Justin Campbell: You look amazing. What is going on? What is this lighting? You look incredible.
Charles: It's the Vancouver lighting. I'm in Vancouver. We're wrapping up the last episode of “Riverdale,” season six, and I got a haircut today. It's the shortest it's been in a really long time.
JC: There's one more season, right? Is that what I just heard?
Charles: One more season after this year.
JC: Does it almost feel bittersweet knowing that you're going into the end?
Charles: Yeah, it’s a bittersweet thing. I’ve spent half a decade on this show. I’ve made so many great friends—best friends—and I’ve met so many different people. Since I’ve been on here, I’ve just grown so much in my personal life. It’s very bittersweet.
JC: I want to start by talking about our shoot because I don't think people realize how crazy the conditions were on set.
Charles: There was, like, a windstorm. The wind was crazy. We’re in the middle of a desert. Dust was blowing in our eyes.
JC: I feel like, at one point, you even had to jump in to help hold the suns-swatters.
Charles: Yeah, I did. It was pretty gnarly, man. I didn’t just want to stay in that little trailer and do nothing. I figured I’d be out there helping with you. And I knew you were doing so many things—you had to shoot, like, six people that day.
JC: I just remember thinking, “I hope this wind calms down so we can create amazing images.” We did in the end, even though the wind did not calm down. I’m really proud of what we created. This was not your first Coachella, right? You’ve been to Coachella before.
Charles: Yeah, this was maybe my third or fourth Coachella.
JC: Who was your favorite headliner?
Charles: Man, the Weeknd was great. Swedish House Mafia and the Weeknd—that was incredible. He was just a single-man show, the Weeknd, and that was really great. And Swedish House Mafia—they haven't performed in, like, 10 years! But I really fell in love with Harry Styles and his performance.
JC: Have you met him before?
Charles: I met him way back when, at a party, when I first got to LA. It was brief.
JC: And I read somewhere today that it was your dad, actually, who you fell in love with the filmmaking industry with by watching movies as a kid.
Charles: Growing up being an army brat—my dad, my family—we always went to the movies on Fridays. When we went to the new showings, we’d go on Tuesdays, sometimes just my dad and I. I just fell in love with movies, man. It was just a great little escape of fantasy and feeling certain things that I was watching, and I just fell in love with movies. I fell in love with blockbusters. And as I got older, I fell in love with arthouse films. I just fell in love with the world that I’m now in.
JC: Is there one movie in particular, or do you have a favorite movie that you remember being pivotal in your life somehow, or opening up your creativity or your desire to act?
Charles: Yeah. I love “The Matrix” and this idea of being in a simulation and believing in something that’s maybe not plausible in your real life. I don’t know, just being the “chosen one.” We all want to be. Sometimes, I feel like we all have “main character syndrome,” and we want to be the “chosen one” in our world and in everyone else’s world. I really got that from Neo.
JC: Do you feel you’ve arrived at that place? You have millions and millions of people who follow every word you say, who pay attention to everything you do. Do you feel you’ve arrived at that place of feeling like the you’re “chosen one”? Because, in many ways, you are—you are to so many people.
Charles: Yeah, no, not even close. I do not feel I’m the “chosen one.” I’m just like, “I got to choose myself today.” That’s where I’m at. And then also Avatar, another blockbuster! I love Avatar.
JC: Which is also about living in some sort of simulation…
Charles: Yeah, and going to a better world, a fantasy kind of like this reality. I love those kinds of movies.
JC: Do you think those movies are about escape? Escaping to something better?
Charles: I think so; definitely escapism and a bunch of other things.
JC: I ask because the theme for our shoot was this idea of running away. What is something you’ve run away from in your life?
Charles: I think, for me, just running away from myself; not knowing my emotions or feelings and not being able to sit with them and process that. We’re always running away from this idea of a better life. I don’t know if you’ve ever read “The Midnight Library” by Matt Haig—phenomenal. It’s this beautiful book about all these multiverses, and this girl, she’s at a point in her life where she has so many regrets. She ends up waking up, and she doesn’t enjoy her life, and she’s in this library with an infinite amount of books and realities and time in different worlds. She travels into these different multiverses and experiences these different lives. And the conclusion is, I won’t ruin it, but she comes back to her [original] life and realizes...in one life she wanted to be a pop star; in another life she wanted to be a glaciologist; in another life she just wanted to go on a date and marry this guy. It’s very interesting. Sometimes we escape, and most of the time we just end up escaping back to wherever we were before we escaped. It’s just a journey.
