Actor Ahn Bo-hyun said he aims to take on a wider variety of roles.
On Feb. 11 at a cafe in Gangnam-gu, Seoul, Ahn Bo-hyun conducted an end-of-series interview for the tvN Monday-Tuesday drama Spring Fever.
Spring Fever is a work that depicts a hot pink romance of spring days that will melt the frozen hearts of teacher Yun Bom (played by Lee Joo-been), who is blasted by cold winds, and the man Seon Jae-gyu (played by Ahn Bo-hyun), and Ahn Bo-hyun met viewers playing the role of Seon Jae-gyu.
Spring Fever ranked in the global top 10 for five consecutive weeks (as of Feb. 4) in the Amazon Prime Video TV show category, based on FlixPatrol, a global OTT viewing ranking aggregation site, and it swept first place in major countries in Southeast Asia. Also, according to Good Data Corporation FUNdex, Ahn Bo-hyun proved his hot popularity by ranking second in the first week of February in TV-OTT drama cast topicality.
Maybe because of this popularity? Ahn Bo-hyun's Instagram followers surpassed 5 million. Asked if he felt the popularity, he recalled, "It seems my followers increased by more than 200,000. There used to be countries that formed a core of commenters, but fans from other countries have increased a lot. When I went on a travel program, on the way back there was a public security officer with a gun, and he grabbed me and said, 'Spring Fever.' That was around the time the first episode had just aired."
Ahn Bo-hyun said, "I was dressed sloppily, and when they said 'Spring Fever' I thought, 'Is this real?' They said they had actually watched episode 1 and that it was ranked second or third. The country was the Philippines, and it was amazing. The staff were also really happy, saying, 'You watch Spring Fever?'
Meanwhile, after Ahn Bo-hyun became known for Itaewon Class in 2020, he used his physicality to portray several characters in My Name, Yumi's Cells, Military Prosecutor Doberman and others. In See You in My 19th Life, which aired in 2023, he sometimes drew mixed reactions from viewers for playing Moon Seo-ha, who had a frail charm different from his previous image, but in the subsequent Flex x Cop and Spring Fever he consecutively delivered career roles and received favorable reviews from viewers.
Asked about the criteria he has established for choosing works while playing various characters, he emphasized, "For me it is always about change." He said, "When I work on a project, I pursue a new, challenging image and approach it with that attitude. My Name and Yumi's Cells were like that before See You in My 19th Life, and for the image in See You in My 19th Life I lost 9kg to show a frail-looking appearance."
Ahn Bo-hyun added, "That too was a change for me to discover and find a new face, and my goal is to show a different side in the next work to people who watched this work, so I choose a variety of professions and pursue new things even in terms of genre. It's not that I insist on sticking to making people laugh or being high-energy just because I'm good at those things."
Asked if there was any new genre he particularly wanted to show, Ahn Bo-hyun mentioned his next work Divine's Bead and said, "A historical drama would be completely different, something I haven't done before. It's a project I'm looking forward to." He revealed, "Actually, I played a villain in Itaewon Class and people liked that image, but other than that I haven't played a villain. I want to try a proper villain role, and rather than focusing on the scale of the work, I'm thinking about trying to twist the character."
[Photo] Provided by AM Entertainment
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