For Yerin Ha, the past few years have unfolded at remarkable speed. In a relatively short time, she has gone from graduating from the National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA) to starring in major international productions, from the epic sci-fi world of Halo and Dune: Prophecy to the brooding Tasmanian murder-mystery drama The Survivors and then in 2026, her widest-reaching role yet: the romantic lead in season 4 of Bridgerton, playing Sophie Baek opposite Luke Thompson’s Benedict Bridgerton.
It’s a career trajectory that has quickly positioned the Sydney-born performer as one of Australia’s most exciting rising actors, so, unsurprisingly, she joins The Australian Women’s Weekly’s Leading Ladies, alongside Mia Morrissey, Miah Madden, Philippa Northeast and Sophia Wright‑Mendelsohn.
Yet speaking with Yerin, what stands out most isn’t the scale of her success, it’s her grounded, thoughtful perspective on acting, identity and the winding path that led her here.
Growing up in a creative family meant storytelling wasn’t something distant or abstract. Acting runs in her family. Her parents met at drama school, and her grandmother is the well-known South Korean actress and politician Son Sook.
“I always loved performing, whether that was just reading a book to my parents when I was really young, pretending I was the teacher or dancing and putting on a show for my parents’ friends when they came over for dinner,” she says as we sit on the floor of a dressing room after a long day of photoshoots for Leading Ladies.
“I always loved entertaining. And I always thought that was like in my blood.”
But the moment that truly cemented the idea that acting could be a career came when she watched her grandmother perform.
“Watching my grandma on stage doing theatre was a point where I went, ‘This is a job, this is a career, this is what you can, this is something I could do’.”
What captivated her wasn’t just the performance itself, but the emotional connection between actor and audience.
“I could just hear the audience being affected by what they see on stage from acting, and how much storytelling can affect people emotionally,” she says with a slight smile, seemingly excited by the power that a great performance can have on a crowd. “For a little moment, you just think, ‘we’re all the same. We’re all connected through emotion, you know?”
Watching her grandmother transform into different characters never felt strange; to Yerin, it simply felt like play, but refreshing to see sides to her. In fact, it seemed like “fun”.
“It was just her playing. It just seemed like so much fun and so liberating because I didn’t always get to see that super emotional side of Grandma in my personal life. But I get to see her like cry and, just like shout on stage.”
While she was born in Australia, Yerin’s teenage years were spent studying at Kaywon High School of Arts in Seoul, South Korea. Her formative years studying performing arts in Seoul were an experience she describes as both challenging and transformative.
“That was really tough. That was really tough three years,” she says. But she wasn’t alone.
“Luckily, my mum had come with me to study, so I wasn’t by myself.”
Living between cultures forced her to examine questions of identity she hadn’t previously confronted.
“It was a bit of a shock to the system. When I was there, it really challenged me to ask about my identity and my Korean-Australian identity, what that looks like and what that feels like.”
However, even in Seoul with her mother, she sometimes felt like an outsider.
“Even though I was there, I was still somewhat like the foreign girl, the overseas girl.”
But the experience ultimately helped her embrace both sides of her identity.
“I learned to be quite proud of where I come from and what they teach there, which is very different to the Western culture. It’s a team mentality, and you’re only as good as your weakest link. You’ve got to keep supporting everyone. And the work is never done. Like the work, there’s still always so much exploration to be had. And I feel like my teenage years in Korea really taught me my work ethic.”
Something that she brings into her acting career.
“I kind of got like the best of both worlds and learned how to mould it into what it feels and looks good to me,” she adds.
“I identify as Korean Australian because I was born in Australia, and I think so much of my childhood was spent here. But then, my prime adolescent years were in Korea.”
Today, she sees those dual influences as a strength rather than a tension.
“One’s not stronger than the other, so they can coexist peacefully now. Whereas I think when I was younger, I used to struggle with, you know, being the Asian kid in the bigger, Australian group. And always felt a bit, not isolated, but just maybe not as fully comfortable in my own skin. Now, it’s a combination of both. And one’s not stronger than the other; they can coexist peacefully now.”
