Joy Ride’ Star Ashley Park Gives Her Characters a Signature Scent: ‘I’m Such a Sensory Person’

Ashley Park is revealing her unique and clever way to get into character.

The actress, 32, tells PEOPLE that when it comes to truly understanding and embodying a character, her recent go-to strategy is assigning each one a signature scent.

“I’m such a sensory person,” she tells PEOPLE on the red carpet of the Los Angeles premiere of her film Joy Ride. “I feel like smells take me back immediately to a certain time in my life or to a certain person.”

Park continues, “What I started to do is when I have a character, especially one that’s similar to me in some ways… to get into the skin of that person, I will go to a perfume place and find a scent that feels like that character.”

“And every morning before I go to set, I’ll just put it on,” she reveals.

Park then shared that for the premiere she put on the perfume she wore while filming Joy Ride. “I put on the Audrey [her character] perfume tonight and I was like, ‘oh my god, I’m in Vancouver. I’m doing this movie.’ “

The Emily in Paris actress stars in the raucous comedy as a woman named Audrey, who was adopted as a child by American parents and heads to Asia as an adult in search of her birth parents alongside a group of close friends played by Sherry Cola, Sabrina Wu and recent Oscar nominee Stephanie Hsu.

An official synopsis describes the Adele Lim (Crazy Rich Asians)-directed film as a “hilarious and unapologetically explicit story of identity and self-discovery centers on four unlikely friends who embark on a once-in-a-lifetime international adventure.”

“When Audrey’s (Park) business trip to Asia goes sideways, she enlists the aid of Lolo (Cola), her irreverent, childhood best friend who also happens to be a hot mess; Kat (Hsu), her college friend turned Chinese soap star; and Deadeye (Wu), Lolo’s eccentric cousin,” the synopsis continues.

“Their no-holds-barred, epic experience becomes a journey of bonding, friendship, belonging, and wild debauchery that reveals the universal truth of what it means to know and love who you are,” the synopsis concludes.

[via]