JC: In another life, who would you want to be? Or what would you want to be?
Charles: I'm good with this life, but I wouldn't mind being the lead singer of a K-pop band.
JC: Do you listen to a lot of K-pop?
Charles: Yeah, I do. I love BTS! BTS is pretty good. And Blackpink.
JC: Are you fluent in Korean?
Charles: Yeah, and I’m taking Korean lessons just to refine. It’s an honorary language, meaning you speak differently to someone who’s older than you or younger than you.
JC: You are, at heart, a poet. You’re very tapped into your emotions. Most people spend a lifetime trying to figure out how they feel, how to interpret their feelings and how to express them. I think you’re very tapped in, which is a beautiful thing.
Charles: Oh, that's sweet, man.
JC: Do you think that comes from anything in particular? Is it just the way you were raised?
Charles: I grew up with a lot of storytelling in my life and making sense of things through metaphors, analogies, similes, prose, movies, plays. I was encouraged to try to articulate what I was feeling and when I was feeling suppressed, repressed. As I got older, I tried to find different outlets to communicate in the simplest form. I think that’s where that came from.
JC: Who was the storyteller in your family?
Charles: My dad was the storyteller. My mom was the complete opposite.
JC: Really?
Charles: Yeah—quite a big contrast between my mother and father.
JC: What did you learn from your mom?
Charles: I learned how to cook. I’ll just keep it at that. My mom taught me how to cook and how to cook with love. She also taught me how to be determined.
JC: Is cooking a love language for you?
Charles: Yeah. I learned a lot of resilience from my mom too. She moved from Korea; my parents met each other in Korea, and he went off to the Gulf War in 1990 when she was pregnant with me. It was her first time in the United States. She was pregnant with me while he was gone—she was in the United States by herself with my dad’s mom and two sisters. That’s resilient, man, leaving your own country and watching your husband go off to war.
JC: That’s, honestly—it’s a beautiful story. You’ve lived in a lot of places. Which one was your favorite?
Charles: I don’t know, man. That’s a tough one. I love all of them, but I’d say maybe Korea or Germany because those sound like the most interesting answers.
JC: Was living in so many places as a kid something you loved, or did you find moving around hard? As an adult, I know you definitely look back and appreciate it.
Charles: Yeah. It’s difficult, but I just thought that’s how life was and everyone did what I did. Did I have the dream of growing up with childhood friends, having the white picket fence and being best friends with the neighbors? Sure. But to me, it was good. I always saw it as an opportunity to escape, hit the refresh button, and figure out a new identity and what I wanted to be like.
JC: And it all comes full circle. I also read somewhere that you love to write letters. Is that true? I found that so fascinating.
Charles: Yeah, like journaling. I could write to myself, a version of myself or an elder version of myself—or family members.
JC: Do you journal on a regular basis?
Charles: Oh yeah, for sure. That's how I stay sane.
JC: I envy that discipline. One of my best friends is similar—he journals every single day. Every time I try to pick up the pen to write in a journal, I get stuck on a sentence, and I can’t continue. I don’t know why.
Charles: You’re thinking too much. Sometimes it’s good to start with where you’re at: What are you sitting on? What’s the color of the walls? What’d you have for breakfast?
JC: Yeah. My problem is, I’m such a perfectionist that it impedes my creativity sometimes, because I’m self-editing even something that’s not for anybody else to see.
Charles: Yeah, man. I’ve edited what I’ve written like 10 times, but you’ve just got to vomit it out.
JC: Do you think, in the future, you’d want to write or direct something?
Charles: Oh yeah, for sure. It’s already happening.
JC: Is this announced, or are you telling us here?
Charles: No, I’ve just been working on stuff. I’m not announcing anything, but I’m doing something in the summer.
JC: Last, for the fans, what can you tell us about the end of this season on “Riverdale”? What are you allowed to say?
Charles: It’s everything, everywhere, all at once. That’s all I’ll say.