Jung Woo-sung “‘Tell me you love me’, I also felt afraid” [MD Interview] (Comprehensive)

[My Daily = Reporter Lee Ye-joo] “‘the eraser in my head ’, ’padam padam’… It was awesome. (Laughs)  This melody? ‘I went into it with the mindset that it can’t be any later.’

‘Melo craftsman’ Jung Woo-sung left another mark on the romantic comedy genre with his unique love. Even though he is approaching his 50s, the reason why ‘Jung Woo-sung’s melodrama’ is still popular is not just his acting skills. On the 16th, My Daily met Jung Woo-sung at a cafe located in Samcheong-dong, Jongno-gu, Seoul, and talked about the ENA drama “Tell me you love me.”

‘Tell Me I Love You’ is a classic melodrama about the silent love between Cha Jin-woo (Jung Woo-sung), a painter who speaks with his hands, and actress Jeong Mo-eun (Shin Hyun-bin), who listens with her heart. Jung Woo-sung purchased the copyright to this work 13 years ago, so it became a hot topic due to his long relationship with the work. 

“When I was trying to do this drama about 13 years ago, I wondered if the main character, a man with a hearing impairment, would not do his voice acting until the end of the drama.’, ’3 Around Tuesday, my voice clears up. Let add settings . Words like this used to come out. At that time, I thought, ‘Ah, it’s still a difficult environment to make a drama about this kind of material’ and gave up. Then, by chance, I came across the script again. At that time, I contacted the copyright holder again and purchased it. I wondered if it was right for me to play Cha Jin-woo, but the original writer said, “I’m giving it to you because it’s Jung Woo-sung.” “That story won’t leave my head, so I thought, ‘I have to do it quickly.’”

As it was a difficult dramatized work, I had a lot of concerns.

“Seeing that it was an original work, I felt a sense of responsibility to make it well. So, until I completed this work, I continued to think about what the emotion and story needed for the work would be without looking the other way.”

Since I was playing a character who suffers from hearing impairment, I couldn’t hear Jung Woo-sung’s voice in the drama except for the narration. Instead, he conveyed Jung Woo-sung’s sincere love through his eyes and facial expressions and received rave reviews from viewers.

“Sign language acting was the biggest challenge. This is the language that a person named Cha Jin-woo has been using his whole life since he was 7 years old, so he had to be fluent in it. Sign language had many intuitive expressions, so it was easy to access and fun. Instead, I used to change the order, erase, condense, and memorize the lines again in a sign language way because the word order was different from Korean. Cha Jin-woo is careful with his expressions and is not a person who expresses a lot, so he tried to restrain his expressions instead of actively revealing them.”

Then, how did Cha Jin-woo express the sound of his heart? Jung Woo-sung confessed that he even felt fear while preparing for the narration.

“In the ending of part 2 of the original work, a man’s voice came out, and that voice was a sound that really hit me in the back of the head and stuck in my heart. I thought, ‘That person also had an inner voice.’ As that inner voice was so impressively imprinted, I decided that I really had to do this drama, but when it came time to prepare the narration, it was very difficult to make the voice. I had to exclude the sound and approach Cha Jin-woo, so I had to read the script and do the narration, but I also heard the fear of ‘how am I supposed to record it?’ However, through the process of continuously visiting Cha Jin-woo in the field, fortunately, I was able to make the sound naturally in the recording studio.”

The news that Jung Woo-sung is coming back to Melo through ‘Tell me I love you’ was made known and at the same time it aroused a hot reaction in the drama fandom at home and abroad. It was partly because of the return of the melodramatic craftsman, but it also became a hot topic because Jung Woo-sung entered his 50s. However, once the original work was unveiled, the concerns disappeared like melting snow. Instead, rave reviews poured in, including “A new form of love” and “Jung Woo-sung’s melodrama revisited.”

“I thought a lot about the value and meaning of love. Normally, when I was young, love was like, “Why don’t you know my heart?” But, of course, we can’t help but not know. It seemed like love was the yearning to be recognized without having to be recognized. However, in this work, I tried to suppress and suppress that emotional desire. It may not be possible to say that it is maturity for love, but it is a relationship between humans that surpasses reason. “I continued to worry about that.”

As time passes, the love becomes calmer and deeper as it becomes calmer. Jung Woo-sung also made efforts in the visual aspect to express this.

“After filming, I could see Cha Jin-woo’s fatigue. I thought, “This fatigue shouldn’t be there for Cha Jin-woo.” So he quit drinking. Then, I noticed that my fatigue was lessening little by little. As for styling, I tried to make it look as comfortable and natural as possible. So, as always, he wore very little makeup and let his hair look natural without any products.”

Through the work, I was able to meet Jung Woo-sung, whose faith in Shin Hyun-bin was strengthened.

“Jung Mo-eun hoped that the physical age difference between Cha Jin-woo and Cha Jin-woo would not be big. That’s why she looked for actors in a limited age range. Then, I found out that casting was more difficult. Then she happened to pass her script to actor Shin Hyun-bin, and she was able to see through the theme of this script and talk about it. She was so happy and grateful. While she was working, she talked for a long time with the director, and she was able to have many very pleasant meetings. It felt like a time of healing. Looking back, she thinks, “What would she have done with this drama if she hadn’t been Shin Hyun-bin?” “She is a truly grateful actress.”

He also shared that he felt satisfied with the fact that he had a solid fan base, rather than with high viewership ratings.

“Of course, it would have been better if the viewership ratings had been higher. However, due to the nature of this drama, you cannot quickly go through it, so you have to allow time. People who love this drama are enjoying their time while fully acknowledging its characteristics. I was very proud of that. It was also a great strength to know that there were people who steadily supported the drama. In particular, I was impressed by the response that it was a drama I wanted to own, and a drama that was strangely difficult to even go to for a drink.

From movie directors, to long-awaited melodrama, to 10 million movies. A workaholic who has been running non-stop since last year. Jung Woo-sung. What is his next plan? Let’s ask Jung Woo-sung secretly, and he gets the answer, “I’m going to rest now.”

“I felt like I really did nothing but work. So I’m going to rest. I take care of my health and enjoy leisure activities. Also, I’ve been really bad at exercising for a while, so I’m trying to exercise again. For now, I won’t even think about it! (Laughs)