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“I’ve never regretted at all choosing Playful Kiss”.
After moving into different agencies as other SS501 members as he chose Bae Yong-jun’s Keyeast, Kim Hyun-joong took on his first male protagonist drama [Playful Kiss] of MBC, and the above was a statement made from him.
It remained a single digit from start to end with its TV ratings. Though being put on par alongside hot popular dramas like KBS2 [Baker King Kim Tak Goo], [Fugitive Plan B], SBS [My girlfriend is Gumiho], [President] etc, the results attained by this drama where he first stars across as the male lead fell below expectations.
To this however, Kim Hyun-joong explained that he “Wasn’t too bothered with the ratings”. “I took this on with the final high-teen drama that I’ll do as I placated my many imperfections for [Boys over flowers]. It became a piece that I like”. Though many actors reveal their feeling of sadness after drama ends, Kim Hyun-joong was different. He felt pleased and contented with his achievements because of the amount of hardwork he had put in for it.
In particular, after the TV drama ended its run, a special Youtube edition consisting of seven 10-min episodes were released on the net; after its release, North Africa Tunisia and South America, Argentina etc began pouring in favors for a visit to their countries. Having no relations at all to domestic ratings, Kim Hyun-joong had once again solidified his status as a Hanryu star through the help of [Playful Kiss], and this is very much obvious.
But of course, sadness was not in absence. The biggest problem lied in the script – it came in late to him. There was insufficient time to prepare for the shooting. He mentioned that he felt he could have done better had the script reached him earlier. As what is called a “slice of scripts”, he thus had to catch up on filming and speed up hastily with limited time due to the late arrival of his script, and this – has been a persistent problem of Korean drama production systems.
Despite having ‘made some noise’ towards the production system, Kim Hyun-joong did not forget about his newbie status as an actor, “The female lead Jung So-min was a newbie, and I am, too, a rookie, that’s why there were quite lot worries from people around us”, “As time passed by, I believe we could improve, my chemistry with Jung So-min also tapped better as it went along”.
From people around them, they have also been giving feedbacks like they were slowly improving with each episode. However, Kim Hyun-joong did not hide his growing greed.
“In future, I want to hear feedbacks. Not those like ‘you’ve improved’, but rather ‘So anticipating’, and my acting skills will be what makes them anticipating”.
It’s a tiring work where 70-minutes of 2 drama episodes have to be shot in a week. After [Boys over Flowers], now came [Playful Kiss]; Kim Hyun-joong had no chance to escape such. For the same amount of time used in a week, it was no less than 18 hours in total did he manage to catch a wink.
“Thoughts like ‘Who will enjoy dying this way’ came onto mind everyday”, “But to act as someone else is really fun”. He also showed his absorbing into character Baek Seung-jo, “It’ll take some time before I return as Kim Hyun-joong after the ends. In [Playful Kiss] I took on the role of a cranky Baek Seungjo, so unknowingly I also resulted in treating people around me crankily”, which was evident to see how he dwelved alot into his character.
He’s also thinking of a transformation in his next work.
“People like awesomely rich millionaires or geniuses are quite ridiculous sounding anyway. It was also always warm and passionate roles (referring to BoF and Jangki). Next time round, I want to challenge realistic and maculine characters. I’m planning to prepare for my album to be released next May, after that I’ll be likely to return with a drama work, so I’ll be able to meet you all as an actor in latter half of next year”.
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English translation: ss501ode.blogspot.com
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