After graduating from NIDA, Yerin landed a major role in the video game adaptation, Halo. Stepping onto such a large-scale international production straight out of drama school was a baptism of fire.
“It was really intense,” she recalls.
“And I think because it was my first proper big job since graduating NIDA, it really was like getting thrown into the deep end.”
The series required not just emotional range but physical endurance, with the character navigating violence, survival, death, and constant danger. But it was also an opportunity for representation as Yerin’s character, Kwan, spoke Korean on the show.
“It was a really physically and mentally draining character and show to do,” she says.
But the experience accelerated her learning curve.
“That was my first proper big screen job with blue screens and so many visual effects that, yeah, I felt like I learned the hardest way possible. But because of that, probably in a way, the quickest way possible, because you have to figure it out.”
Her next major project, the atmospheric mystery drama The Survivors, could hardly have been more different. Based on the novel of the same name by Jane Harper (also known for The Dry), Yerin plays The Survivors stars Charlie Vickers as Kieran Elliott and Yerin Ha as Mia Chang, opposite Charlie Vickers as Kieran Elliott, as a young couple who return to their childhood hometown only to be confronted by memories of a tragedy in their youth and a fresh murder.
Set against the rugged coastline of Tasmania, the series explores grief, memory and long-buried secrets. For Yerin, Tasmania became woven into the emotional texture of the story itself.
“I loved filming in Tasmania,” she says. “Australian landscapes are so magical and powerful, and the Indigenous people… you can feel it sometimes. There is just something so magnetic about the landscape.”
The Survivors makes the landscape almost a character in its own right — something Yerin felt deeply while working on location.
“You definitely, that small town vibe for The Survivors, I think it was like the perfect setting.”
The unpredictable weather only added to the mood, but it helped ground her performance.
“We would almost get four seasons in a day, like the sun, the wind, the rain. Your emotions kind of go with it. Like, there is a bit of that chaos, like an internal hurricane inside you. It just fits with the landscape.”
To portray her character Mia’s grief authentically, Yerin drew from her own personal experiences.
“I always like to not draw so much, like I do like to draw from my own experiences, obviously.”
“I just drew from my own experiences with what grief felt and looked like for me and what my healing journey was when I lost someone in my life.”
She shares that when her grandfather passed away, she felt like she had to hide her grief from her mother, to be strong for her. Instead, she dealt with her grief privately when she had the mental space to acknowledge and feel her pain and let it grow with her.
“It’s a really wild but also beautiful thing,” she says of grief, adding that it is different for everyone, even the characters she’s portraying.
“Grief always stays with you, whether that’s on the surface or whether that’s just kind of deep inside you, I think, is a bit different. For Mia, because it has been so long since Gabby passed, it never leaves her, but it’s not at the forefront of her mind until they get back to Evelyn Bay.”
“It was a bit more of a personal kind of digging experience, but I think it was a really beautiful story in terms of telling what grief can be like for people.”
Despite the global success of The Survivors, which she has now followed up with Bridgerton, Yerin has learned to keep her distance from social media reactions.
“You know what’s really funny is I tend to steer away from social media during that time,” she admits.
“I think I learned it kind of the hard way that people are going to say nice things to you and people are going to say bad things to you. But strangely enough, it’s always the bad ones that stick.”
Protecting her mental health means stepping away from that noise.
“I never wanted to go into like a mental hole because I know myself now, and I want to protect my mental health and sanity.”
Instead, she views a show’s success as a collective achievement.
“I think a show’s success just means everyone’s success.”
Family and friends are genuinely my pillars in my life. And my mom’s dog. Sometimes, when I see her, just happily playing in the rain, I’m like, ‘life’s not that bad’. But they’ve been with me since day dot; it didn’t matter what kind of success I had, they were always supporting me, same with my best friends. So I just always like to lean on them and spend time with them, and that’s how I heal and how I charge my battery. I love reading books, and I love baking because I just never think of anything else,” she laughs. “If I wasn’t acting, I wanted to become a baker.”
Making sweet treats for loved ones and spending time wit themis part of Yerin’s mentality of togetherness and community.
“If I’m in Australia, I love going to the beach and seeing the sunrises. I used to do that a lot with my friend. It would always remind you that – and I mean this in a good way – you’re not that important. Like your worries and everything might feel really big for you, but the world is so massive out there.”
