Actor Kim Goeun said she "wasn't bothered" about the controversy over actors and a director leaving before The Price of Confession began granting.
On the 12th morning at a cafe in Samcheong-dong, Jongno-gu, Seoul, a wrap-up interview with Kim Goeun, the lead actor of the Netflix original series The Price of Confession, was held.
The Price of Confession is a mystery thriller about Yun-soo (Jeon Do-yeon), who was framed as a suspect in her husband's murder, and Mo-eun (Kim Goeun), a mysterious figure called a witch, and what happens between the two people with many secrets.
Originally, The Price of Confession was directed by PD Lee Eung-bok and was known to star Song Hye-kyo and Han So-hee, drawing attention. But in 2023 PD Lee Eung-bok was replaced by PD Shim Na-yeon, and not long after it was revealed that PD Shim Na-yeon and Song Hye-kyo and Han So-hee had also left, attracting notice. Later PD Lee Jung-hyo was confirmed as the new director and Jeon Do-yeon newly joined. In particular, Kim Ji-won was offered the role of Mo-eun but it fell through, and Kim Goeun ultimately took the role.
When asked if she was bothered given the successive actor and director changes, Kim Goeun said, "Honestly, I don't mind that kind of thing." She said, "Because for any project there are countless cases where an actor goes to it and it doesn't work out. Of course this gets reported in the media, it gets announced and canceled during progress and many people feel strongly about it, but actually over more than a decade working as an actor there have been many situations. Any actor would have experienced such situations, so it wasn't something that bothered me at all," she said, expressing her conviction.
When asked if there was a reason she readily took the difficult-to-express role of Mo-eun, she said, "Before this project was concretized I once read the script as part of monitoring. It wasn't a script given hoping I would grant; I read it from a monitoring perspective, and because I glanced at it a long time ago I only remembered that the characters were attractive. Then I thought 'let's make it' and I received the offer while filming You and Everything Else. I heard Jeon Do-yeon sunbaenim would appear, and I remembered the character was attractive so I asked to be allowed to do it," she said.
She continued, "Character-wise I worked a lot with the director on development. In the first draft the direction for the character Mo-eun was 'a person who makes great efforts to appear like a psychopath.' But isn't she a character who is revealed in the middle to late portion as 'actually not'? Until that is revealed, viewers also must be deceived. When I read it on the page it was fun to read, but when I tried to act it I thought there might be parts that didn't match my character's plausibility, like 'what about when she's alone?' She commits murder like a psychopath in the murder scene filmed on the pet cam, and later if it's revealed 'she wasn't a psychopath,' viewers would think 'then what about that time?' But you can't show the moment she returns to her original self when she's alone. The viewers must not know the twist," she said, revealing her concerns.
She said, "After various discussions I thought it might be more fitting that Mo-eun stays still while many people misunderstand and imagine things about her. A psychopath is, after all, a type who cannot empathize. Thinking about that, I wondered if it might be good to reveal later through Mo-eun's backstory that she became completely emotionally broken, that she had been emotionally castrated. To do that there had to be parts where the backstory is clearly revealed, so I judged that and approached it that way," she said, describing her effort to build the character.
Despite putting so much effort into the character, when jokingly asked, "Was there any moment you regretted granting?" she replied, "No, there wasn't." Kim Goeun said, "In You and Everything Else Eun-jung appears constantly, right? She's on set every day, and in The Price of Confession Do-yeon sunbaenim is on set constantly like Eun-jung's role while I feel like I go only occasionally. I was so excited to go play Mo-eun, and thinking about meeting my senior made me thrilled. Since the senior has many episodes wouldn't it be hard on her? There are many scenes where she gets rained on and a lot of action and she might be physically tired, so I thought 'I'll bring vitality' and took on the project enthusiastically." (Interview part 2 to follow.)<
[Photo] Netflix
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