I created, but we have to be prepared for that!

ESQ: Have you ever thought about how you make that distinction? For example, when I asked you earlier “What is good?”, you could either prioritise your personal preference when doing music or fashion, or you could consider the preference of the consumer. 

PW: I try to look through the consumer’s point of view as much as I can, because I’m also a consumer. I think about how I can make it practical, or how the final piece can improve my life or help me live a better life. That’s the criteria I use when making decisions. 

ESQ: What do you ultimately consider to be “good”?

PW: “Good” is such an interesting word. Why do we not say “great”? But at the same time, there isn’t a singular definition of “good”. Something might be “good” but might not change your life. Or “good” could be just a feeling. But if you don’t have true passion or sincerity, or if you’re trying hard to get “something good” without knowing why you’re doing it, then that attempt will fail. What sets you apart from others is what makes you special.

ESQ: What does creativity mean to a creative director?

PW: I have three roles. The first is to be a student, the second is to share the code, and most importantly, the third is to help others. Every season, we have to start from the beginning and expand the codes, which are the elegant tailoring, comfort, resortwear vibe, the basics, and of course the dandy. At the head of it, my role is to give energy (to the people I’m working with). But if I’m not able to create something charming, none of these have any meaning. I speak through my vision and through the amazing talents at our Maison.

ESQ: In a previous interview with Vogue, you described a creative director as a “love movement” and someone who “commands 2,500 soldiers”. I know that The Love Movement is also your favourite album by A Tribe Called Quest, but to be honest, I don’t understand that figure of speech.

PW: “Love Movement” or “LVers” for short was inspired by the slogan of my hometown Virginia, which goes “Virginia is for Lovers”. The work that our team at the Maison and I do is one part of the strong “LVers” community that we created, and at the same time it’s for the community. The reason I likened it to commanding solders, is because I lead 55 departments and 2,500 skilled artisans at our Maison. It means that my role in this place is to lead and direct. Our work has to be in harmony, and my role is to make sure everyone moves as one. And the basis of all our work is love.

ESQ: How did the slogan “Virginia is for Lovers” come about?

PW: I think it started from an ad or a billboard inviting people to come to Virginia for their honeymoon. But the slogan is true. There are all types of love in Virginia. It’s full of communities and families everywhere. 

ESQ: Hearing that reminds me of the Princess Anne High School Varsity Jacket that you put up for auction. It’s clear that it’s an important piece that explains your identity.

PW: Princess Anne High School is the name of the high school I went to in Virginia Beach! I really love that place, and it’s a place that has a lot of good memories. Coming from Virginia is very important to me and to who I am now. Whenever I have the chance to show that Virginia holds a special place in my heart either by representing or mentioning the place, I’ll take it. Creating the Princess Anne High School jacket was a tribute to my hometown.

ESQ: For someone who has only lived in Korea, it’s hard to picture Virginia as clearly as I can picture New York or LA. What kind of place is it?

PW: It’s a really cool place, and it’s my pride. People might underrate us, but you cannot find the history or the culture we have in Virginia state anywhere else! I love being close to the water and get a lot of inspiration from water. Being close to the water helps me feel safe. 

ESQ: You really love Virginia. What about making Pharrell’s Virginia, just like Donald Glover’s Atlanta series?

PW: That’s an interesting thought. But I’m not sure if Virginians would want a show created about them. If you want to watch a cool programme about Virginia or want to hear about the lives of people in Virginia, there is a documentary series called Voices of Fire about Virginia’s choir group with the same name. It’s amazing how much talent they have. The choir is led by my uncle Bishop Ezekiel Williams, who is an inspiration to many people, and you can catch it on Netflix. 

ESQ: As someone who loves honky-tonk, the Louis Vuitton Autumn/Winter 2024 show was very impressive. I’m curious about the reason why you interpreted Western American outfits in the collection. 

PW: I wanted to reference my personal journey from my hometown of Virginia to Paris. I also wanted to tell the story of Western America, which is also the origin of workwear. Workwear evolved from denim which the first cowboys wore. I wanted to tell the story about this inherent history and express the origin and evolution. The story is told as is in the code of this collection. I’m very proud of that collection. From the buckles to the engravings, we didn’t miss a single detail. Simply put, we elevated every element you can think of up a notch.

ESQ: Will you consider interpreting American kung fu culture from the '70s and '80s in future works? I think it would suit you well.

PW: Kung fu and martial arts in general are very interesting. It’s a sport that requires a lot of strength, agility and patience. It’s almost like dancing. This sport is a type of art. It’s something I could consider!

ESQ: What do you think is your greatest asset right now?

PW: I will forever be a student. I love learning from others, and I get inspired by others every day.

ESQ: It’s interesting that you said “student”. What kind of student are you?

PW: I’m a student who observes well and asks a lot of questions. I want to know what happened here and there. I’m curious about how something I’m seeing is being made and why it’s made. We need to keep having curiosity. It’s the best way to learn about ourselves and the world around us.

ESQ: Is there a personal treasure that you’ll never put up for auction no matter what?

PW: There are so many! You mentioned the Tiffany heart-shaped sunglasses at the beginning of this interview. I will never put that up for auction, because it marked the beginning of my beautiful relationship with Tiffany.

Photography: Hyea W. Kang
Fashion Editor: Yun Wonghee
Styling: Matthew Henson
Grooming: Johnny “Cake” Castellanos at H.Q.E
Tailor: Alice Chastel Mazin
Production: Bae Woori
Art Designer: Kim Daesup
Styling Assistant: Marine Gabaut
Translation: Astrid Ja’afarino
Animation: Joan Tai

No one could ever recreate what Gay Talese did for Frank Sinatra in 1966. They are and were respectively two great powerhouses in their own calibre, and nothing will come close to the written legacy presenting a fresh angle of not only the figure himself, but the culture he was embedded in.

