Did You Know These ‘XO, Kitty’ Stars Are Siblings? All About Sang Heon Lee & Gia Kim’s Family
What To Know
- Sang Heon Lee and Gia Kim play Min Ho and Yuri in Netflix’s XO, Kitty.
- They are real-life siblings, though they have different last names and accents.
- The siblings grew up in two countries and pursued different educational and career paths before acting.
In XO, Kitty, Kitty Song Covey (Anna Cathcart) is a magnet for relationship drama, forming connections with more than one of her classmates at KISS. While Kitty is certainly chaotic, though, one mess she doesn’t find herself in is a sibling love triangle (unlike her fellow Jenny Han universe leading lady, The Summer I Turned Pretty‘s Belly Conklin). However, two of the actors who play Kitty’s love interests are actually siblings IRL: Sang Heon Lee and Gia Kim, a.k.a. Min Ho and Yuri.
We don’t blame you if you didn’t clock it, even if you’ve been tuning into the Netflix drama over the past couple of years. After all, Lee and Kim have different last names. In fact, both the cast and the production team didn’t know Lee and Kim were related at first. Their costar, Choi Min-yeong, told Teen Vogue that they found out when the cast group chat was being set up. We’re breaking down everything we know about the brother-sister XO, Kitty duo below.
Are Sang Heon Lee and Gia Kim siblings?
Lee and Kim have spoken about their sibling bond often since 2023, when XO, Kitty debuted and gave them their breakout roles. Though they were both born in Seoul, Lee and Kim grew up in Hong Kong, splitting their time between the two. Both didn’t go immediately into acting: Kim studied journalism and music at the University of Hong Kong and worked as a news reporter for Korea’s Arirang TV before heading to LA to pursue acting.
Her brother, who’s four years younger, took drama classes in high school and studied the subject at the University of Northampton in England. He returned to Korea to complete his two years of military service and took up modeling after that. On the Fun With Dumb podcast, Lee said he wanted to earn some money from modeling before jumping into acting. He was about to make that transition when his sister sent him the open casting call for XO, Kitty. “She said, I just got pinned, you should go for it as well,” Lee told TV Guide. “At the beginning, I didn’t really think much of it. Because I thought, what are the chances? After I sent three tapes, I got pinned as well.”
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Why do Sang Heon Lee and Gia Kim have different last names?
Kim’s birth name is Lee Jeong Yeon, but she decided to take a stage name. On the Fun With Dumb podcast, Kim said that she visited a fortune teller, who gave her a birth chart reading to determine her new name. She asked for one based on her career. “I really do like this question because I have had evolutions of names based on the kind of person I thought I was stepping into,” she explained. “And I’ve had like five different names, which is why, depending on which stage of my life you’ve known me from, they would know me by different names.”
Kim explained that the first English name she used was Helena, because it was a Catholic name and her family raised her Catholic. “And then I went by Jeong Yeon, which is my birth name, because we went back and forth between Hong Kong and Seoul quite a bit as well. And then when I went back, I was like, I don’t want to use Helena anymore because one of my third-grade teachers was like shortening everyone’s names, and mine was Hel. I was like, I was so hurt by that. I was like, ‘Oh my God, I don’t want anyone calling me Hel.'”
Why do Sang Heon Lee and Gia Kim have different accents?
Lee describes his accent as a mix of American and British, the latter of which started to develop when he went to university. “It just suddenly grew on me so quickly,” he said. During their joint podcast appearance, Kim added, “Also, it’s funny because when you grow up in Hong Kong, you either grow a standard American accent or a standard British accent, you can go either way. If you grow up in Hong Kong, it depends what international school you’re going to.”
Who are Sang Heon Lee and Gia Kim’s parents?
Though they’ve talked about their pre-fame backgrounds often, Lee and Kim haven’t shared much about their mom and dad. They’ve mentioned that their dad’s construction job led them to move around a lot, though, so it seems like they’re the only two members of their family in the spotlight.
XO, Kitty, Season 3, Streaming Now, Netflix
