She’s an ER nurse in NC by day. By night, she’s an FBI agent with Robert De Niro
In an ER near Charlotte, nurse Eden Lee is used to handling high-stakes situations all day.
By night, you can catch Lee at her other high-stakes job, as an FBI special agent. Make that, playing a fed in the new Netflix thriller, “Zero Day” alongside series star Robert De Niro.
The Oscar winner portrays a former president leading an investigation in the aftermath of a deadly national cyber attack. Lee’s character, Special Agent Angela Kim, is a big part of the team under De Niro. Despite widespread panic, Lee’s character has to look authoritative, calm and in control.
That’s a familiar role for her. When Lee’s not in front of the camera, the 34-year-old has to manage high-stakes pressure as a real-life emergency room nurse for Atrium Health Union in Monroe.
Lee, who has been acting since 2017, splits her time between two professions that she loves..
She recently spoke with The Charlotte Observer from her home in Indian Trail about how she landed her role in the new series, what it was like working with De Niro and how she balances the dual careers.
How Eden Lee found joy in acting and nursing
Lee is a native of Queens, New York, who participated in high school theater when her parents briefly relocated to the Pocono mountains in Pennsylvania. But acting was never something she seriously considered as a career path.
“I think every little girl wants to be like Britney Spears when they grow up, right? Like we all want to sing and dance and act. But I grew up in a very old-school Korean household,” where her parents expected her to be a doctor or lawyer.
The family moved to Indian Trail her junior year of high school in 2007, due to the real estate market crash and her parents’ desire to move South. Lee didn’t get involved in theater at Porter Ridge High, but retained her flair for the dramatic — she was so angry about the move, she chopped off all her hair in an act of defiance.
But eventually, she changed her attitude toward the Charlotte region.
Lee earned a Bachelor’s of Science degree in nursing from UNC Charlotte in 2013, found a job at Atrium Health Union and started dating her now-husband. Around 2017, Lee realized that despite being happy, something was missing. She started imagining what change she could make that would possibly “spark joy in a different way.”
She decided that something might be acting, and enrolled in classes at the Film Actors’ Studio Charlotte. Lee realized how much she liked acting. Her teacher encouraged her to keep with it.
“It was never a thought in my mind to abandon my nursing career,” Lee said. “But there’s a world in which these two things can live in tandem, and I wanted to see what that was like.”
Lee’s other job is as a PRN nurse, one who works on an as-needed basis rather than a regular schedule. Lee usually sets her schedule week to week. That might sound chaotic but Lee loves the flexibility it provides.
During her time in New York filming “Zero Day,” it meant she could still fly back to Charlotte and meet her minimum required PRN nursing hours when she had days off. Her hospital co-workers are also very supportive of her acting career.
“Emergency nursing is hands down another passion of mine,” Lee said. “I feel a drive and a passion for that as well.”
That work also taught her to keep everything in perspective, even when things get stressful on set.
“Regardless of what kind of emergencies that we have on set, like wardrobe emergencies, a client doesn’t like this, we’re running out of daylight, nothing is ever truly quite life-or-death as it is in my other line of work. So it keeps me very level-headed. When everyone else is freaking out… I’m like, literally nobody is dying. Everything is fine.”
And while she loves acting, there’s a less glamorous side too, what she calls “a lot of hurry-up and wait” before a scene films. Hour for hour, she said she finds the faster pace of ER nursing more enjoyable.
Landing ‘Zero Day’ on Netflix
Lee has more than two dozen credits listed on IMDb.com. But most of her other TV and film gigs, like appearances on the Disney+ series “She-Hulk: Attorney at Law” and Peacock’s “Twisted Metal,” were shot at studios across the Southeast, including in Atlanta and New Orleans.
And on Instagram a couple years ago, she wrote about how she landed a one-line gig as “PTA Mother” on a high-profile movie filmed in Charlotte, “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.” It happened after she improvised lines with one of the younger actresses, and wound up with what she called “the first ‘big girl’ job I booked!”
Getting the chance to audition in January 2023 for the high-profile Netflix series filming in her hometown of New York was an exciting proposition.