Anyway, the premise here isn’t nearly the same. Lucien Laviscount isn’t unwilling to be interviewed, he merely seems really pressed for time. He doesn’t have a cold either. He just has a broken rib, though he didn’t quite specify how. It has been a crazy couple of days.

Friends, family, and associates were not involved in crafting this piece either. The only third-party accounts available are sifted from prior interviews with him. One particularly memorable (shoutout Fashion Magazine) for effusing such enthralment by his looks and charms that it’s borderline comedic.

The story often begins as a child model for David Beckham’s clothing line at Marks and Spencer, where the former athlete casually comments that the boy should try his hand at acting. It’s that demeanour that got Laviscount scouted for the campaign in the first place.

Laviscount rose to prominence in his teens through a couple of British dramas, strangely all taking namesake from locations—Waterloo Road, Grange Hill, Coronation Street. For international audiences, he plays Earl Grey (kudos to the writers) in Scream Queens and more notably, Alfie in Emily in Paris.

There’s his upcoming rom-com This Time Next Year and we would go on but this isn’t an IMDB page. Though it will be a pity to leave out that music video he did. Not appearances as a man-turned-werewolf in a Calvin Harris release, or a centaur-turned-man in Shakira’s recent hit; which if combined would probably make the rarest bingo card. No, it’d be fronting his own music in the most random 2012 club banger (for those interested, it’s “Dance with You” featuring Mann).

He has since come far. Now, the rumour mill churns of his Bond candidacy. The 32-year-old English actor takes this call from London, despite coming off a shoot in LA and his posts showing him last in Miami. After the call, that very evening, he’ll jet off to Cannes for the film festival.

He does wish, fully acknowledging it’s not something he should say, that people would work on the weekends. Perhaps then, Mondays wouldn’t be so swamped. He is possibly the poster child for “If you love what you do, you never work a day in your life”. It’s not a mantra he recites, but it does surface as a running theme in previous coverages.

He actually just flew in from Antigua, where his professional bodybuilder father is from, and where he has been based since the pandemic days. So really, it’s about managing four days of his life at a time. Anything after will be too much to cope with, but of course, he wouldn’t have it any other way. Once again reinforces the grateful-to-be-here vibe.

Laviscount is insistent that he takes nothing for granted. He’s really happy for everything that has happened in his life and grows with it. Besides relaying how he’s learning and getting a better perspective of what the world for him looks like and who he is now, he encloses another almost boilerplate statement about how you won’t be able to live where you want to if you live in the past.

Surprisingly, motivational one-liners and all, the actor doesn’t quite deem himself an optimist. Even though he strikes as the type to believe in the best of everyone, and resonates with uplifting shows like Acapulco; a tale of overcoming odds and achieving dreams. Even though in a similar vein, when most consider audition processes daunting, he finds excitement in bringing what he has to the table and putting his unique spin on a part that was never written for him.

Underdog trope aside, the notion of optimism was never an option to Laviscount. In his books, it would only mean the reality of the situation is not recognised. His feet are very much planted on the ground. Great things do happen... with hard work and conviction. In other words—in his words—you can’t be a real optimist unless you are a realist at heart.

If anything, he would brand himself as a realist, but ultimately he rejects being labelled. Like many thespians, he hates being pigeonholed. Which is why the actor wouldn’t want to be solely defined by his occupation. His penchant for creating—whether writing, acting, having a fashion brand, fostering an incredible space for people to learn, whatever form that takes—is something that will always be part of him.

He attributes his unquenchable thirst for exploration to the energy he has. Busy savouring a moment where he is confident in his abilities but on the other side of that same coin, advocating the pursuit of ambitions outside of one’s career.

At the minute, it’s interior design and architecture. It fills his Explore feed on Instagram. The interest probably stems from the aspect of building something visual yet tangible that can live beyond him. He then draws opposing observations between the art world and the industry he inhabits. How in the former, nothing is ever truly finished and there’s freedom to curate individual moulds. Whereas the latter may be equally subjective to audiences, but its course and result are commonly dictated by the opinion of one.

It would be like storytelling; where the storyteller gets to decide how the story is told. Where the reader’s perception is very much shaped by the hands of the writer. Would the license wielded by the author to weave an entirely verbatim-free narrative paint a balanced picture of fact and poetry?

In a delicious twist of irony, storytelling is one key concept Laviscount’s soul is drawn to. For a man who abstains from labels, it’s the sole identity that stays on his social media bio. In separate capitalised words, no less: Story Teller.

According to him, the tales don’t exist unless they are told. The massive appreciation he has for stories extends to people who are just as passionate about telling them. Capturing intrinsic moments of people’s lives and delving deep into their being are nothing short of magic and beauty.

In his yarn, Laviscount is on a continuous journey to discover what the best version of him will be. Navigating life and its many expectations, seeing through the good and the bad, acquiring a variety of experiences and influences with sheer wonder and wide-eyed amazement.

These could be politically correct answers. Or they could be genuine worldviews. Spoken sentences might be rephrased with a keen awareness that responses will be retold. Or they might purely be a reflex to remain neutral. As Laviscount maintains a consistent core, void of career cynicism and characteristically driven, the approach to be guided by inspiration and gratitude is how he aims to take on and run with whatever comes his way.

Or at least, that is how this story goes.

Photography: Philip Sinden
Fashion Direction: Asri Jasman
Art Direction: Joan Tai
Styling: Tanja Martin
Hair: Fluffy the Original Barber
Makeup: Charlotte Hayley Mcritchie Trujillo
Producer: Guoran Yu at APEX COMMUNICATIONS
Executive Producer: Even Yu at APEX COMMUNICATIONS
On-Set Producer (UK): Kate Zhu
Production Assistant: Kingvarit Vongchanphen
Photography Assistant: Jon Conway
Styling Assistant: Ania Egan
Retouching: Yang Liu

I WAS PLAYING around in the surf one day in Hawaii and someone zoomed passed me on a boogie board and I thought, “That’s amazing!”. And then someone went by on a surfboard and I thought, “That’s even more amazing!”. It’s hard to explain how invigorating and joyful surfing is.

