Shin Hyun-bin “‘Samal’ = a story about communication…after the ending? “You will live well” [Interview summary]

[OSEN=Reporter Kim Na-yeon] Actor Shin Hyun-bin spoke about the importance of ‘communication’ that he realized through ‘Tell Me I Love You’.

Shin Hyun-bin recently conducted an interview for the end of Genie TV’s original drama ‘Tell me I love you’ at a cafe in Samcheong-dong, Jongno-gu, Seoul.

‘Tell Me I Love You’ is a classic melodrama about the silent love between painter Cha Jin-woo (played by Jung Woo-sung), who speaks with his hands, and actress Jeong Mo-eun (played by Shin Hyun-bin), who listens with her heart. It is based on the Japanese TV drama ‘Tell Me I Love You’ (written by Eriko Kitakawa, produced by TBS Television), which aired in 1995.

‘Tell me you love me’, which aired as an ENA Monday-Tuesday drama, ended on the 16th with a happy ending where Cha Jin-woo and Jung Mo-eun reunited after their breakup. When Shin Hyun-bin was asked about the future of the two after the ending, she replied, “I think they will live well together.” He said, “In some ways, I think we broke up because we both thought about each other too much. “If I had thought more about myself, I wouldn’t have said anything about breaking up and wouldn’t have accepted it, but I think we broke up because we are people who love each other more than ourselves,” he confessed.

He continued, “So I thought these two people had no choice but to meet again. I think the time spent apart and thinking about themselves without that person actually made them feel stronger for each other. I thought the reunion was natural, and I also accepted the ending very well. “It was good because it was a reunion that was connected to the situation of the two people in the beginning,” he said. “The title of the drama also has a double aspect to it. They are two people who do not begin their relationship with words and fully express their love through things other than words. At that moment (in the ending), Jin-Woo would have expressed that he loved him, and Mo-Eun would have felt it too. “I thought the two would have entered a more stable and comfortable stage.”

Shin Hyun-bin had to go through various learning processes, from sign language to guitar, for ‘Tell Me I Love You’. He said, “There were difficult points, but those were also fun. She felt that learning sign language was both difficult and fun, but it coexisted. Because they were similar, the more I learned, the more I got confused, but at other times, it was fun to learn a new language and use it in the field. “I talked a lot with the director about how she would express her sign language acting in the play,” she said.

He continued, “I had a new experience because conversation is impossible without looking at the other person. Isn’t there a time when you look at someone like this and have a conversation with such concentration? It was a new experience to constantly have to look at that person even when doing trivial things. The other person said that since there were no lines, it must have been difficult because there was no tiki-taka through sound, but since there was no sound, they were constantly looking at each other, so they were able to receive more looks and emotions from that. “That was the difference,” he said.

He continued, “I was worried a lot because there was no sound from the other person, but my senior (Jung Woo-sung) tried to give me a lot of energy with his emotions and eyes, and I thought I could act by receiving that energy. My senior said, ‘I know which parts will be difficult and worrying, and I also know what this character is difficult to act. He told me, ‘I will try everything, so do whatever you want.’ The director has always been very trusting and open. “With that kind of love and trust, my worries eased,” he said.

In the story, Jeong Mo-eun often appears in scenes where she hides her emotions. Shin Hyun-bin said, “Actually, that part is difficult for her to play. Should I say I’m picky, but if I do well, I get what I deserve, and if I don’t, there are some strange aspects to it. However, Mo-eun’s personality and environment are the same, and even in her early lines, she says, ‘I have never cried, not even in front of her mother.’ She’s always been the type to keep a lot to herself, but if she thought of others more, how much more would she have thought of her loved ones? “There are many situations that make her suffer because of that,” she explained.

He continued, “People who watch it may feel sad and upset because they have affection for the character, but if they think of it as Mo-eun, there is also a part of them that wonders what they can do differently. I hoped that people would understand that ‘that could happen’ and ‘you can make that kind of choice in real life’, and I tried to act like that. There are moments when viewers sometimes hate Jin-woo and sometimes Mo-eun and say, ‘Why did you do that?’, but after it’s over, when they look at it with a calm mind, they say, ‘That’s why you did that.’ I thought that was a realistic feeling. “If you’re a character in a drama, you can make better choices and have more fun, but that’s not the case in real life, so I think the characters in ‘Tell Me I Love You’ are closer to real people,” he said.

When asked why Shin Hyun-bin chose ‘Tell me you love me’, he said, “I felt a lot of pressure and worry about having to fill in my voice alone in the moment when two people were together. Part 1 started with Jin-woo and Mo-eun’s narration and led the way, and I was very worried about how I would be able to act without receiving feedback from the other party. Still, the reason she chose this drama was because it was a time when she was thinking about communication,” she began.

He said, “There are people who wonder, ‘How can we not communicate like this even though we speak the same language?’, and sometimes there are people who understand more even if you don’t express it much. It was a time when I was wondering, ‘Why is it so different?’ But seeing this scenario at that time made me think more. The work is good, but there were a lot of things I had to worry about when I tried to do it, so it took a long time to make a decision. Nevertheless, the reason I decided to appear was because I wanted to tell a story about communication, and I also wanted to experience doing a melodrama in a genre where there are almost no classic melodramas. The setting of hearing impairment may feel dramatic and unfamiliar, but I thought it could have happened even if it was just maximized and in fact love between hearing people. “I also wanted to tell a realistic love story like this,” he said.

Also, about what I learned through the work, “I started to think more about communication. “It’s a work that made me think and experience a lot about relationships between people, listening to the other person’s story and expressing it more,” he said. Shin Hyun-bin said, “Actually, my greatest fantasy is that there is someone by my side who understands my heart. Doesn’t it seem like a fantasy, yet realistic, to have someone by your side who can say ‘that’s right’ even if they don’t necessarily take your side? This is a work that made me think a lot about the importance of people. “It was also a work where the staff and actors got along very well while filming,” she expressed her affection.

‘Tell Me You Love Me’ started at 1.5% and ended at 1.8% (based on Nielsen Korea’s nationwide paid households). Although the viewership rating was not high at around 1%, the response from viewers was not proportional to it. Shin Hyun-bin said, “It was a new experience for me too. Regardless of the viewer ratings, if you look at the reactions and evaluations, it was a new situation because it was a very different situation. “It seems like there are a lot of people who look at me so well that I wonder, ‘How can they look at me this favorably?’ and that makes me feel proud,” she said.

He added, “It’s a drama that everyone worked hard to create, and I’m thankful that it seems to be conveyed. After it was over, there were some people waiting to continue driving. I don’t know if this is good or bad, but I hope you enjoy it. Among the reactions from the beginning, there was a story that said, ‘It doesn’t seem like anything special happened, but time has passed.’ I liked that. “It was a drama that may be unfamiliar, but I think there were many people who understood it, so I was able to finish it with a grateful heart,” he added.

/delight_me@osen.co.kr

[Photo] Yubon Company