For Park Bo-young the script for Our Unwritten Seoul seemed like a once-in-a-lifetime challenge — and also a huge opportunity.
“I kept thinking, ‘When will I ever get to try something like this again? If not now, will this kind of chance ever come again?’As soon as I read the line at the end of Episode 1 — ‘I’ll live your life. You live mine.’ — I knew I had to do this drama.”
In this new Korean drama Park plays twins Mi-rae and Mi-ji, creating two realistically different characters and then convincingly portraying them as they trade places and pretend to be each other. When they were younger twins Mi-rae and Mi-ji often switched places, so when Mi-rae faces a difficult problem, it seems like a logical solution. However, trading places triggers some drama and romantic mix-ups. The twins share a lot, explains Park, but they do have different personalities, shortcomings and strengths.
“Mi-rae, the older sister, was born with a physical ailment that made life challenging from the start,” said Park (Daily Dose of Sunshine, Doom At Your Service) at a recent press conference. “She’s someone who studies hard, endures silently, and believes she’s best at holding things in. After struggling to survive in Seoul, something happens that leads her to switch roles with her twin.”
Mi-ji, the younger sister, used to be a promising track athlete in her childhood, but an injury shattered that dream.
“For reasons of her own, she’s been living in a small rural village called Doo-son-ri,” said Park . When something happens to her sister, she agrees to take her place — and that’s how the switch begins.”
STUDIO DRAGON
Since Mi-rae starts off in Seoul and goes through a lot emotionally, the actress tried to highlight the character’s distant personality—from her behavior to her styling decisions
“One of the things I worried most about was the balance during the identity switch — when they pretend to be each other,” she said. “Director Park guided me through that part the most on set. In the early scenes, Mi-ji appears with bleached hair — that visual contrast was actually the director’s idea to help distinguish her from Mi-rae. He even wanted Mi-ji’s hair to be bleached but with some dark roots grown out, so we went with that — and when I saw it, I was really satisfied with how it looked.”
Having a conversation with yourself is harder than you might imagine.
“Normally, I focus on reacting to my scene partner’s performance. But this time, I also had to predict how the other character — who was also me — would act.
This story was originally published on forbes.com.