WHENEVER I SURF, I feel something deep inside me. That’s the same feeling I have when playing on stage in front of a lot of people.

OUR CHANGING THINKING on spirituality fascinates me. Where quantum physics meets with philosophy meets with mathematics meets with engineering; how they’re all coming to the same place from different starting points and how the numbers and teachings vindicate one another. We’re all one. We’re indivisible.

THAT KIND OF IDEA is not for everyone. You basically have to say goodbye to everything you thought was real. It gets craaazy!

WHEN I LISTEN TO MUSIC—even classical music—I have a tendency to imagine that all the instruments are guitars and that makes it all so much more interesting. Play an oboe passage on guitar and it can sound amazing. Translate a French horn passage in the harmonics of a guitar and the result can just be incredible.

I KNOW ONE DAY my children will come into a lot of money and that bothers me. I still don’t know what I’m going to do about that, especially as I grew up with very little and know that when I had some disposable income I went a bit crazy. I’ve had pretty much everything I’ve ever dreamt of having.

THE TRICK always is to want what you already have, not to keep on wanting.

WHEN I WAS A TEENAGER and inspiring to be a rock musician, I was taken with rock ’n’ roll’s glamour, the romanticising of the lifestyle. Well, then you experience it—and it’s all bollocks.

BELIEVING in sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll is a quick way to ruin your life. Pretty much all of my peers bought into all that and didn’t come out at the end of it—addictions, narcissism, just inappropriate behaviour, all that changes people for the worse. The problem is that it seems like a good idea at the time. Yes, it was fun, but every day I have regrets [about it].

WHERE METALLICA STANDS in culture is very important to me. The band just gets bigger every year and when people hear your music for the first time when they’re younger, they just latch on to it. There’s only a handful of bands that are like that. In our case, it speaks to people who are pissed off and don’t know why, people who haven’t had enough of a voice or who haven’t yet found a way to express it.

WHEN we’ve all run out our lives, Metallica will still be this living entity. For some reason, it’s so much bigger than the four of us [band members].

IT’S SO HARD to find stage clothes—something that’s unique, that you don’t see everywhere but has a flashiness to it because it also needs to be something you can see from 50 feet away.

WEAR ALL BLACK—as you do in heavy metal—and the stage gets dark and then suddenly it’s like, “Where’s Kirk gone?” It took time for me to realise you can really express yourself through clothing and that clothing can be fun.

WHEN I WAS YOUNGER I never really understood what machismo was. And then one day I realised I was neck-deep in it. All my friends, my father, my uncles and cousins—they were macho so I was naturally drawn to that way of thinking. It wasn’t like we were all Clint Eastwood exactly but there is a covert kind of machismo—the aggression and hostility, the need to be the toughest guy in the room. For me that even meant writing tough, scary riffs. It’s still hard for me to write happy-sounding music. It needs to sound like scraping a shovel along concrete.

I TELL MY CHILDREN never to feel pressured by dad’s day job [or] by the idea that they have to rise to some kind of standard [of success]. I tell them to just try to do what makes you happy—as long as it contributes to your well-being—and pray that you can make a living from it.

THAT and be nice to people.

I DON’T KNOW where the points come from but you get extra points for being nice to people. It makes you a lot more positive. And positivity is progress.

I’M A HABITUAL COLLECTOR, BRO. My friend called me the other day and asked me, “Why do you collect plastic bags?”. And I thought ‘I’ve been completely rumbled here’ because I do. I have OCD and collect anything.

I’M AT THAT AGE when I can look back on my life and see patterns when I go hard on certain things—guitars, vehicles, watches... plastic bags.

THE TRICK IS to not care what people think [about you]—not the way you’re dressed or your music or anything.

EVERYONE WILL HAVE AN OPINION—that’s what my parents told me—and it just doesn’t matter, especially since everyone’s opinion is coloured by where they are at in their lives.

UNFORTUNATELY, social media has turned that around.

WHO WOULD BE A COACH? That is the question that might have formed on the lips of anyone watching former Australian rugby coach Eddie Jones’ terse press conference following the Wallabies’ 40-6 thrashing by Wales at the Rugby World Cup in France earlier this year. Jones was in the hot seat, a position in which all coaches at the highest level find themselves at some point. It’s part of the job, if you can call what is a multidimensional, intensely scrutinised and, for some, all-consuming obsession, a job.

“I don’t consider coaching to be a career in any way, shape or form,” says Michael Cheika, coach of the Argentinian rugby team, a former World Rugby Coach of the Year and one of the few people who might have had a real understanding of how Jones was feeling in that moment, having coached the Wallabies from 2014 to 2019. “One day when I grow up, I’m going to have to get a proper job, just like everyone else. I think this is... it’s a lifestyle.”

Cheika, 56, who is speaking to me today from his living room in Paris where he currently lives, loves the real-time, week-by-week, game-by-game accountability of his role (he refuses to call it a job). “That is the best because you know that the day-to-day will get you to the better results later on,” he says. “The ups are never as good if you haven’t had the downs. So, the thing I enjoy most is that attention to results.”

Cheika’s attitude is one that’s built not so much on self-confidence—though, of course, that is important—but supreme self-belief. “Confidence can come and go,” he says. “You can be swayed with confidence. Because after a bad result, you could have your doubts. But what brings you back is that sense of self-belief, that you know what you can do, and what you can achieve.”

If you want to know whether you truly love something, you can get pretty clear confirmation when the things you enjoy about it are the same ones as those you find challenging. Or as pop culture’s most recent coach du jour Ted Lasso has said: “Taking on a challenge is a lot like riding a horse, isn’t it? If you’re comfortable while you’re doing it, you’re probably doing it wrong.”

