Actor Lee Hyoje recalled the time he fluctuated between gaining 20kg and losing 7kg in one week.
Lee Hyoje met global viewers as Hyung-wook in the Netflix YA (young adult) horror series If Wishes Could Kill, which was released on the 24th of last month.
If Wishes Could Kill depicted high school students who are foretold of sudden death because of the curse of the wish-granting app "If Wishes Could Kill" and struggle to avoid the curse. With a fast-paced narrative dealing with smartphone apps and teenagers' anxiety, friendship, jealousy and desire, it captured genre appeal and drew a hot response, rising to No. 4 on the global top 10 non-English shows shortly after release.
In the series, Lee Hyoje played Hyung-wook, a prankster who likes hanging out with friends and is the first to be entangled with If Wishes Could Kill, firmly showing his face to the world. He embodied the character's diverse facets, from the appearance of an ordinary high school student to moments of suffering at unexpected realities. In particular, he compellingly portrayed Hyung-wook's gradual descent into fear over time by finely adjusting his gaze, expressions and facial muscle tremors.
The boyish Lee Hyoje, once familiar to the public as the child actor for Gang Dong-won and So Jisub, was nowhere to be seen in If Wishes Could Kill. For the role he underwent a shocking physical transformation, gaining more than 20kg, and proved his overwhelming presence as an adult actor with dense acting.
To complete Hyung-wook, Lee Hyoje chose a radical challenge. For someone who normally weighed 57kg and had a thin frame that did not gain weight easily, bulking up felt like an overwhelming task, but he ultimately managed it. "The top priority was finding foods that I could eat without getting tired of them while filling up on high calories. After trying all kinds of foods like kimchi stew and jajangmyeon, the No. 1 contributor I found was adding glass noodles and sausages to Rosé tteokbokki. In between I also had Buldak Ramen Carbonara and Rosé jjimdak. At first eating was torture, but as my stomach gradually expanded, I had the strange experience of thinking, 'I'm actually eating all of this?'"
Lee Hyoje's transformation, successfully gaining 20kg in two months, surprised people. Early on some misunderstood it as a negative change, but after the show was released it became clear it was his dedication and effort, and praise poured in.
Even more surprising, he lost 7kg in one week to appear in the upcoming production Taxi Driver 3. "For a week I split one block of tofu between meals each day, when hungry I drank ground black soybeans and ran 10km every day. I never skipped the three-part gym split (chest & biceps & triceps, back & shoulders, lower body & abs). It was a truly brutal process. Director Park Yun-seo recently said in an interview that he was sorry for making me gain weight, but I was actually grateful that he suggested an image change I could not have imagined myself."
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