Her family were with her when she learned she had landed the lead role in Bridgerton. It was a moment she will never forget.
“I was in Seoul, Korea, with my mom in Gangnam,” she says.
“I get a phone call from my agent, and he’s like, ‘Hold on, we’re going to get everyone online’.”
Then came the words that changed everything.
“Until he said, you are the lead of Bridgerton in season four.”
Her reaction was immediate.
“I was just a genuinely hysterical girl on the streets, and everybody was looking at me while they were all going to work.”
Even more special was sharing the moment with her mother.
“And I just remember that, and my mom coming out of the cafe because she could obviously see me. And she was crying.”
“It was a really sweet moment.”
Before she auditioned for the role, she shared that she was “gobsmacked” and in “disbelief” that they wanted an Asian woman as the lead. But she didn’t let that stop her from putting herself forward.
“I think that is why Bridgerton has done so well globally,” she adds. “When audiences see themselves on screen, it draws them in. I’m not going to always necessarily relate to a Caucasian story. You know what I mean? And just that kind of extra spin, Iets people in and feel seen. And I think that’s just really beautiful. They’ve done it so well in a really slick manner.”
Joining such a behemoth as Bridgerton was thrilling but intimidating. But last season’s lead, Nicola Coughlan, lent her some guidance.
“She was here briefly for Sydney and caught up very briefly,” Yerin shares after I gush about my Galway girl. “She’s just the best. I just know that if I needed anything, I could count on her.”
However, Yerin got to work to ensure she was bringing her best to the set.
“I re-watched all the other seasons. And I really focused on the book, An Offer from a Gentleman,” she shares. “I really wanted to just like unpick Julia Quinn’s mind of how she envisioned Sophie. Then I try to let that go after I sink into it and focus on the scripts and then my relationship with Luke.”
Bridgerton is partly famous for its steamy, intimate scenes, so having a screen partner that she trusts was of paramount importance.
“Acting is all about the reacting,” Yerin explains. “When you have someone who’s giving and listening, it just makes your job so much easier. When you have someone who is not present and hasn’t done the work, it just makes it harder.
Yerin describes her chemistry and connection with Luke as “ really effortless and smooth.”
“The whole story is basically about that connection”, she says, emphasising how important it was for them to get that right.
“I loved filming it,” she said of season 4. “That was probably the most fun I’ve had, actually shooting something. I wasn’t covered in dirt or blood, which is nice.” Something that can’t be said of her other two big series.
“It’s just really fun, witty, the writing is a bit lighter. I think I’ve done quite a lot of heavy stuff. I mean, Sophie also has a heavy moment, but just, there’s a lot more…” she reaches for a word.
“Brightness?” I suggest.
“Yes, exactly.”
Despite her growing success, Yerin remains remarkably humble about her achievements. Even when she was named Rising Star by the Casting Guild of Australia, her reaction was unexpectedly candid.
“I was just like, I’m a fraud.”
She laughs at the thought now, but admits imposter syndrome still lingers. Part of that mindset may come from the rigorous discipline instilled during her time studying in Korea.
“They were kind of hard being like, there’s always going to be someone better than you.”
For Yerin, the answer is simple: keep working.
“It keeps me humble.”
With filming commitments taking her across continents from Australia to Korea to London, Yerin has had to rethink what home means.
“Home, I think, is really where I make it to be, to be honest with you.”
Constant travel has taught her to build stability from within.
“I have to kind of make wherever I am home because I’m gone away for such long stints of time.”
At its heart, home isn’t a place but the people she carries with her.
“Home is always changing, but at the core of it is always just like me and my family and my friends.”
As her career continues to expand internationally, that sense of grounding may be her greatest asset.
Because if the past few years are any indication, Yerin Ha isn’t just a rising star — she’s only just getting started.
An excerpt of this interview originally appeared in the March 2026 issue of The Australian Women’s Weekly. Subscribe so you never miss an issue.
Check out the rest of our leading ladies: Miah Madden, Philippa Northeast, Sophia Wright Mendelsohn, and Mia Morrissey.
