TVLine's Performer Of The Week: Hoon Lee

Netflix

THE PERFORMER | Hoon Lee

THE SHOW | Netflix's "East of Eden"

THE EPISODE | "Departure" (October 1, 2026)

THE PERFORMANCE | Narrowing down the gorgeous performances from Netflix's "East of Eden" adaptation to just one standout actor feels almost cruel. Throw a rock anywhere in the show's Salinas Valley, and you'll hit five performances you'll be thinking about all week.

The most indelible of them all, though, has proven to be Hoon Lee's stirring work as Lee, a servant to Adam Trask (Christopher Abbott) who essentially raises Adam's twin boys when Adam is too emotionally unmoored to do so. Lee gives a disarming performance from the very start when his character reveals that, contrary to the racist assumptions of others, he's quite a learned man who speaks fluent English. Lee's on-screen presence is both soft and commanding throughout these seven episodes — often simultaneously, as is the case in two pivotal Episode 5 scenes.

First, when Adam decides to start a new life with his sons in Salinas, Lee asks to be freed from his obligations to the Trask family when they relocate to their new home. He's had ambitions of his own all along, and when Lee admits to Adam that he's longed for a wife, children, and his own bookshop business for years, there's not only regret in his words, but a subtle resentment that Lee had to shelve his dreams in order to raise another man's family. Adam asks why Lee never simply left the Trasks to pursue his own desires, and Lee's response ("Being needed is hard bait for a lonely man.") is accompanied by a lump in his throat that matches the one we get upon watching their conversation.

Later, as he urges Adam to tell his sons the truth about their mother — the boys think she's dead; she's not only alive, but she lives nearby — Lee reveals the traumatic story of his own mother's death, a tale he could have been shielded from as a boy but is ultimately grateful to know. The monologue's subject matter is harrowing and heartbreaking, but Lee delivers it with such gravitas that it's impossible to turn away. "She died on a pile of shale in the afternoon sun," Lee tells Adam of his mother. "My father managed to claw me out of her, alive." As we said: harrowing! But in Lee's delivery, the haunting anecdote becomes something akin to poetry.

For reasons we won't spoil if you've yet to watch the final two episodes of "East of Eden," Lee ultimately remains a fixture in the lives of the Trask men, even after they move to Salinas. Adam remarks, later on, that he couldn't replace Lee even if he tried; we feel much the same about the actor portraying Lee, who elevates Netflix's adaptation into one of the most moving series of the year. — Rebecca Luther

Scroll down to see who got an Honorable Mention shout-out this week...

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