Actor Ham Eun-jung shared her feelings as an ex-wife ahead of the wedding of her ex-husband Lee Jang-woo.
Ham Eun-jung gave a passionate performance as Kang Jae-in in KBS2 daily drama Queen's House (written by Kim Min-ju, directed by Hong Eun-mi and Hong Seok-gu), which ended on the 19th.
Queen's House is a revenge drama about a woman who believed she had a perfect life and then has her life stolen, leading to a fight to take back her life. Directors Hong Seok-gu, who showed delicate directing in many works such as Beauty and the Man of Devotion, Oh! Samgwang Villa!, and Hometown of Mine, and Hong Eun-mi, who presented stylish direction in Beauty and the Man of Devotion, Devoted Boxer, and School 2021, joined forces. Writer Kim Min-ju, who led the revival of daily dramas with Golden Mask, Clear Tomorrow, and Shine, Eun-soo, once again delivered intense immersion to viewers, and the series ended with its 100th episode broadcast on the 19th.
In Queen's House, which received much love and recorded a peak rating of 11.9% (episode 97), Ham Eun-jung played Kang Jae-in, the youngest design team head of YL Group. Kang Jae-in was born into a household everyone envied but actually dreams of an ordinary and modest life; an unexpected incident completely upended Jae-in's life. Ham Eun-jung, who delivered immersive performances in works such as Lucky Us, Twist of Love, and Even If Fooled, Dreamily, took on her first revenge drama in Queen's House, delivering thrilling catharsis and immersion and cementing her position as the queen of daily dramas.
Taking on her first revenge drama since starting her acting career, Ham Eun-jung said, "It was my first revenge drama, but the script was also fun. I think it was the first time the layered emotions and the feelings between lines were shown so in detail in a daily drama. The words directed at the ex-husband or the target of revenge weren't filled only with revenge. It wasn't love or hatred, it was a love-hate relationship, and when it was revealed they were terminally ill at the end it became complex and subtle. I wondered if such complex and subtle emotions existed in a daily drama, and it had been a while since I saw a script like that. Viewers offered many interpretations, and even that was good. That was a new aspect of the work," adding, "Of the works I've done so far, this is the spiciest. Because it was a revenge drama I really wanted to try it. It was so spicy that I had to check the schedule to know the date. I was so immersed I lost track of time during filming. There were many spicy plot developments, so I had to focus on them. The pace of the development was fast, so it was a really tough project. Energetically I had to build up and then release, and if I treated the emotions lightly they looked light, so it was difficult. It was a very educational project."
Behind Ham Eun-jung's successful completion of her first revenge drama was the chemistry with her fellow actors. First, about her chemistry with Seo Joon-young, Ham Eun-jung said, "Seo Joon-young acted with such strong emotion in Missing that I almost wanted to kill him, so I could speak comfortably. I worked as a singer for a long time, but Seo Joon-young has been an actor for many years and has a precise perspective. So I listened a lot and took his advice."
About her ex-husband Park Yoon-jae, she said, "I wondered how many people in his older brother's age could perform with that kind of dignity. An aura radiated from him, and the melodrama worked well too. I thought it would be good to act together without the love-hate element. The scenes when portraying a briefly happy time came out well," and about acting as a mother-daughter pair with Lee Sang-sook she said, "When we filmed for six to nine months on Lucky Us and then I became a mother, looking into her eyes made me feel comfortable and focused. Senior Lee Sang-sook was the first to come to my mother's funeral. That memory was vivid, so when I was cast in Queen's House I contacted her and she said she was so happy to be a mother and to tell me whenever I needed anything to become a mother. That helped me focus more on Kang Jae-in."
Ham Eun-jung experienced both the happy and fierce married life in Queen's House. She had also experienced something similar herself. Although it was a virtual experience through We Got Married, her sweet interactions with actor Lee Jang-woo raised the illusion that it might be real. Lee Jang-woo is set to marry actor Jo Hye-won in November, and attention has turned to the feelings of his ex-wife Ham Eun-jung.
Ham Eun-jung said, "If we were ex-girlfriend and ex-boyfriend I would have been too uncomfortable to see him or talk with him, but I support him. We Got Married had no script, but it felt like filming a drama together. It isn't easy to give and take, but we were able to sync comfortably, and because there are no uncomfortable feelings or grudges, I wholeheartedly support my older brother's wedding."
Ham Eun-jung added, "With Lee Jang-woo it's more like college peers who know each other's youth than a man-woman relationship. When I contacted him last year to say my mother had passed away he came, and I'll go to his wedding and congratulate and support him a lot. There are many places connected to me in ways he doesn't realize, so he said I could sit with the We Got Married team, sit with director Hong Seok-gu's side, or sit with the musical side."
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