“Mental health in COACHING is a case of whatever doesn’t KILL you makes you stronger.”

Comfort certainly isn’t something you’ll find in abundance in elite-level coaching. This is a role that puts you on a war footing with failure. One in which pressure is a ceaseless companion, scrutiny can be forensic, and all that really matter, regardless of how much an organisation might bang on about about culture and development, are wins and losses that are there for all to see. Succeed and you’re a saint. Fail and you’re a sinner. As Tom Sizemore’s character says in Michael Mann’s Heat, “The action is the juice”. And if it’s not, well, you should probably find another gig.

In that sense, you could call the coaching environment at the top level of professional sports a cauldron. The mental strength required to operate under such a cutthroat dynamic is difficult to fathom. But mental strength is built on mental health. And while the psychological demands faced by players have become a major focus in the past decade, the same can’t be said of the mental burden carried by coaches. Does the authority and visibility of the position preclude it? Could an admission of weakness and vulnerability put your job at risk? In all likelihood, yes. But there is also the possibility that coaches, the ones who’ve survived, are mentally stronger because they have faced adversity, shouldered responsibility and been held accountable.

“I think that mental health in coaching is a case of whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Because if you are to survive long enough as a coach, you’re going to encounter all kinds of anxiety and depression, but you’re going to overcome them,” says Dr Bill Steffen, a former division one soccer coach in the US, and assistant professor in sports science at Wingate University in North Carolina, whose primary research focus is mental toughness in coaching. “You’re going to inoculate yourself to those two conditions. Yeah, you get depressed. Yeah, you get anxious. But you figure out how to handle it, or you don’t, in which case you exit coaching.”

If that is the case, could it be that the seat Jones was occupying at that press conference back in September, while hot enough, perhaps, to scold or even brand him, was one he could endure? Because coaching isn’t so much a cauldron as it is a crucible.

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WHEN BRIAN GOORJIAN WAS appointed head coach of the Boomers in 2001 after more than a decade as an NBL coach, he had a very human reaction: am I good enough? “I was excited when I got the position, but as soon as I got it, I’d have to say I felt overwhelmed because the responsibility is huge,” says Goorjian, who’s enjoying a view of the Melbourne skyline on a clear Friday morning, as he speaks to me from his apartment in Prahan. “I thought, Am I good enough to do this? Everyone has those doubts in them and people don’t realise that. You feel insecure. This isn’t just you and your team. This is a country.”

Goorjian, whose heavy Californian twang remains strong despite emigrating here in the late ’70s, found his doubt disappeared once he entered the Boomers’ camp and immersed himself in the day-to- day minutiae of coaching, otherwise known as the X’s and O’s. There, the players and support staff would likely have never twigged that their loquacious, at times temperamental, always passionate coach might have felt unsure of himself. And Goorjian wasn’t about to tell them.

In a leadership position that hinges on authority and respect, there’s not a lot of room for outward expressions of uncertainty.

The popular image of the coach as a solitary figure on the sidelines of games means they’re easily reduced to caricature, at least by their critics in the media and in the often hackneyed archetypes they inhabit in popular culture—stubborn, taciturn, volatile, tight-lipped and inscrutable are a few of the more common adjectives used to describe top-level coaches. Lasso, in his unrelentingly cheesy and avuncular nature, clearly bucks the stereotype. But you do have to wonder how much coaches’ public profiles match their private personas. “I’ve spoken with coaches that say, ‘Yeah, I’m screaming just to scream, just to be a presence so that it looks like I’m doing things, even though I know I’m not’,” says Steffen.

Anson Dorrance, coach of the division one women’s soccer team at the University of North Carolina and former coach of the USWNT that won the inaugural Women’s World Cup in 1991, says many people are surprised when he describes himself as an introvert. “I’m a radical introvert,” says Dorrance from his car on the way home from practice in Chapel Hill. “So for me, even on this phone call, this is a performance. This isn’t me. This is me acting like the women’s soccer coach at the University of North Carolina.”

So, what defines mental toughness as it relates to coaching? Steffen conducted a study in which he and his team asked 22 elite-level coaches in the US that very question. The coaches surveyed came up with 46 characteristics, which were then narrowed down to a top 10. Confidence was rated the most important component in a coach’s mental make-up, followed by resilience, consistency, positivity, energy, passion, optimism, adaptability, inner strength and patience. The coaches were then asked if they thought these traits needed to be innate or could be developed. “Most thought it could be developed because a number of them said they weren’t mentally tough when they started coaching,” says Steffen. “Resilience is adversity and adjustment, and if you don’t have adversity, you can’t be resilient. Most coaches had some difficult times, yet they adjusted, they adapted, then they developed that resiliency.”

Cheika agrees coaches need to be mentally agile to succeed. “I’ve got an open mind as a coach but can also be very authoritarian,” he says. “I think that’s a real skill: to be able to be flexible, but to have single-mindedness when necessary. And then not be afraid to change if you feel like, Oh, no, this actually is better.”

Underpinning all of these traits is often an insane level of competitiveness. “Most people that think they’re competitive, I don’t think are competitive,” says Dorrance, who gleefully tells me he was the subject of a celebrated book, The Man Watching, which includes a chapter in which “everyone who hates me gives their opinion on me”.

It was Dorrance’s competitiveness that drove him, during one year of his 47-year tenure at UNC, to take a single Thursday afternoon off. “I was ok with that,” says the 72-year- old, who elevates plain speaking to an art form. “In fact, as my wife will tell you, I hate vacations because what’s going through my head is someone’s getting ahead of me.”

