[Exclusive] A Round Table Interview with Park Bo Young

The annual Korea Indonesia Film Festival once more invites guest who will be honored to open the festival which will be held starting from today. Last year, we had Lee Kwang Soo as the honorable guest star and this year we will have Park Bo Young, whom coincidentally or not is Lee’s co-star in just released movie, Collective Invention. The actress, who has been acting in numerous projects with wide range of characters, warmly joined selected medias in a cozy yet fun round table interview. KoreanUpdates feels honored to be able to interviewed this beautiful and lovely lady, and we gleefully share the session results with our beloved jjangers below.

Q: Can you tell us about your character in Collective Invention?

A: I play as Joo Jin in this movie. Actually my character was kind of aggressive and not a really good person, but after meeting Gu (Lee Kwang Soo) she becomes a better person.

Q: Why did you decide to play in Collective Invention?

A: The first time I read the scenario, I thought it’s really unique despite not knowing whether it will be well received in cinema or not. The message behind this movie is very clear that’s why I decided to take this project.

Q: Was there anything funny happened while filming Collective Invention? Can you tell us about it?

A: When we were filming the movie, Lee Kwang Soo must always wearing the mask which weighed about 8 KG and makes him difficult to see and even breathing. So, Lee Chun Hee and I, always helped him to walk and tell him what’s in front him, for example when he was about to take stairs, we would tell him “there are two stairs in front of you”, or when to sit. He also wore costume for his hands which turned those into fish fins and make it impossible for him to use chopsticks, so I gifted him fork which also hard to be used by his hands and make his meal times turn into comics because of how funny it looks. Thus, we helped him to eat sometimes.

Q: You have played with both Song Joong Ki and Lee Kwang Soo, who are known as real life best friends with different images, while working with them what is the difference between both?

A: Both of them are gentlemen and took care of me really well. When working with Song Joong Ki in A Werewolf Boy he played a character who doesn’t talk a lot, but even though he didn’t talk while on set, he could show his feelings and what he wants through his facial expressions. While with Lee Kwang Soo, because of his costume in Collective Invention he couldn’t show his face nor talked, so he expressed everything with his body gestures. Both of them express their feelings really well without much spoken language and it was such a great pleasure to be able to work with them.

Q: Which one do you think is more unique character between Song Joong Ki’s werewolf boy and Lee Kwang Soo’s fish man?

A: Honestly, I think both characters are unique, but if I have to choose only one I vote for Lee Kwang Soo’s character. Because you know there are already a lot of movies about werewolf in other countries, but for Lee Kwang Soo’s character, it was a first in South Korea and the mask was self-made, so if I have to choose only one, I choose Lee Kwang Soo’s.

Q: The two personalities of Na Bong Sun/Shin Soon Ae in Oh My Ghost are really different, is there any secret on how you played them so well?

A: Kim Seul Gi helped me a lot to play as Shin Soon Ae. She led me on how Shin Soon Ae’s character behave in this and that, and how to copy Shin Soon Ae’s character whom she plays too. She taught me so well which makes it easy to follow her leads. Even though it was difficult at first, but other actors in restaurant helped me build the confidence to create distinction between Na Bong Sun’s and Shin Soon Ae’s figures as I constantly distinguish both of them.

Q: Did you find any difficulty while acting along Jo Jung Suk who has a big age gap with you?

Hahaha! Even though we have 10 years difference, but because his appearance and personality are a lot like younger people I rarely feel the age difference.

Q: You acted as a chef in Oh My Ghost, do you actually can cook?

A: I like to cook, but honestly I was not really good at it. Thanks to Oh My Ghost I learned to make pasta a lot and now I’m good at making delicious cream pastas.

Q: You played in horror movies before, such as Don’t Click and The Silence, you said to actually hate horror and fainthearted, did it help you to act in the movie?

A: I’m actually not good in watching horror movies, but because I always wanted to choose project or character which is different with my previous ones, so I also chose the horror genre. Because I’m easy to be scared, it helped me to act better in horror movies, because I really feel scared when imagining about scenes in horror movies.

Q: Which one do you think is more difficult between filming movie and drama?

A: If you compare it by the amount of tiredness, of course filming a drama makes you more tired because drama has to be broadcast every week, so the filming time is limited too, thus makes you have less sleep and easily tired. But about acting difficulty, filming a movie might be a little harder than drama.

Q: You have played a lot of different characters, in the future what kind of character do you want to play? Maybe antagonist?

A: Because I’m still young, I will take any character that I haven’t played before in every chance I get. I’m afraid as I get older I will be pickier on choosing character, so I will try a lot of characters. I honestly want to play in a melodrama later and antagonist sounds really fun too! Hahaha.

Q: Do you have any actor or actress that you want to act along with?

A: I have role model within South Korean actresses, senior Kim Hae Sook.  So, in the future I really want to act in any project with her.

Q: Between people and fans there is an image of you who have cute personality and a lot of aegyo, is there any difference between your real character and the image of Park Bo Young that people believe?

A: I originally don’t have a lot of cuteness, hahaha, but for showing a better performance in dramas and movies I learned a lot how to be a cute person. Actually I’m an active person, but not to the extent of Oh My Ghost’s Na Bong Sun/Shin Soon Ae character.

Q: What is your next project?

Next month my new movie will be released in South Korea. It will be a movie about youths which focusing on how young people think they are happy after they graduate and have a job, but actually after all that there will be many more difficulties they will have to go through. The movie will try to deliver message to youths from the side of job finding difficulty which these days occurs in South Korea.

Q: Last question, why do you think a lot of people love Korean movies?

I am not in any place to tell the reason why Korean movies are loved outside the country, either wise I can only say thank you for loving and supporting Korean movies.