Actor Park Ji-hyun said she even fasted for about three weeks for You and Everything Else.
Park Ji-hyun conducted an interview on the morning of the 25th at a café in Samcheong-dong, Jongno District, Seoul. At the event, she met with domestic reporters and talked about the recently released Netflix original series "You and Everything Else."
"You and Everything Else" is a drama that depicts the moments when two friends, Eun-jung and Sang-yeon, who like and admire each other the most at every moment, also feel jealousy and hatred and become entangled throughout their lives, facing all of their times. Actress Kim Goeun played Eun-jung, and Park Ji-hyun played Sang-yeon and delivered passionate performances. Thanks to this, the drama ranked fifth in the non-English section of Netflix Global Top 10 series.
Sang-yeon chooses dignified death in the story. For this, Park Ji-hyun was praised for her desperate performance portraying a patient with an incurable disease. She even endured dieting to look gaunt. In particular, she said, "I fasted for about two to three weeks, drinking only water and americano," which surprised people.
She said, "I didn't precisely monitor the kilos I lost," and added, "I actually thought Sang-yeon should be thin in her 20s. The house of 20s Sang-yeon was very slanted and poor, and the refrigerator wasn't empty, was it? So I wanted 20s Sang-yeon to be a bit thin. But the filming location was so cold that we wore a lot of thermal underwear under our clothes. I made my own iron man suit out of thin electric heating pads and attached six batteries to film. Because we had to depict all four seasons, there was a scene where I fall into the sea in summer, but it was the middle of winter. Instead, I was perfectly armed inside. Sometimes, when you look, you can tell I'm wearing armor. I'm wearing a short-sleeve shirt or a seven-eighths-sleeve shirt, but I look puffy to anyone. My face was thin, though. My senior watching with me said, 'It's too obvious.' So I also tried to lose a lot of weight in my 20s."
She continued, "In my 30s, I thought Sang-yeon had somewhat settled professionally, so I tried to express things like middle-age weight by gaining some weight. I didn't set a specific number of kilos to gain. I gained enough to make my face look fuller by eye. In my 40s, I observed how to portray a sick patient a lot and also tried fasting. I fasted for about two to three weeks, drinking only water and americano," adding with an embarrassed smile, "It was hard at the beginning of the fast, but after a while my stomach shrank, so it was okay."
She said, "When I fasted like that my body became thin but my face swelled. It turned yellow and puffy. I thought, 'This is it.' I needed my face to swell. So I cried a lot right before filming. I'm such an 'F.' Sang-yeon is supposed to be detached and calm, but on set, whenever I made eye contact with senior Goeun, I couldn't hold back my tears while delivering lines. So normally emotional scenes are shot starting with the bust shot, but my bust shot was filmed last because I cried so much. I simply couldn't control my tears. It was so hard to hold them back. I cried for about two to three hours before filming."
Park Ji-hyun confessed, "I went to the set with my face that puffy. In a way, it was intentional. In wide shots or scenes where I wasn't in frame, I would cry. I'm still sorry to senior Goeun. There were scenes where I shouldn't have cried when filming her bust shot in front of me, but I shed many tears. By the time it came to filming my bust scene, I had gotten much better. So I was able not to cry. I also don't swell easily. That can be an advantage in my acting career, but I cried a lot to make my face swell."
(Continued in interview ②.)
[Photo] Provided by Netflix.
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