Did You Know? Arden Cho Auditioned for a Different Role in “KPop Demon Hunters”

“It’s pretty wild. I actually auditioned for Celine,” Arden said in a surprising revelation, referring to the formidable demon hunter and mentor figure in KPop Demon Hunters. She recalled sending in “a simple voice note” back in August 2022, explaining that the film’s title immediately caught her attention because it “sounded cool.” “I like K-pop. I like demon hunting. So why not?”

She may be familiar to audiences who have seen Teen Wolf or Netflix’s Avatar: The Last Airbender, but Arden had subtly retired from the industry. She was enveloped in the intriguing nature of KPop Demon Hunters, but she didn’t hear anything after her audition—that is, until a year later.

"About a year later, I got an email that was like, 'Hey, would you like to come in for a callback for Rumi?' And I was like, 'Wait, the lead? Would I like to? I mean, of course.’” And with that, she booked a ticket and flew in to meet with Sony Pictures Animation. “We had like an hour-long session, and then a month later, I was working," she shared.

Arden initially lost the “desire to keep acting” when Partner Track, her first series as a lead, was canceled after the first season on August 26, 2022. “I was heartbroken, discouraged, and done after giving it 20 years of my life. I quit. Traveled for a year and disappeared,” she wrote in an Instagram post. She stated that she chose to come back “only for Asian-led projects that truly inspired me, whether my part was big or small,” and that includes KPop Demon Hunters.

On that exact same date three years later, the animated film became the most-watched film on Netflix. She wrote, “If that’s not a sign from God to keep going, I don’t know what is.”

In an interview with The Playlist last year, Arden also talked about how fixed she was on being done with the industry, but the animation just felt different. “This one was for me. This is for baby Arden, who grew up feeling like I didn't see myself in a lot of these stories, and KPop Demon Hunters is really the movie that I always hoped for, dreamed [of].”

The rest, as they say, is history. Apart from its record-breaking Netflix run, KPop Demon Hunters recently won Best Animated Feature at the 31st Critics' Choice Awards and the 83rd Golden Globe Awards. It also won three awards at the Astra Film Awards, namely Best Animated Feature, Best Original Song for Golden, and Best Voice Over Performance for Arden’s performance as Rumi.