Meet Rick Yune, who plays a bank manager sharing scenes with Taron Egerton in the new film Tetris.
Andrew Nguyen: Just wanted to start off by saying it is so thrilling that I got a chance to talk to you because I’m Vietnamese and your role as Johnny Tran in The Fast and Furious was probably one of my favorite roles I ever saw for Vietnamese representation. Just to follow up, I just wanted to know [as] you have [had] so many roles in your film career and how does approaching a movie like Tetris, which is based on history and based on true events, compare to roles that you’ve done before that are based on fiction?
Rick Yune: In every story there is some truth and then there’s some creative license. So I always thought my job was to find the truth in what I’m doing no matter what. And so that’s what I focus on. Even if it’s driving fast cars, because, I mean, there’s a lot of reality to that. Yeah, it just wasn’t shown right. That representation wasn’t shown. We brought that. So in Tetris it’s the same thing. This is based on real life. And you got great filmmakers and producers, Gregor Cameron from Unigram and Matthew Vaughan and artists like Taron Egerton, he doesn’t get enough credit. The guy was amazing when I was working across [from him] because I only had a day and a half on this project. So there was a lot of commitment and a lot of hard work going on in the background.
Andrew Nguyen: And I just want to ask because this movie has such a huge build up and the introduction of the Game Boy and how revolutionary it was, what was your first experience with the Game Boy? Do you remember what your favorite game was? Maybe the first time you ever held one?
Rick Yune: Tetris was a favorite. Talking about games back then, it was really you versus you. And now it’s a bit different, which is cool also. But the progression and the evolution of these things is very similar to what goes on in filmmaking now. So that’s always interesting to see. And you saw that,, you could see exactly what somebody goes through in creating something like this back then. And it’s a much different experience now and that goes for filmmaking as well. So I think everybody came together and put this in a fantastic way and that’s why Tetris is doing so well.
Andrew Nguyen: This movie has so much intricacy and an intense process of how Tetris was brought globally and explained it. As an audience member I was so blown away by the intensity of how this story came to be. And I just want to know without spoiling anything, was there a specific fact that you were like, “whoa, I did not know that about the history of Tetris!”
Rick Yune: Everything. I mean the espionage aspects of it. What it took to do international business, especially back then. But ultimately the thing that intrigued me most about Tetris is what Matthew Vaughan and Unigram went through to get this made. And hats off to Apple for seeing it through because there was a lot of stop and go during COVID. Lots of rights issues. A lot of what was what you saw in Tetris, and getting that made also went on in getting the actual movie Tetris made. So those are the similarities, but to be honest, I didn’t know the KGB was involved.
