Im Soo-jung on playing two characters in Time Renegade

by awcoconuts

Im Soo-jung (36) promoted Time Renegade with a round of interviews of her own, discussing her reasons for selecting the film, what it was like to work with director Kwak Jae-yong and co-stars Jo Jung-seok and Lee Jin-wook, her current views on the Korean film industry, and her hopes for the future.

It’s hard to believe it’s been 17 years since Im’s debut and over a decade since she was last on TV, in KBS’s hit 2004 melodrama I’m Sorry, I Love You. Since then, she’s worked steadily in films, and she signed on for director Kwak’s latest offering back in 2014.

In Time Renegade, the characters of Jo Jung-seok and Lee Jin-wook begin to connect through their dreams to save the woman they love from suffering a violent fate. Im plays a 2-in-1 character who instigates the men’s race against time, Yoon-jung in 1983 and So-eun in 2015. She said, “Actors don’t come upon the opportunity to play 2-in-1 characters often. [In this film] there are elements of a melodrama. There is romance… there’s no law that an actress must always film melos but the melodramatic role is what I like to do most.”

Im didn’t think twice about accepting the offer, despite it being for a supporting role. “I read the script in the summer of 2014 and these days the public is very aware of this type of material [due to Signal], but at the time, it felt very fresh. Here was this thriller where two men communicate through their dreams to save a woman, but there was a melodramatic tinge, and I approached it as a fresh experiment. When I first read the script I knew that the Yoon-jung/So-eun characters were purely there for motivation, but despite that, the story was so entertaining I decided to do it immediately.”

She also hints at a lack of good roles for women as a reason for accepting a lesser role. “In commercial films, it’s a reality that female characters aren’t diverse. There are films being produced where women are acting autonomously, but it’s a fact that the ratio is small.”

Another factor that led to her acceptance was that, like Jo, she’d been a fan of director Kwak since she was a young woman. “Even though the genre [for Time Renegade] is thriller, the foundation is a love story that transcends time. My Sassy Girl and The Classic came out when I was just starting my career, and those films ooze love. I really liked those movies and I became a fan of director Kwak Jae-yong [then].”

She praised everyone who worked on the film. “Of the projects I’ve worked on, the set environment was one of the best. The teamwork was great, the director’s experience in the film world and leadership on set was so vast that we all banded together, and I fully appreciated being able to film without any difficult worries and while receiving tons of love.”

Im was effusive about Jo Jung-seok and Lee Jin-wook. “Both actors I met this time were great. They’re both such good people; cheerful but serious, too. They had good on-set manners, took care of the staff, and were good at acting to boot.”

“We’re all a year apart, either older or younger, so we were like siblings on set. They both have something attractive about them. When filming with Jung-seok-ssi, there was happiness but also a faint sadness. I felt that Jung-seok-ssi gave me that feeling, and with Jin-wook-ssi, I was a comrade unraveling the case with him so we felt like friends, but also had that nervous energy between a man and a woman. In that respect, our hearts fluttered.”

Time Renegade was actually filmed months ago. “It’s been a while since we filmed. It took a year to come out. Post-production activities began ramping up at the beginning of February, but we actually began filming in October 2014. The latter part of production took awhile.” Asked how she felt about watching a movie shot a whole year prior, she joked, “It’s something to be thankful for. I looked just a tad younger.” (Laughs.)

Why has she only done movies since 2004? “The biggest reason was because I love films. I really love films. I’m also the type to stubbornly burrow into one thing. While doing that I looked around at actresses my age and realized that no one else had stuck solely with films for a decade. They’d all done dramas and movies and their acting reach had spread. Correspondingly, they’d gotten a lot of exposure.

“It doesn’t matter what the medium is, acting is acting, and I realized that up until now, ‘I’ve been really foolish’ and ‘I’ve been very stubborn.’ I still haven’t lost my desire to do films, but now I’m thinking that I should open my heart and give dramas another shot, especially since the production environment for dramas has gotten better.”

Where does she see herself in the future? “In my twenties I knew nothing but work and focused on building my career, but in my thirties I’ve relaxed a bit and so my output has gone down.”

“Like Kim Hye-soo sunbae-nim and Jeon Do-yeon sunbae-nim, I would like to continue performing into my mid-forties. If I do well, I’d like to prolong [my acting career]. I’m not sure if I can continue to act beyond my sixties. I’d like to but I’m not confident. I’m not sure I can do as Kim Hye-soo sunbae-nim and Yoon Yeo-jung sunbae-nim have done.”

If she could go back and change the past, would she? Im explained, “If I go back and change the past, the possibility that the present is not the present I wanted will be high. I wouldn’t change a thing and I think I would live according to my fate.”

Has she lined up her next project? “Not yet. I don’t have another commercial film lined up yet. In the latter part of the year, when the weather is nicer, I’d like to be on set. I’d like to do a drama if a good project comes to me but I’m not sure when that will be.”

Time Renegade is currently in theaters.

Via Chic News, Daily Hankook, Herald, Joy News 24, Topstar News

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