The actress recounts the years fighting to get cast in her "Past Lives" breakout while the producer was still attached


Greta Lee attends the Emmy FYC Screening for Apple TV's "The Morning Show" Season 4 at DGA Theater Complex on June 7, 2026 in Los Angeles. (Credit: Amy Sussman/Getty Images)

Enough time has passed for Greta Lee to open up about her fight to get cast in "Past Lives" — and that includes a "humiliating" experience that involved megaproducer Scott Rudin and "Barbie" filmmaker Greta Gerwig.

In Monday's episode of the "Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend" podcast, the host asked Lee about her touch-and-go experience with Celine Song's "Past Lives" script early on and how she initially missed out on the role.

"I think enough time has passed now that I can tell the story," Lee said, joking that she's going to share more on "the murders I've committed" to land the lead role of Nora in the Oscar-nominated A24 indie.

"No, it really was such a messy ride. And it happens a lot with casting … You find out, like, oh, I was not only the second choice, I was the 15th choice or whatever it is," Lee said. "But in this case, I really was told by the universe several times that this was not going to be my job, and at a certain point, it just became so absurd and insulting."

Lee admitted she didn't even want to audition for "Past Lives" at first and had to be convinced to do it because she was intimidated to speak the film's Korean onscreen — "that wasn't something I was looking for," she said.

"But I was convinced, did the tape and then didn't get it and was like to my agents, 'Come on, see, like, what'd you make me do.' And they're like, 'No, no, they thought that you are just too old.'"

In the case of this first round of casting, that was actually the hard truth, Lee said, because they had secured a male Korean actor as the co-lead who was "much younger" than her.

"But then it fell apart, and it came back almost exactly a year later. Same thing, and I think I had sort of started talking to them, and at the time — this is just wild," Lee explained, setting up the Rudin bit.

Rudin was a producer on the project through its earlier stages before ultimately dropping out, and she got a call and voicemail from his office stating that he was ready to have a lunch meeting with her at Cafe Cluny in New York City. This was good news.

"I thought I got 'Past Lives' because I thought, Oh my god, this is amazing. He wants to meet me at Cafe Cluny to tell me that I got this job. I listened to the message again and again, and I played it — I sent it to my agents, and they played it, and we realized collectively that the message was actually for Greta Gerwig," Lee said, describing the excitement and conversations she had with her team about meeting with Rudin as "such a publicly humiliating experience."

From that point on, Lee said, "I really thought, like, please leave me alone with this job. I get it. I'm too old, and I'm too American or whatever."

"Yeah, and you're no Greta Gerwig," O'Brien quipped. "You're the wrong Greta."

Of course, the tides turned yet again and Lee was ultimately cast in "Past Lives," a project that went on to launch her career as a true lead actress.

As for Gerwig? She doesn't remember what her lunch meeting with Rudin was for.

"[It was] for something completely — who knows what that was for? I don't know," Lee said. "I've told her now since, and she she was like, 'Oh my gosh, I have no idea.'"

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