(Interview ③ continued) Actress Kim Goeun said that, like in You and Everything Else, if a real friend asked her to help with assisted death and to accompany them at the end, she would join them.
On the morning of the 22nd, an interview with Kim Goeun, the lead actress of the Netflix original drama You and Everything Else, was held at a cafe in Samcheong-dong, Jongno-gu, Seoul.
You and Everything Else is a story that faces all the times of two friends, Eun-jung (played by Kim Goeun) and Sang-yeon (played by Park Ji-hyun), whose lives are tangled through a lifetime of liking, admiring, being jealous of and hating each other at every moment.
In the story, Eun-jung experiences two breakups, first with Cheon Sang-hak (played by Kim Jae-won), whom she had a crush on, and later with Cheon Sang-yeon, with whom she had a long connection since her teenage years. When asked about Eun-jung's acceptance of the deaths of the two people, Kim Goeun said, "Sang-hak's death was something that happened too suddenly to young Eun-jung, and there were many moments whose reasons she didn't know. Actually, it ended with a smile in the end, didn't it? He smiled at me, but after that I couldn't see him. Because Eun-jung liked Sang-hak oppa, I think there were many things she wanted to say. She couldn't see the letters she wrote and things like that. Wouldn't those things have remained so much in life? I think so," she confessed.
She added, "Sang-yeon's death, to some extent, is something I could also mentally come to terms with, and she endured enough years for that. For Eun-jung, when she went to Switzerland she resolved she would never show tears in front of Sang-yeon. Whether as Goeun or when expressing Eun-jung, I thought it would be that kind of feeling. For Sang-yeon, there were many things I could do emotionally, so it must have been somewhat different from a death that came suddenly," she said.
In particular, when asked if she would go if a friend actually asked her to accompany them to Switzerland for assisted death like Sang-yeon, Kim Goeun answered without hesitation, "I think I would go."
She recalled, "I lived alone with my grandmother for six years in my 20s. From my first year of university until I finished the work on Cheese in the Trap, I lived alone with her for six years. Usually people live with their grandmother when they are young, but I was a special case. We really had a lot of mutual understanding, and my grandmother told me things she didn't even tell my aunts; we had a truly friend-like relationship. She sometimes drank makgeolli only with me," she remembered.
She continued, "My grandmother passed away, and I think I slept at the hospital day and night for three days to see her final moments. She was asleep at the last moment, so I couldn't see her. My father woke me and told me, 'Grandmother is gone.' A scene like that appears in Our Unwritten Seoul. I was like that too," and added, "A few days before that, my grandmother seemed to whisper her last words into my ear in advance. She told me, 'Goeun, live by giving. Help a lot and live by giving a lot, understand?' That kind of mutual understanding. And I also spoke into my grandmother's ear. Of course I couldn't exactly be there at the moment of death, but I was by my grandmother's side for three days and nights. I often feel grateful even while living that I was able to be there," she confessed.
Kim Goeun said, "Of course it's sad when I think about it, but many more good memories come to mind, and I feel so good that I accompanied her at the end. You and Everything Else is the story of the people left behind, and there are many documentaries, books and such that follow the emotions of those left behind, so I read them. At the time it was very hard and how emotionally difficult would a solo return flight be. But when you think about the time that passes, I think you would feel you made the right choice," she said frankly.
Meanwhile, You and Everything Else was released on Netflix on the 12th.
[Photo] Netflix
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