Park Bo Young’s recent success on the small screen started with tvN’s drama “Oh My Ghostess,” where she played a lovable aspiring chef that was possessed by a ghost. The drama was very successful, reaching a viewership rating of over 7%. Even more recently, Park Bo Young starred in JTBC’s hit drama “Strong Woman Do Bong Soon” together with lead actor Park Hyung Sik which broke JTBC’s record for the drama with highest viewership ratings.
Due to her success with the two dramas, she earned the nickname “rom-com fairy.” When asked about this nickname, Park Bo Young responded,
“I’m not sure if I deserve to be called the 'rom-com fairy' because I’ve only done two rom-com dramas so far. I think I’m just really grateful that people would even call me that. When I filmed my previous drama, ‘Oh My Ghostess,’ I was really worried that viewers would see me as too young and awkward for the role. I thought that they would critique me and say that it’s hard to focus on the story because of my looks. Now, I am happy with where I am and I don’t think that way anymore, so I would consider that a success.”
She further stated that she had no idea that her works would be nearly as successful as they were.
Park Bo Young also cautiously opened up about the struggles she faced a few years back.
“The past me would never be able to imagine receiving this much love for my acting. I always faced obstacles in my career. I had a big lawsuit with my previous company so I was extremely worn out by that. I was upset at all the bad people in the world and no longer felt the joy in acting that I experienced when I first started out. This lead me to consider quitting this profession altogether. I considered quitting and moving back home to the countryside in Korea. My parents saw how much I was struggling and agreed that I should live a normal life. But the sad thing was that when I tried to think about another career path, I couldn’t think of anything that I would want to do besides acting. Coming to this realization, I changed my mindset and started acting again. My attitude towards this profession changed after that,”
With this chance, she also shares her goals for the future.
“I want to be an actress that people are always curious about. I want them wonder what kind of drama I will be working on next and look forward to the next character I will be portraying on screen. In the past, I always set definitive goals for myself, but I’ve stopped doing that. Now, I want to focus on putting all my effort into acting and loving myself. That is my goal for the future,”
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| Park Bo Young in high school |
Regarding her past childhood life, she opened up about the social isolation she had gone through back when she was a student which led her to consider quitting acting back then. Park Bo Young revealed that she acted for the very first time in a short film that her video production club made in middle school. After participating in that project, she took acting classes for a few years and auditioned for several roles. Once she entered high school, she officially made her debut in a youth drama. However, her fellow schoolmates began to treat her differently due to jealousy. “It wasn’t because I was pretty. There were no actors in my neighborhood back then, so I got attention just for being an actress,” she explained.
“Some kids would deliberately knock shoulders with me while passing by. Students from other classes would then put trash all over my seat, and the kids in my class would try to clean it up for me,”
She further shared that when she got cast in the youth drama, her teacher tried to put up a poster of it. Upon seeing the poster, Park Bo Young broke down into tears and begged her teacher to take it down, scared that it would only make the bullying worse. Even one time, people around her would say things like, “Park Bo Young is becoming a celebrity? I guess I can become one, too.”
Meanwhile, her chemistry with Park Hyung Sik has been gaining a lot of interest from the netizen, which she confessed finally that she has had her eye on 'Strong Woman Do Bong Soon' co-star Park Hyung Sik since his early idol days.
“I’ve been watching Park Hyung Sik since his ZE:A days. I know all of their title songs and even got tested on their songs by Park Hyung Sik. We would even play ZE:A songs on set and Hyung Sik would dance the choreography to their songs.”
Park Bo Young also talked about working with younger actors through 'Strong Woman Do Bong Soon' and said, “Park Hyung Sik has a lot of aegyo (cuteness) while Ji Soo, perhaps because he has an older sister, was really good at taking care of others. Ji Soo continued to use a formal tone with me until the very end; however, Park Hyung Sik, talked to me informally right away and said ‘Bong Soon-ah, have you eaten yet?’ They are charming in completely opposite ways.”
Regarding Park Hyung Sik’s signature sweet gaze that partially caused many to believe that the two co-stars were dating, Park Bo Young responded, “I wasn’t the only one Park Hyung Sik looked at like that. He even looks at the male actors like that. He’s just an individual who naturally has a sweet gaze. If he only looked at me like that, I definitely would have swooned but he even looks at the director like that.”
On the other hand, Park Hyung Sik first talked about the ending of the drama and said,
“I felt a lot of pressure at first, but thankfully, the director, Park Bo Young, and the other actors gave me a lot of support and I was able to enjoy filming until the very end. I am so thankful that we were able to receive a lot of love until the end.”
Next, the singer-turned-actor talked about how it felt to star in JTBC’s most-watched drama of all time. “Before the drama premiered, I had a bet with the staff on the ratings of the show. They promised to send the cast on a reward vacation if the show ever broke a 3 percent viewership rating, so we were all shocked when the first episode recorded a 3.8 percent rating,” he said. “When I went to the set for filming after the first episode, our director has smiling up to his ears! Everyone was so happy and this positive energy carried over until the end of the show. This is my first time getting so much love and high ratings from a drama, so this is all very exciting for me,” said Park Hyung Sik.
Park Hyung Sik also shared what he thinks the secret to the success of 'Strong Woman Do Bong Soon' was. He stated, “I think the story was really unique, fresh, and funny. In times like this, it’s important to be able to laugh. I found every scene to be funny. Whenever the gangsters and high schoolers came out, it was hilarious. And the drama also had a scary, thriller component to it. There were just so many different sides to the story.”
Finally, Park Hyung Sik talked about the many overly sweet lines he had to say in the drama. “There were so many lines that were a little too romantic. But I think Ahn Min Hyuk’s personality is very truthful, so saying those lines were true to his character.” The actor also revealed how the director of the drama was able to bring out Park Hyung Sik’s chemistry with Park Bo Young. “Our director doesn’t like to say ‘cut.’ Often times, I would do exactly what was in the script, but our director wouldn’t cut the scene, so I kept going and making up lines. There was one time when the audio director actually thought Park Bo Young and I were dating because of the lines we had improvised,” he said.
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