Song Hye-kyo is actively promoting the upcoming exorcism thriller "The Priest 2: Dark Nun." She recently appeared on musician Jung Jae-hyung's YouTube show, sporting a refreshing short hair look that caught everyone's attention. She talked about collaborating with Hong Kong's renowned director Wong Kar-wai in "The Grandmaster," where she was initially supposed to play a minor role but ended up being trapped for three years. She considered fleeing the set several times, which Wong Kar-wai noticed and reportedly planned to confiscate her passport to prevent her from escaping back to Korea.
Wong Kar-wai is known for his meticulous and time-consuming craftsmanship. "The Grandmaster," starring Tony Leung, Zhang Ziyi, Chang Chen, and Zhao Benshan, started preparations in 2002, was announced to begin filming in 2009, and was released in 2013. Song Hye-kyo, who played Ip Man's wife in the film, revealed this on the program, leading netizens to jokingly call her the latest complainant.
Song Hye-kyo said she was a beneficiary of the Korean Wave at the time, frequently interacting with filmmakers from China and Hong Kong. She met Wong Kar-wai when he was in Korea promoting "2046," and they kept in touch afterward. Later, while preparing to shoot other works by Wong, he asked her if she was free because there was a minor but irreplaceable role in "The Grandmaster," and hoped she could accommodate. At the time, she was on break and curious about the Chinese sets and how Wong Kar-wai shot films, so she thought it was a good chance to have fun. "I ended up being stuck there for three years," she said, making host Jung Jae-hyung laugh.
She mentioned that Wong Kar-wai seemed to notice her thoughts of sneaking away. "There was a translator who had a good relationship with the director. I heard that one day the director suddenly called her over to ask, 'Who has Hye-kyo's passport? Is it with Hye-kyo or you?' The translator replied it was with Song Hye-kyo, and the director instructed the translator, 'Quickly get it from her, it seems she's going to slip back to Korea soon.'" Song Hye-kyo laughed and summed up, "That's basically how the filming went." Despite "The Grandmaster" being 130 minutes long, Song Hye-kyo appeared for only 6 minutes.