Clearly this level of commitment is not for everyone and even for those who possess it, is surely a double-edged sword. “The beauty of it [coaching] is that it’s not a nine-to-five job, and the curse of it is it’s not a nine-to-five job,” says Steffen, who also used to coach division one college soccer in the US and once had a year where he was away from home for 49 weekends on recruiting trips, a workload that hastened his transition from coaching into academia.

Dr Will Vickery, a senior advisor in coaching at the Australian Sports Commission, confirms that work- life balance is an alien concept to a majority of coaches. “It consumes your life, so you don’t really have a lot of time to switch off,” he says. “You forget the fact that it’s your job as opposed to your life.”

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GOORJIAN KNEW HE MIGHT FACE a little extra heat when he stepped off the plane from Japan after the Boomers’ lacklustre FIBA World Cup campaign back in September. He expected it from the traditional media, who he has long courted and enjoyed a fruitful, symbiotic relationship with. But these days, of course, the real criticism, the stuff that might keep you up at night, doesn’t come from those who report on sports for a living. It’s from the anonymous keyboard combatants on social media. Fortunately, or perhaps astutely, Goorjian isn’t on social media. “My daughter’s like, ‘Don’t worry about what they’re saying’, so I’m like, Jesus, it must be fucking horrible.” Goorjian didn’t care to find out. “I’m oblivious.”

But he’s all too aware how such criticism affects the younger coaches he mentors, calling trolling the work of “cowards with no responsibility”. “Man, you’ve got to watch your mental health because some of that stuff is vile, really nasty,” he says. “I had a guy on the phone the other night and he was like, ‘They’re talking about my wife and my kid’. It breaks my heart.”

Cheika too, shuns social media but is similarly aware of its psyche-shredding potential. “All of a sudden you can be receiving everybody’s judgment,” he says. “It’s probably more in the domain of those who are just starting off in coaching. Whereas a coach my age, I wouldn’t know what anyone’s saying on social media. So it has no effect. And this is the thing, right? It’s a choice.”

While Cheika and Goorjian’s absence from social media removes it as a stressor, they don’t shy away from scrutiny from the mainstream media and are accepting of the fact that reporters, like them, have a job to do. “I always look at it like I’m getting rewarded for my work,” says Goorjian. “People say, ‘You can’t hide this’. I like that. I’m proud of what I’m doing, I’m proud of my team. I love that if I lose a certain number of games, my ass deserves to be in the firing line. It helps drive me.”

Cheika too, is not overly bothered by criticism of his performance; invariably, he’s already judged it for himself. “I’m an extremely harsh auto critic,” he says. “What role have I played and how has my performance been? I’m already asking those questions before any media ask me. I feel like the whole pressure thing is a bit overplayed.”

Of course, pressure also comes from within an organisation, particularly if you’re a coach who’s been brought in to help a team take the final step toward a championship, premiership or medal. Goorjian admits that his outstanding record as an NBL coach, including a three-peat with the Sydney Kings, has created expectations he’s found tough to deal with. “You can’t help but feel it within the organisation and to be truthful with you, that’s why I’ve coached overseas [in China] a lot in the last 15 years,” he says. “You don’t want to let people down.”

The perception created by a team’s position on the ladder can see pressure on a coach mount quickly. “Their win-loss record is their litmus test,” says Vickery. “If they’re not winning, then they’re almost seen as failing, which is absolutely not the case. But the public perception is often that way.”

Steffen, meanwhile, believes the focus on results warps perceptions around the job the coach is actually doing. “I think coaches get too much blame when they lose, but they also get too much credit when they win,” he says.

The fact is, when a team is underperforming, it’s not the star player who’s going to get the axe, even if fault lies within the locker room. “It’s easier to get rid of the coach,” says Steffen. “To sack one person versus sacking an entire team. It’s just easier to change it that way.”

In such a transparent, results-driven profession, job security will always be an issue, says Josh Frost, a researcher at the University of Melbourne’s Orygen Institute, who is currently completing his PhD on the mental health of elite coaches. “In last year’s Premier League season in the UK, 13 out of the 20 football clubs sacked or fired a coach. In some sports coach turnover is very prevalent.”

“It consumes your LIFE, so you don’t switch off. You forget that it’s your JOB as opposed to your life.”

Not surprisingly, those who’ve been in coaching for a while have developed strategies to deal with the precarious nature of their position. Cheika, for example, came into coaching from a successful business career and was already financially secure. “No one is forcing you to do this,” he says. “It’s a choice. I’ve always had my own businesses. What that does for you is give you that autonomy so you don’t make compromises for the reason of job security or because you need that salary to pay your mortgage.”

Earlier in his career, Goorjian, too, leaned on a teaching qualification as a form of insurance, allowing him not only to shelve worry about his financial future but also to take risks. “I always had a plan B,” he says. “I taught when I came to Australia. So, I had a mindset of, I’m in a casino, I’ve got five grand in my pocket that I’ve won,I’ve got the other 500 sitting on the table and I’m playing with the bank’s money. Risk-taking is a very important part of coaching. You’ve got to play a little bit by the seat of your pants.”

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AS A FORMER PLAYER WITH THE Melbourne Demons in the AFL, Alistair Nicholson remembers his first coach, Neil Balme, being fired after a string of losses in 1997. “I got quite a strong dose of the instability and impact that can have on a football club and player group,” says Nicholson, who these days is the CEO of the AFL Coaches Association. “And then my time under Neale Daniher, there were times where I’d go, ‘You’re looking after us and looking after us well, but who’s looking after you?’ And I think that’s probably where the conversation is now.”

A 2020 study by the Orygen Institute conducted in partnership with the Australian Institute of Sport of 252 elite coaches found that 41 per cent of them had psychological symptoms that warranted treatment from a health professional, while 42 per cent reported potentially risky alcohol consumption. Almost a fifth (18 per cent) reported moderate to severe sleep disturbance and 14 per cent experienced very high psychological distress.

