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🇰🇷 South Korea /Culture & Society

Ryu Jun-yeol takes on two roles and wonders what it would be like to live Messi’s life

From Hankyoreh · () Korean

Translated from Korean and summarized by DistantNews. Read the original for the full story.

At a glance

Interview Named sources Context piece
  • Ryu Jun-yeol said he focused on making the two versions of his character feel similar but distinct in Netflix’s “The Rat.”
  • The series, adapted from a Korean folk tale, ranked eighth worldwide in Netflix’s TV-show category three days after release and topped the service’s South Korea chart.
  • Asked whose life he would like to take over, Ryu named Lionel Messi because he wants to understand the emotions of competing as a sports star.

Ryu Jun-yeol’s challenge in Netflix’s “The Rat” was not simply to make two characters look different. He had to play a novelist and a creature that copies the novelist’s identity while making them feel related.

The 10-part series, released on Aug. 28, adapts a folk tale about a rat that eats a person’s fingernails, turns into that person and assumes the person’s identity. In the series, novelist Moon Jae lives as a recluse because of panic disorder. He discovers that an identical figure known as the “rat” is living as him, taking his identity and wealth.

Overall, I think I tried to subtly suggest that they were different people.

— Ryu Jun-yeolHe described his approach to playing Moon Jae and the figure impersonating him.

Ryu said he tried to suggest quietly that the two were different people. Both characters, he said, experience emotions that people naturally have, but express those emotions differently. He used contact lenses that added faint spots to the whites of his eyes, removed one of his own moles and altered the shape of his ears. He avoided changing the nose, he said, because he wanted viewers to wonder what looked different without immediately seeing obvious makeup.

I think both characters feel the emotions that people naturally have, but I expressed those emotions differently.

— Ryu Jun-yeolHe explained how he distinguished the two roles.

The series placed eighth worldwide in Netflix’s TV-show category three days after its release and ranked first in the service’s South Korea Top 10 series list as of Aug. 31. Ryu appears alongside Seol Kyung-gu, who plays Noja, a loan shark helping Moon Jae search for the rat.

Ryu said he wants to create a set where everyone working with him feels happy, an ambition he learned by watching Seol. Asked whose life he would like to take if he could take another person’s life, he named Lionel Messi. Ryu said he is curious about the feelings of a sports star competing on the field, then joked that he would contact reporters once he found a way to define himself.

I want to know what it feels like to compete and experience something on the stage of the field.

— Ryu Jun-yeolHe explained why he would like to experience Lionel Messi’s life.
About this summary

Originally published by Hankyoreh in Korean. Translated, summarized, and contextualized automatically by DistantNews, with a note on how the source frames the story. Not individually reviewed before publishing. How this works.

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