The Rain is coming down on Ningin

Today has definitely been one of those “I love my job” type days. Since most of you guys never had the experience of doing a press junket and interviewing celebs, I thought it would be good to go through my entire three hour experience with Rain and the marketing team at Warner Bros. And what a great team they have at Warner Bros. Everyone was so nice, open and chatty. I wish every studio was like that.

We’re going to divide this interview into three parts:

Part 1: Behind the scene and other side stories
Part 2: Interview with Rain
Part 3: Interview with Ninja Assassin director, James McTeigue

Let’s start this journey from where I was walking to Rain’s hotel from the Mixr office around 1pm EST. Almost immediately it started to rain and my first thought was, “how appropriate to interview Rain today.” The commute included passing through Time Square, aka tourist capital of New York City. There was a big crowd of Asian people massing and I was thinking that can’t be because of Rain, he’s suppose to be doing interviews now.

I think I got to Rain’s hotel at about 1:30pm and just expected a reception area with some chairs. I was quite surprised to see the following gourmet spread:

I think I had a few too many of these:

As I said in my review, Asian movies or movies starring Asian people don’t really get this kind of big budget treatment. I can’t say this enough, Ninja Assassin is just huge for Asians in mainstream media on many different levels.

After helping myself to the food — mostly the desserts – I sat down at the first open seat. To my great fortune, I was sharing a table with Rain’s personal stylist who I’ll call Jane. Now, Jane is a cool person. In addition to Rain, she’s been the stylist of just about every major celeb. One notable story Jane told me was about her trip to South Korea with Ben Stiller for some movie promo. She said Ben is even funnier in person and that they would spend their free time playing Guitar Hero. Can you imagine how cool is it to play Guitar Hero with Ben Stiller?

Naturally I asked Jane a lot of questions about Rain’s daily routine, hairstyle, etc. Turns out, Rain does most of his hair styling by himself. By the way, Rain cut his hair very short compared to the long locks he had as Raizo in the movie. It’s dyed a warm brown as you can see in my candid photo of him. Jane says that for the most part Rain dresses and styles himself. She just does touch ups and minor tweaks here and there when needed.

Jane was also kind enough to show me Rain’s schedule for today. The poor guy had an early morning TV spot on the Today Show, about six hours of one-on-one interviews with a one-hour lunch break, three hours of TV interviews, dinner, and some local event where he’ll be making an appearance. All in all it was like a 14+ hour schedule. I was looking at the impressive list of magazines and websites that were interviewing Rain. Unfortunately, I don’t have photo recall memory so I can’t really remember the names of all those magazines/websites. One somewhat surprising thing was that Ningin was the only Asian media outlet on that interview list. But hey, I have no problems with that.

About 2:30pm I finally got to go up to Rain’s palace of a hotel room. Rain, however, was not there. His rep told me that he was busy being mobbed in Time Square by adoring fans. I said to the rep escorting me, “You have bodyguards going with him right.” The rep, we’ll call him Bob, said, “no,” and that he really had no idea how popular Rain was globally. I told him Rain is easily the Justin Timberlake of Asia, on his way to the Michael Jackson stratosphere. Bob then said yea, he’s been hearing that a lot lately.

While waiting for Rain, Bob would tell me about how much Rain’s English has approved from Speed Racer to Ninja Assassin. He says the difference is “10 times” better in a one year span. Not only that, but Rain works hard before every interview to make sure he’s composed, relaxed, and natural in his speech. He would talk to Bob after each interview to see what he did good and bad and how he could improve the next time. This is not surprising for the fans that know Rain as the hard-working, perfectionist.

Another Warner Bros rep, we’ll call her Susy, updated us that Rain is on his way back and needs to finish his hot dog. That just made me laugh out loud to think that of all the good (but pricey) restaurants in Time Square, Rain settled for a hot dog street vendor. I guess it was Rain after all, stopping traffic on my walk there. It’s funny that I passed him without knowing it.

Susy also told me an interesting story in the Washington D.C. airport involving Rain and some overly rambunctious Clouds (fans of Rain). To protect Rain’s travel plans, Susy would book multiple flights during each leg of the Ninja Assassin press junket. That way, people wouldn’t know which flight Rain was leaving on or which gate. Apparently that wasn’t enough as according to Susy, “little Asian girls were chasing Rain wherever he went in the airport!”

Part 2: The Rain finally comes down!