Frost believes the broad remit of modern coaching makes it inherently mentally demanding. He cites pressure from clubs, fan expectation, job insecurity and social media as contributing factors, which are compounded by long hours and frequent travel, often robbing coaches of the ability to access a support network. “I think a range of things can be very demanding and with a lot of social isolation and travelling, not having your social support around you can really contribute towards being more vulnerable to mental health challenges,” he says.

And while the argument can be made that adversity forges resilience in the longer term, the fact is, not all coaches are equipped to deal with the pressures of the job as well as others. This is only exacerbated by the fact that those who are struggling may not feel comfortable disclosing their difficulties due to concerns about the reaction from their organisations. “Coaches are leaders in their environment and might feel less inclined to exhibit or express emotions at the risk of receiving judgment from players or members of the hierarchy or board,” says Frost. “And that’s why it’s really important that organisations cultivate a psychologically safe culture to allow coaches to be able to express their emotions or challenges in an environment that has fewer consequences.”

Steffen returns to the sink-or-swim dynamic of coaching. “Sinking could lead to problems with mental health or you just get out of coaching,” he says. “I know a number of coaches that have just left coaching because of the demands. They felt like it wasn’t healthy.”

Sometimes coaches just need to refresh themselves, something often only afforded by default after contract termination. Increasingly, though, at least in the AFL, some coaches are choosing to take time off on their terms. “We’ve seen in the AFL some experienced coaches take a sabbatical or time -out and the boards have confidence that they’re going to bring something back to the club. Clarko [Alastair Clarkson] and Brad Scott and Ross Lyon came back after a period away and hopefully their energy levels will continue to let them do it because there’re only so many people that can do it at the top level, and do it well,” says Nicholson, whose organisation helped found, in 2018, a mental health education programme

for AFL community coaches and players called ‘Tackle Your Feelings’. Not surprisingly, the mental toll of the profession is something coaches will often only acknowledge behind closed doors, sometimes with other coaches who are equipped to understand the struggles they might face. Goorjian and Cheika both talk regularly to other national- level coaches. Both also see the advantages to be gained in seeking outside counsel. When Goorjian began coaching he employed a performance coaching consultant to evaluate him on and off the court. “Once a week, it’s like I’m sitting in the chair and he would say, ‘Let’s talk about you. You look tired, let’s talk about your...’ so I know that side of it.”

Similarly, after the World Cup, the 70-year-old sat down with a circle of trusted confidantes. “They knew I was going to call. They’ve watched every game. So it’s like let’s sit down and talk. If I have a problem and it’s affecting me, I have people I can go there with. You need it just like the players need it. You need to be evaluated. I’m like everybody else. I’m not made of steel.”

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IF COACHING AT THE HIGHEST LEVEL does ultimately come down to winning and losing, you have to wonder how coaches mentally approach this inescapable, sometimes oppressive dynamic. While there is something to be said for attempting to embody Kipling’s immortal line, "If you can meet with triumph and disaster... And treat those two impostors just the same", coaches do have to allow for their own humanity.

“I think coaches get too much BLAME when they LOSE and too much CREDIT when they win.”

“On wins and losses, I have a rule where at midnight, that game is in the rear-view mirror,” says Goorjian. “If we win, I’ve got to celebrate with my staff, ‘Let’s have a meal together’. But at midnight I put it in the rear view mirror and it’s the same thing with a bad loss.”

Of course, the really big victories, the championships or Olympic medals should be savoured, he adds. “I got a three-peat with the Sydney Kings. You carry those rings around in your heart with that group for the rest of your lives. The bronze medal [at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics], I think about that every single day. I wake up and that’s something I carry. It never goes away.”

Cheika, who’s coming off a fourth- place finish with Argentina at the Rugby World Cup, is in a period of reflection when I speak to him. “Look, it’s hard for me because many would say we had a successful World Cup, finishing fourth. I’m still going through the last game where we could have finished third. What could I have done better in the lead-up? Not because I’m looking to be hard on myself but because I know that will serve me so that when that scenario or something similar occurs again, I’ll be able to make good decisions or better ones.”

That is, of course, all you can do, for soon enough victory and defeat are reduced to something altogether less august: statistics. And those, well, those can be damning, even for the most successful of coaches. “If the only time you’re happy is when you win the championship, you’re going to have a horrible career,” says Goorjian. “I’ve been in this close to 40 years; I’ve won six. It’s very, very rare that you finish a season with a win.”

This all serves to underline the fact that in this business, you need a healthy relationship with failure. Sport’s great conceit is that results mean everything and nothing. The stakes are a construct, the drama confected. “The greatest thing about sports is failure because it doesn’t matter if you fail,” says Dorrance. It’s a lesson he tells his players but one that might serve anyone compelled to embark on coaching as a career. “If you want to really grow, fail as often as you can and recover, because it’s in the failure that you’re going to learn about who the hell you are and you get to make a decision on who the hell you want to be.” Well said, coach.

Originally published on Esquire AUS

WE ARE AT A CROSSROADS. One road leads to extinction and the other could lead to a more peaceful, sustainable, healthier and joyful planet. Unfortunately, our emotional and spiritual development has not kept up with scientific knowledge.

IT IS WITHIN our power to reverse this calamity, and that can change if humanity has a shared vision. If we complement one another’s strengths, if we have maximum diversity of knowledge and if we connect, emotionally and spiritually... then it could emerge into a new paradigm.

ALL PEOPLE are interested in, is how many likes they get on their selfies. We have sacrificed ourselves for our selfies.

YEAH, I think celebrity is another way on how we replace ourselves with our selfies. It’s the human condition. They like to think that there’s somebody who’s superior but there isn’t.

I USED TO MEET people on the streets who told me, I read your books. Now they say my grandmother used to read your books.

