Actor Kim Hye-soo is leading the drama with a powerful presence in the Coupang Play series The Affair Was Just The Beginning.
Kim Hye-soo plays Gyeong-hee, a successful influencer in The Affair Was Just The Beginning, showing a wide range of charms from realistic everyday acting to striking visuals. By adding bold costumes and hairstyles to relaxed, natural acting to bring out the character's personality, she delicately expresses Gyeong-hee's emotions, who has fallen into chaos, with her characteristic control of pace.
Above all, Gyeong-hee's line "I wish it had been an affair instead" instantly flipped the tone of the work. It was a line that compressively showed Gyeong-hee's predicament, caught up in an incident so unbearable that even an affair would have been preferable, and marked the moment that announced the beginning of a full-blown, chaotic, and cruel farce.
Kim Hye-soo's knack for lines also shone. In the midst of the frenzied situation, each quietly uttered line left a stronger impression. The restrained tone, rather than exaggerated emotion, in Gyeong-hee's acceptance of the situation heightened both the realism and the tension of the drama.
In episodes 3 and 4, released on the 7th, Gyeong-hee is shown suddenly forced to dispose of a body. Kim Hye-soo portrayed the confusion and fear experienced when an ordinary person is swept into an uncontrollable incident in a moment through subtle emotional shifts.
Even though she thinks she should call the police, the scene in which she repeats "It will spread all over the internet" and "No matter what I try to do later, it will stick to me like a label" fully revealed the realistic concerns of Gyeong-hee, an influencer who also supports a household. She was portrayed not simply as a person startled by the incident but as a working person who has to calculate the life she has built and her future.
Kim Hye-soo's acting also stood out in the scene where she panics after receiving a secretly filmed video of the accident scene. Uttering "There was no one. Isn't this a fake? Damn! Damn, damn damn!!," she expressed the process of emotions racing from anxiety to anger with rapidly changing facial expressions and tone, increasing the tension.
In the scene where she tells her family "Act like nothing's wrong," another face was revealed. Although she herself was in an overwhelming situation, Gyeong-hee forced herself to stay composed out of a sense of responsibility to protect her family, conveying the weight of life the character carries.
Kim Hye-soo balances the character so that Gyeong-hee does not appear overly unrealistic even in extreme situations. By portraying emotions that swing between chaos and fear, anger and resignation, without exaggeration and with a realistic tone, she strengthens the work's distinctive black comedy.
In particular, the contrast created by easing her acting despite the provocative styling is striking. The character's dimensionality came alive as Gyeong-hee's realistic appearance, helplessly shaken in the face of the incident, collided with her flashy external look.
As the episodes progress and the situation becomes more tangled, it is also of interest what choice Gyeong-hee will make. As she gets caught in unexpected incidents the more she struggles, anticipation is growing over how Kim Hye-soo will portray Gyeong-hee's wit and survival instincts.
[Photo] Provided by Coupang Play
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