Audrey Magazine
The Double Life of Grace
Grace Park finds out a lot about herself, playing multiple characters on SCI FI Channel’s hit series Battlestar Galactica.
Diana Ryu

07-2005

Lieutenant Sharon "Boomer" Valerii is one confused chick. One minute she's fighting alongside the last survivors of the human race against evil super-machines called Cylons. The next, she wakes up sopping wet with a couple of detonators in her bag, right after the water main on her ship mysteriously explodes. Meanwhile, she's carrying on affairs with two fellow officers on the side, and worst of all - she isn't even a chick. She's a Cylon.

Now while Grace Park - the actor playing the messed-up pilot on SCI FI Channel's Friday night hit, Battlestar Galactica - may not be an automaton in human clothing, she does know what it's like to be conflicted, confused and not exactly sure of who you are. And ironically, it wasn't until the Los Angeles-born, Vancouver-raised Park entered the small screen world of Valerii that she realized that she and the Cylon have a lot in common.

"The funny thing is the show [Galactica] always seems to [reflect] what you're going through. It's like, 'wow, how is this so perfect for me right now,'" says Park. "So having two Sharons, the duplicity, being conflicted, not really knowing who I am or thinking I [know] but other people think something else, it's like, wow, that sounds a lot like my life."

Well, not literally. After all, in addition to discovering that she is not even of the species she thought she was, Valerii gets pregnant and then discovers hundreds of Valerii clones. But playing the conflicted Cylon did give Park the impetus to uncover some of her own inner demons. For one, in having to maintain a constant level of intensity on the set, the usually free-spirited Park realized she had been putting a lot of pressure on herself throughout her life and thus had plenty to draw from. "Being Korean and having very high expectations put on me - and all for great reasons - but without realizing, as children, that we kind of keep perpetuating [those expectations]," she says. "And not because we want to be excellent, but because we want to be good daughters and to keep the love of our parents. And the threat of not having that [love] is equivalent, psychologically, to death.

"No one ever tells you like, 'alright, here's your award, you're done, you don't need to worry about getting in trouble anymore,' like 'you're free to live your life."

A surprising revelation, given that in person, Park is vivacious, dramatic in her gesticulations, seemingly carefree - quite different from her ever serious, on-screen persona. But as you continue to talk to her, you can sense that hesitancy in her, that very culturally based concern over maintaining her parents' approval. And yet you also sense the tension, her need to free herself from that childhood stricture. It's another side of Park perhaps best epitomized by the Maxim spread.

Ah, the Maxim spread. The spread in the March 2005 issue where the self-proclaimed tomboy, normally makeup-free and clad in a drab, baggy jumpsuit for the show, dons little more than smoky eyeshadow, a thong and thigh-high boots. The very "free-to-live-your-life" spread her parents made her swear not to mention when they found out she was coming to Los Angeles for a press conference with local Korean media. The spread which inevitably was the subject of the very first question asked at the press conference. Park takes it in stride and candidly describes the scene when she first showed her parents the magazine. Needless to say, it doesn't appear that her father was happy.

"I don't think I gave them very much option - I just told them," she says matter-of-factly. Park doesn't apologize for it, but she doesn't flaunt it, either. Of her parents she says, "They're more open to things. I kind of force them to be open." Then she adds good-naturedly (albeit with a tinge of wistfulness), "It's enough to make a Korean parent proud."

Of course, later, when it's just the girls, Park grins. "Yeah, like hot, huh?" she says. Apparently, she did the shoot just before her 2004 wedding so she got Polaroid's of each shot and surprised her husband Phil, a real estate developer, on their wedding day. His reaction? "That's my girl," Park quotes.

Between that rather giant step toward freedom and her new status as a married woman, perhaps it will get easier for Park to enter into her own. "Going towards marriage definitely makes you look at a lot of issues pretty quickly because there's a deadline coming up," says Park. "And you either run away screaming or you just finally buckle yourself down and go, 'I'm gonna get through this.' And that's what I did. I had a huge year last year growing up."

Her marriage is especially significant given that Park married a Korean Canadian. Like many American girls of Korean descent growing up, Park didn't think she'd marry a Korean because of the chauvinistic stereotype. Needless to say, Park is quite happy with her KC hubby, poking fun of him for his pronunciation of Korean words ("Did you just say 'joe' to me?" Park laughs, imitating Phil's Americanized version of the Korean word "give") and debating over whose mother makes the better galbi, or Korean marinated short ribs (Korean food, and especially galbi, is one of her favorites).

Indeed, with wedded bliss, some self-revelation and a hit series - Galactica has now been picked up for another 20 episodes in its second season - anticipation for Park, as well as her counterpart Valerii, is high. Although she admits that it was exhausting work "being conflicted and under pressure and stressed all the time and lying" ("you have enough of that in real life," she laughs), Park is looking forward to some significant advancements in the new season. "Things have changed a lot," she smiles secretively.

Park drops hints about a few casualties in the first few episodes, but not much else. While she does say that it'd be nice to play just one character for once, she's pretty open to anything, especially given the helluva year she had last year. "I don't know. We'll just see what happens this year." Then she grins. "I mean, it's fine; it's like whatever they throw at you, you deal with it, right?"

The second season of Battlestar Galactica premieres July 15 on the SCI FI Channel. Check your local guide for listings.