"My Remaining Love" producer Lee Eun-sol mentioned the intention behind planning the program and the production process.
Recently, OSEN met Lee Eun-sol, producer of "My Remaining Love," at the SBS building in Mok-dong, Yangcheon District, Seoul, to talk about the program.
Producer Lee Eun-sol joined SBS in 2019 and, after working on "My Fantaship", "Unanswered Questions", "Hell Court in a Strange Land", and "Whales and Me", took charge of directing her first dating program with "Fortune Tellers' Love". "Fortune Tellers' Love," which caught attention for being a dating program featuring skilled fortune tellers who usually only read others' romantic luck, benefited from its success and produced a second season the following year, and producer Lee Eun-sol met viewers with a new concept after one year.
"My Remaining Love" is a program about the romances of people in their 20s and 30s who have experienced a terminal prognosis or have had life-threatening illnesses. Because they know the finiteness of life better than anyone, they can only be sincere about love, and the idea of planning a dating program that gathers such people raised concerns among viewers.
Producer Lee Eun-sol explained that the planning for "My Remaining Love" began while having a normal conversation with the show's head writer. She said, "I talk a lot about dating with the writer. When we asked how you can judge love, honestly, leaving everything aside, the discussion came up that an important criterion is how much time you spend on that person."
The producer said, "Then who would be the person for whom that time is important? We approached it from the opposite angle. Thinking about who lives a day very valuably led us to connect the idea. I and a close acquaintance have both had experiences with illness. That person is in the same age group, and after going through illness they said they think differently. They said their view on relationships changed to whether the person would protect them until the end rather than conditions or occupation."
Producer Lee Eun-sol added, "They also worried about when to reveal their illness when dating. Should they say they were sick right after a blind date, or wait until the third date? Since there are also concerns about marriage, those thoughts get intertwined."
Because of this, the production team of "My Remaining Love" had many concerns. Producer Lee Eun-sol confessed, "We thought it was a difficult subject. The head writer and I agonized over it a lot. We debated, 'Should we do this or not?' Since it raises a high barrier for viewers and is a sensitive subject, we started planning meetings with worry."
She said, "We met with patients and medical staff to talk, and although we thought we would be criticized, they rather welcomed it. This kind of topic is mostly treated like a documentary, emphasizing the painful parts. Also, parts about life afterward are not covered, but by using this popular "dating show" format, peers who had been ill showed reactions like, 'I really hope this gets aired.' With that thought, we started."
When the program went into full production, the production team established a "first priority for casting" rule. Producer Lee Eun-sol said, "We set an important criterion that they should have 'completed active treatment' before we began casting. It was a standard we had to maintain for the sake of filming and the participants' conditions."
She continued, "Patients often write illness diaries on blogs, so we mainly cast people who had opened up about their experiences. We met three to four times to build rapport, and the key standard we valued was whether they had experienced change and growth through their illness." (Continued in interview 2.)
[photo] SBS, broadcast capture
[OSEN]