Actress Lee Chung-ah recalled the preparation process for "Honor."
On the afternoon of the 12th at a café in Cheongdam-dong, Gangnam District, Seoul, a wrap-up interview with Lee Chung-ah, an actor in the ENA Monday-Tuesday drama "Honor," was held. Lee Chung-ah played lawyer Hwang Hyun-jin in the drama and made her presence felt with bold actions that confronted crises head-on without yielding.
In particular, he who struggled to the end to reveal the true nature of the great evil captivated viewers and received high praise by playing a central role in giving momentum to the flow of "Honor."
That day Lee Chung-ah mentioned how she came to appear in "Honor," saying, "I was traveling in Amsterdam at the time. I was going to buy clothes when I was urgently asked if I could read the script by tomorrow, so I sat in a café and read it. I finished it in three hours," she said. The braided hair Lee Chung-ah had casually tied during her trip became Hwang Hyun-jin's hairstyle in "Honor."
During the tight preparation process, Lee Chung-ah said, "I had to give a quick answer because I had a process of returning to Korea, and the director and writer wanted to see me. The reading date was set, and I'm the type who needs a bit of time. I get anxious. I should be fully prepared, but there is time for the character to settle. There's a process of getting it to stick on set, but this time I thought they could trust me a little more. I thought, 'This will work out somehow.'"
Although she joined "Honor" in a hurry, she would also have needed time to become close with Lee Na-young and Jung Eun-Chae, who are 20-year friends in the drama. Lee Chung-ah said, "Actually, in the beginning there were about two more times of getting to know each other when I wasn't there. I attended twice too. The director said the three of us should feel like 20-year friends, but we're all introverted, so he said, 'Chung-ah, you should...'" and added, "'Me? I'm famously not sociable either...' I said, but when we actually met, the three of us greeted each other and stayed still. Silence continued, so only the director talked, and we slept well when we went home. But we weren't worried among ourselves. We felt similarities, and because we weren't uncomfortable with silence, we felt sincerity in small voices."
When asked about 'actor friends' for Lee Chung-ah, who has continued a long acting career, he said, "I have many," adding, "I have affection for everyone I worked with. I'm the type to get close passionately during a project, and I feel like it's a project-based group. There are teams I see occasionally, and I'm not very outgoing, but if I'm invited I'll go."
She said, "If no one invites me, I want to but I'm the type who doesn't reach out. The groups that have people who invite are close-knit. From 'Riders' there's Kim Dong-wook hyung and Choi Yeo-jin nuna, the 'VIP' team, 'Day and Night' Namkoong Min, Seolhyun and others form close teams," and added, "And my classmate from the theater and film department, actress Park Ji-yeon, is a 20-year friend. We read scripts for each other; I majored in directing at university, so I'm comfortable watching others' acting and shaping a character. If I play the counterpart, Ji-yeon plays my role. Jang Nara nuna watched episode 1 of 'Honor' this time and contacted me to say she watched it well."
Lee Chung-ah also said that despite some difficult entry barriers, the show recorded high ratings, saying, "Honestly, I'm an outsider in that area. But as an actor I have a sense of responsibility. When a project does well, you can see the production staff's spirits lift. After filming ends and you move on to other schedules immediately, I felt like we couldn't do enough promotion," adding, "But I felt relieved when I heard that our work was being loved. I thought it was fortunate."
She also said her criteria for choosing projects have changed. She said, "These days when I choose a work I look at whether someone will be made happier and whether it offers something for us to think about," adding, "As an actor I think I find the meaning of participating in this work."
In particular, Lee Chung-ah attributed meaning to the realism of the story handled in this work, saying, "Although this is fiction, these are issues that are not absent in reality. There are stories of vulnerable and unprotected people," and added, "If people who create stories visualize such problems and add the right sense of theme, I think that has a meaning different from simply making people happy."
[Photo] Management Soop
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