Acting Badly

Veteran actor Cha Jae-Hwan has built his career on discipline and perfection. So when a close director friend asks him to star in the historical film Ja-Hwa, he expects a challenge, but not this one. At the first script reading, Jae-Hwan meets his co-star, Shin Seong-Hyeon, a rookie actor with raw potential but zero polish. His delivery is flat, his timing off, and his presence all over the place. For someone like Jae-Hwan, who breathes precision, it’s unbearable. Yet instead of walking away, he finds himself guiding Seong-Hyeon, patiently at first, then with a curiosity he can’t quite name.

“Shin Seong-Hyeon is an invasive species,” the director jokes. “You can’t control him. You just have to let him adapt.”

But as rehearsals blur into something far more intimate, Jae-Hwan begins to wonder who’s really changing whom…

The performance, it turns out, isn’t just on camera.

(Source: Lezhin US, edited)