TRANSCENDENTAL MEDITATION is one particular aspect of mantra meditation. And the mantras that I use take you beyond thought. But now we see that that’s only one form of meditation. [There are others like] mindfulness, reflective inquiry, body awareness, awareness of mental space.

FUNDAMENTAL REALITY cannot be accessed by a system of thought. Whether it’s science or philosophy or any other system. If you want to know reality, you have to go beyond human constructs. Meditation is the only way to go beyond human constructs.

EVERYTHING WE TALK ABOUT IS A story. Stories are maps of reality, not reality. You can’t eat the menu, you have to eat the meal. And so if you want to eat the meal, you have to go beyond rational thought.

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A post shared by Deepak Chopra (@deepakchopra)

MY FAVOURITE BOOKS haven’t changed. Have you heard of Lost Horizon? It was by a guy called James Hilton. It was the first time people were introduced to the idea of Shangri-La. I have other favourites like W Somerset Maugham’s The Razor’s Edge; Rudyard Kipling classics; Arthur Conan Doyle... Shakespeare’s my favourite. I used to be able to recite every play of Shakespeare.

ACTING is a very interesting profession for good actors. I occasionally watch movies and the last one was Oppenheimer because I was curious about the person who had the insanity to create an atomic bomb.

YOU SAW OPPENHEIMER, RIGHT? What an ordinary guy. Do you read Einstein’s biography? I mean, the amount of human problems he had. When you look at famous people, whether they are in the arts or humanity or science or spirituality... everybody is fake. Including me.

IF THERE WAS a biography made on my life? [It’ll be an] authentic fake. At least, I don’t deny it.

HOW OTHERS depict me is a projection of themselves. The story you write about me... isn’t about me, it’s about you because of the questions you’re asking, right? It’s like using AI for a prompt: you’re asking me questions that the next person will not. Every story you write is about you.

IF I HAVE A GRAVE, it would say on the [tombstone], “Where you are, I once was. Where I am, you’ll soon be”.

I HAD A GOOD TIME. Been there, done that.

I WAS NOT SELF-AWARE as a physician-in-training. I graduated medical school in 1970 and went to the United States immediately. The first 10 years of my training, internship president’s fellowship, neuroscience, I was very much part of the system.

IN THOSE DAYS, doctors smoked; we all smoked. Even during the medical conference, doctors would advertise for Lucky Strike or Camel cigarettes. A very interesting time.

WORK doesn’t start until it’s 11am. When I get up at six, I reflect. Meditate; I do yoga. After five I don’t work any more. Weekends too.

I HAVE NO SOCIAL LIFE. I find social conversation very boring. Other than, spending time with friends and family, I don’t go to parties or watch movies.

IT’S DISTRESSING but I watch the news just to keep up with the world. Everybody’s fighting over nothing.

I WANT to be known as an interesting guy. But he’s not there any more. Move on. [laughs]

DO YOU know your great-grandfather? Do you know the grandfather of your grandfather? No. But because of him, you’re here. Every cell in your body has the genes of your ancestors. That is the legacy.

MY NEW BOOK is called Digital Dharma and I think AI, like any other great scientific discovery, can be used to heal the world or to destroy the world. But, at least, we have the intelligence to not allow that to happen.

THEN AGAIN, humans are crazy.

AI IS AUGMENTED HUMAN intelligence: it doesn’t say anything original. It’s a large language model that has no consciousness; doesn’t feel hungry; doesn’t have sex; doesn’t fear death... but it’s super intelligent as a language model..

A LOT OF PEOPLE think I am crazy. Maybe. I don’t know. If war and terrorism and eco-destruction and extinction of species, and poison in your food chain and chronic health and absence of joy is normal, then I don’t want to be normal.

I HAVE NO FEAR. I’ve no fear of death or anything. Zero. My stress level is zero.

TO GET TO THAT STAGE [of having no fear] is to recognise that you’re not your body and you’re not your mind. The only thing that’s real is consciousness; consciousness without form. It doesn’t have borders, therefore, it’s infinite.

Photography: Gan Kah Ying
Art Direction: Joan Tai

It is always interesting acquainting with someone for the first time, celebrity status notwithstanding. Largely because you never know which version of them you're meeting. No one maintains an utterly identical self while meandering through the varied seasons of life.

I would like to believe it's a good moment in Justin H. Min's timeline to meet him. He's not quite a household name yet, but it's more than fair to say he's on the better side of fame. Most would predominantly know him as Ben Hargreeves aka The Horror or his alternate self, Sparrow Number Two from The Umbrella Academy. Hardcore fans may even recognise him from his stint with Wong Fu Productions.

At this juncture, we're discussing his latest release on Disney+, The Greatest Hits. The premise takes relatability quite so literally. Ever felt like listening to a particular song transported you back in time? It actually does for female protagonist Harriett, for whom the act has now become an obsessive plan to potentially undo her lover's ultimate death.

Min plays the new man Harriett encounters, whose existence inevitably forces her to make that fateful decision. A choice (no spoilers!) he still doesn't quite know if he would have made the same way, despite heavy contemplation.

"It's a movie about the exploration of grief, and I was grieving a friend that I lost when I received the script," he shares. "It's amazing that I can do art that resounds with me on a very personal level, often at a very specific time in my life the last few years."

Not one with dream genres in mind, the only litmus test Min has is the emotional connection to the material that comes his way; because why would you put your heart and soul into something you are not passionate about?

One character that naturally surfaces is Ben from Randall Park's Shortcomings. If actors enjoy playing roles vastly apart from themselves to have a distinct divide, the highly-flawed and insecure Ben was terrifying for Min.

"The joke when I talk about him is that's who I was before therapy," he chuckles lightly, "He did feel so close to me in many ways that it was very vulnerable. Other characters I could hide behind different qualities that make up the person, but this felt raw sharing a lot of my own brokenness."