This was an opportunity to get her audition tape in front of a casting office she hadn’t worked with before. It also was a chance to be part of a project with an all-star cast that also included Angela Bassett (“Black Panther”), Lizzy Caplan (“Mean Girls”), Connie Britton (“Friday Night Lights”) and Jesse Plemons (“Breaking Bad”).
But she thought her chances were slim.
“I knew what the project was and I was like, ‘There isn’t a snowball’s chance in Hell I’m going to get it anyway,’ ” Lee said. “So I was like, we’re just going to go for it.”
She figured a more likely scenario was that an actor from New York or L.A. would get the role, especially since the production team was seeking someone 10 to 20 years older than Lee.
But the character description intrigued Lee, a Korean-American actor, because the role was written as a character of Korean descent. Most parts she auditions for are open ethnicity roles.
Lee got a partial explanation for that decision through the research packet she later received to prepare for the role. In addition to highlighting the functions of the cyber task force work, it focused on how few women of color make it to the rank of FBI special agent.
“And so, I think what they did was … in a small way represent a group of people that are incredibly underrepresented within that particular role in the FBI,” Lee said.
By spring 2023, Lee knew she had the job as a recurring guest star in four of the limited series’ six episodes.
She started looking for temporary housing and flew in for a table read that May. But soon all production activities stopped due to strikes from both the screenwriters’ and actors’ unions.
When the strikes finally ended six months later, Lee said it only took a week before she was called back to New York for costume fittings. Filming began in January 2024. For two months, Lee rented a room in West Harlem, about a 40-minute subway ride from the studio.
Making Robert De Niro laugh
So what was it like meeting De Niro, he of the two Oscar wins, the Presidential Medal of Freedom and a career spanning over 60 years and more than 100 films?
“There’s a shock factor, right, ‘cause you’re just like, ‘That’s him, right there, just right in front of me,’ ” she said. “But he’s so kind and he’s so quiet. There isn’t any air about him of superiority… He’s just a very introverted person.
“So, if anything, it marginally felt like he was just as uncomfortable meeting everyone as we were nervous to meet him.”
After a while, she said, it became normal to see him at the studio. She often appeared on screen with De Niro. (Note: If you watch the series, Lee’s character appears the most in episodes 5 and 6.)
One of her favorite behind-the-scenes memories was the time she inadvertently made De Niro laugh.
It was early morning, and they were shooting a scene where his character is supposed to consult various computer screens, then ask Lee’s character to get something. She was supposed to respond, “Yes, sir” and exit quickly.
“He had tripped up his lines a couple of times in a row and just without even thinking it just made me smile because …. you know, everyone thinks, like, ‘Oh my gosh, living legend, he can’t make any mistakes.’ But he’s just a man trying his best, right?
“And so I smiled a little bit and he broke (character) and he was chuckling. He was like, ‘Don’t you make me laugh,’ and I was like, ‘Yes, sir!’ ”
They went right back and finished the scene. Lee said it was a “nice, tender moment” on the well-run set.
What’s next for Eden Lee
Over the years, Lee’s only seen a few actual medical emergencies on a movie or TV set. And medics are typically nearby to assist.
But if something unexpected were to happen and the situation required quick action, Lee would be happy to help.
Like the time she worked on a friend’s short film in Texas, and an actor got heat exhaustion. He grabbed a chair to steady himself and accidentally sliced open his hand. The medic wasn’t nearby so Lee stepped in to stop the bleeding.
“The energy just got really crazy,” she said. Lee calmed things down, rinsed his hand and got it wrapped while the medic was on the way.
But she knows it’s something she has to be cautious about since there could be potential liability issues if her actions jeopardized a crew or cast member’s health. She also wants to be respectful toward the people who are paid to provide medical assistance on set.
“It’s a delicate dance,” she said, “just to make sure that I’m staying within my scope.”
That suits her fine. Between nursing and a steady flow of acting gigs, including a small role in the upcoming independent feature film “Bedford Park,” Lee’s dance card is already quite full.
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This story was originally published April 9, 2025 at 5:40 AM.