‘The Meryl Streep Project’ Is A Journey Of Self-Discovery

Park Hyo-sun admired Meryl Streep for her acting and activism.

London Korean Film Festival

Park Hyo-sun had a simple goal. She wanted to meet Meryl Streep, the Academy Award-winning star of Kramer Vs. Kramer, Out of Africa, Death Becomes Her and The Devil Wears Prada. Meeting Streep was not that easy, but Park’s eight-year quest was ultimately rewarding and led to the making of her documentary The Meryl Street Project.

“There was definitely a phase where I thought I was just wasting my life on an impossible task,” said Park. “Thanks to huge delays and every hardship you can imagine, but along the way, I met so many people and experienced things I never thought I ever would. Now I can confidently say: yes, it was absolutely a major momentum in my life. I didn’t meet Meryl, but I met myself.”

In making the documentary, Park learned how to become a filmmaker.

“I never expected this story would resonate with so many people,” said Park. “I knew it was interesting, but I honestly thought it was way too personal.”

A self-described outsider, Park did not feel at home in her homeland until she began sharing her fandom with others.

“Right before filming started, I was on the edge of leaving this country entirely, convinced I didn’t fit anywhere in this society, let alone making films here,” said Park. “But then I realized there were people like me. People who understood and wanted to hear what I had to say. And Meryl is kind of a metaphor of my childhood, which shaped me into the person I am now. But at the same time, she represents the time I eventually have to pass and move beyond for the next chapter of my life. This journey is a love letter to everything I loved—but also a goodbye letter.”

Park confesses she had a tendency to hyper-focus on things while she was growing up. One of those things was acting. Another was Streep, the actress with the most Academy Award nominations.

“If you love the art of acting,” she said. “You know she’s simply the greatest at what she does.”

Park first saw the actress in Death Becomes Her. Then The Bridges of Madison County.

“ I was gobsmacked that this was the same person,” said Park. “And that kept happening. Every. Single. Movie. She says she’s not a method actor, but in each role she just… breathes, walks, and talks like a completely different human being. She makes it seem effortless. It’s magical — perfectly calculated, but also raw and real at the same time. And it’s a little bizarre that even though she rarely plays someone like me, you feel seen by her characters. My queer and female audience always says the same thing when we watch her. She was one of the first artists who made me realize we can connect and empathize with people we don’t know at all, and still feel everything with them.”

Aside from her distinguished theatrical career, Streep has taken the time to speak up about issues that are important to her. In 2016, on International Women’s Day, Streep, among others, signed a letter asking for gender equality throughout the world. In 2018, she helped set up an initiative to protect women from harassment and discrimination. Her activism appealed to Park, who wanted to improve women’s rights in South Korea.

“I wanted the mission of meeting her as a Korean feminist,” said Park. “And all the buzz around it, to become this unique event. It felt like we really needed something like that at the time. Something exciting for us.”

Park began the project for fun and later on realized it was no longer about actually meeting Streep. At some point it became a story about feminism and female solidarity

“What I really needed was for people to care about why I wanted to tell this story,” she said. “I needed our voices to be heard.”

In the process, she spoke to many women working in entertainment: directors, writers, translators, asking them what she should ask Streep.

“I gathered questions from many people I met on the road,” said Park. “The most frequent one was how she deals with the stress and pressure to keep going as a feminist in her field. We rarely get to see female artists talk openly about these issues, and I think that’s what drew so many young women here to her. I’m not saying we don’t have strong activists here. We absolutely do. But we also have to admit that there has been a lack of communication and connection between different generations of women. But as the journey continued, I realized we didn’t need validation from anyone. Not even her. Our story was already enough. And that turned out to be the real goal of my whole project.”

Fandom gets a lot of criticism, but admiring an artist or any public figure can help someone discover who they want to be, whether its admiration for Meryl Streep or being a fan of Korean media.

“This topic is hilarious to me,” said Park. “I spent my youth obsessing over Western pop culture as a way to escape this society. And now suddenly k-pop and k-dramas have become the coolest. I’m not an expert when it comes to k-pop at all. There are things I still don’t fully understand. But watching this global explosion is astonishing. It’s a weird, beautiful, hybrid art form that this generation could create. When I was growing up, it was rare to see anyone like me in the media I loved. Now those once-outcast kids, the ones who never fit into ‘normal,’ the ones who survived existential crises, have grown up and are expressing themselves through these mixed, weird, beautiful art forms.”

The Internet let a generation cross borders without moving.

“We could finally find people who understood us,” said Park. “Through fangirling. Through stanning. Through 덕질, as we say in Korea. Whatever you call it. So maybe, admiration can guide you toward a version of yourself you never believed was possible. And that is powerful.”

While Park was working on the Meryl Streep Project, Korea changed a lot.

“With that came endless pressure to work harder, be better, be perfect,” said Park. “That extreme competitiveness shows up in our arts, too. There’s a raw and wild urgency that I think feels attractive to other cultures. Inside that society, certain art can feel like it’s crushing you. But once you step out, people see the same thing as something raw, exotic, and strangely beautiful.”

Does Park want Meryl to see her film? Of course.

“The one thing I was always sure of during this long, messy, slightly insane journey is that this story would be interesting for her too,” said Park. “But I don’t think about it too much anymore. This film stands on its own. If she sees it someday, amazing. If not, I’m still proud. The film already found who it needed.”

The Meryl Street Project airs at the London Korean Film Festival on Nov. 6. The 20th London Korean Film Festival runs from Nov. 5–18, featuring Cinema Now, Women’s Voices, a Special Screening, and Dramas of Resistance: The 80th Anniversary of Liberation, a program co-organized with the Korean Film Archive.