Ben, who finds his source in Adrian Tomine's graphic novel of the same name, feels unnervingly like someone you might know in real life. Which begs the question: exactly which traits did Min see in himself most?

"He has a strong sense of what he likes and doesn't. His taste in movies is very elevated, and yet he is unable to produce the kind of art that he loves because he's paralysed by his own perfectionism," Min says, explaining a similar revelation in his early aspirational phase, "You have to be willing to put yourself out there, do the work required to build a portfolio and hopefully reach where your taste and your art aligns."

Experience also puts crappy shows in a new perspective. "We can all watch and say it's so bad but we don't know how many things were needed to work out perfectly for it to be done right."

Min agrees that actors often only have the script—a fraction of the final product—to gauge; the execution you can only hope for the best. "That's why when I see a movie now and dislike it, I have so much more compassion than I used to."

However, one special script did make him cry. Not a cinematic singular-tear-down-the-cheek, but unapologetic sobbing on the plane.

"First of all, I would disclaim that by saying some of that was due to altitude," he clears his throat semi-sheepishly and grins, adding that he's not one to cry much but later discovered that heightened sentimentalism during transit is universal. In his defence, this theory has been widely supported by several psychiatric articles and reported stats.

See, the thing about After Yang (which if anything, you should watch solely for that rad dance break at the beginning) is not your typical robot flick. We don't just mean because it's an A24 starring Colin Farrell.

"Majority of android films and TV is always about the robot wanting to become human, and the thing I was so moved by was that Yang was so content being a robot. So content with serving his family and found so much reverence and dignity in doing his duty."

"It's kind of that Asian immigrant mentality that I think really struck a chord. The idea that my parents have no other joy than to see their kids succeed, you know? That's why a lot of immigrant parents move to America, for their kids to have a better life."

Min trips on his words for a split-second and continues, "I thought about my parents and it broke my heart because I want more for them? My mom owned a [dry cleaning business] for 20 years, my dad worked at a supermarket and they were just perfectly happy doing that. Anything to keep our family afloat; for my brother and I to have a future."

It's beyond evident that family and his Asian roots are dear to the actor's heart. Presented the hypothetical chance to access anyone's memories the way Yang's was, there wasn't much hesitation.

"I love my parents and they've been so great, but as much as we try to meet each other where we're at, there's always gonna be a fundamental disconnection because of the difference in where we were born and raised," he muses.

"There's also seeing your parents as this sort of omnipotent superheroes who are always there to take care of you and don't really have ambitions and feelings of their own. I think navigating my mom's world through her eyes could give me that much more empathy for her as a human."

Besides that instance where we as children awaken to the fact that our parents knew us our whole lives, but we perhaps only know them for half of theirs, there were other aspects the movie confronted him to consider more critically.

"The ever-evolving question I'm constantly ruminating on is: If I ever have kids, what part of my Asian identity would I want to pass down? Would I go as far as Korean New Year traditions? I don't even know enough myself to feel like I can accurately teach them… so there's no easy answer."

Still, it doesn't matter whether his Asian identity is at the forefront of his acting. It's as much fun to deep dive into the dialogue as it is simply left as a subtle nod. Min is content to work with the people he admires, participate in discourses about said work and is at peace with current circumstances.

Witnessing peers that he entered the industry with leave; the opportunity to sustain a decent living post-pandemic post-strikes; doing what he loves without countless side jobs as he used to, is in itself, career success.

It's surely been a roller coaster ride since cutting his teeth on The Umbrella Academy, which sees its culmination this August. To summarise, that's going from recurring character to series regular; from bidding the cast farewell to screaming in his Toronto apartment when he read the secret new script that brought him back.

"And before Netflix, no one was dealt fame in such rapid ascension. Even with the biggest stars, you were watched all around the globe in a gradual rollout. Whereas now you're instantly in 190 countries with millions watching. I don't think enough people talk about how crazy that is."

These days, catching a break between press tours and role-prep, Min has retreated to his happy place—alone in nature.

"I've been slowly ticking national parks off my list," he recounts the most recent being Arches National Park, but Redwoods is one he finds himself returning to. "There's something about the grandeur of those trees that just makes me feel so small in the best way possible; and acknowledge that these ‘huge problems' in my head really aren't that big of a deal."

Success on an individual level though, is something he ponders long to define.

When Colin Farrell called you beautiful, I proffer, gaining a merry burst of laughter.

"Exactly, such a core memory in my life now," he humours, referring to the very first time the two met. On a serious note, he goes, "Sounds cliché but living more authentically. By that I mean figuring out more about myself, my values and hopefully learning to live by them."

Who would the authentic Justin H. Min be?

The man who was once less confident and perchance a little more self-centred, or the one before me; who carries an open, positive energy that you can see why he resonates with crews and audiences alike. Who was previously a photojournalist, but whose fascination with the stories of others persists in his curiosity towards mine through the two-way conversation that the interview eventually became.

The actor who resolved from the onset to have his middle initial be present in his stage name because he feels tethered to his Korean identity. Yet was not aware of what "Hong Kee" means (he's convinced it was a phonetic preference his parents had rather than significant symbolism …but he's going to check with them after this).

The child of immigrants, who recalls Celine Dion's It's All Coming Back To Me Now as one of three albums playing in the car on family road trips. Who abides by the culture that surrounds him, who reflects on essential truths when in the forests and in the air; to imbue its amalgamation in his craft, and one day, in his children who would look back and wonder what the world was like through his eyes.

Photography: Art Streiber
Fashion Direction: Asri Jasman
Art Direction: Joan Tai
Styling: Oretta Corbelli
Producer: Cezar Grief at COOL HUNT INC
Grooming: Aika Flores at EXCLUSIVE ARTISTS using SKIN 1004 and ORIBE
Styling Assistant: Alessandra Mai Vinh
Location: Downtown LA Proper Hotel