Actor Lee Jae-yong reflected on his career as an actor.
Actor Lee Jae-yong, who gained great popularity for his roles as Miwa and Wasaburo in the drama "The Rustic Era", appeared on the YouTube channel "What are you up to these days" and talked about the time he has lived as an actor. He was invited by actor Jo Sang-gu, who played the role of Shirasoni in the same drama.
Lee Jae-yong drew the tension of "The Rustic Era" with his low, weighty voice and sharp gaze. In the drama "Manager Kim", which ended this year amid much talk, he again attracted attention by playing Ri Eung-ryeong, a senior North Korean official. It raised questions about what time lay between the two intense roles separated by roughly 20 years.
He revealed on "What are you up to these days" that he was diagnosed with depression in his mid-30s and took medication for seven to eight years. While doing theater, to make ends meet he ran psychodrama sessions at a psychiatric hospital, and looking around a locked ward was the trigger. Lee Jae-yong said he saw people there who seemed to have had "even their last human dignity taken away."
Recalling the period when he was taking medication, he said, "It does calm you down. But you sink. You become lethargic as if you are inside a bath of thick jelly."
What gripped him again was ultimately acting. Lee Jae-yong said, "I thought that someday I should make people understand this pain through acting. That seems to have been my last strength." He added that, as an actor, he had in effect experienced things others had not. He also confessed that he has quit drinking now.
In this way, Lee Jae-yong conveyed that behind the memorable villain roles the public remembers, there was a time he had to endure alone. The setting, in which a longtime colleague sat down to hear a story the actor himself brought up, gave it a different tone from a typical interview.
Meanwhile, "What are you up to these days" is directly cast and hosted by Jo Sang-gu. Because colleagues who filmed together participate, behind-the-scenes stories from the set and previously unrevealed personal stories naturally come out, which is its strength. Starting from the question "I wonder how those actors from back then are living now," it aims to be a human archive–type content that not only summons the past but records the life that followed. Park Joon-kyu, Son Ho-gyun, Ahn Seung-hoon, Na Han-il, Moon Young-chul and other main actors from "The Rustic Era" appeared and shared memories and recent news from that time. Since its launch in Feb. 2026 it has released 25 episodes, surpassed 30 million cumulative views and recorded 30,000 subscribers.
Stovecat Studio, the company producing "What are you up to these days", has produced MBC's "True Story" as a regular program for four years and has been making major special documentaries for KBS and MBC. Since the second half of 2025 it began its own YouTube channel business and operates three channels alongside the interview channel "Jirit Jirit" and the current affairs variety show "Reporters' restaurants."
[Photo] "What are you up to these days"
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