The Essence of Acting
In a restaurant district packed with office buildings, a man loosened his tie a little as he sat having lunch with his coworkers and opened his mouth.
"By the way, Manager, did you see that article?"
"What article? Ryu Yeon-woo?"
The man nodded at his manager's reply.
"Yes. The National Tax Service issued a clarification themselves, apparently?"
"I saw it. Everyone in the break room was talking about nothing else over coffee earlier."
"It's wild enough that the NTS came out with a statement that fast, but why would a completely baseless article even get published in the first place?"
"Tell me about it. There's so much fake news these days. No wonder even the American president talks about it in his speeches."
Across Korea, office workers gathered over lunch were talking about nothing else.
For the past several years, the actor had turned everything he touched into a hit, so in pure buzz he sat at the absolute top of the heap. Anywhere two or more people gathered, gossip like this was bound to land.
And most people encountered the false report and the rebuttal at the same time — the two pieces had dropped only thirty-seven minutes apart.
The community dwellers who lived on the internet twenty-four hours a day, hunting for the next hot topic, had spent those thirty-seven minutes gleefully piling on slander and wild speculation about Ryu Yeon-woo. But ordinary people, who saw both stories together, treated the whole thing as a minor blip.
The members of Woo's were no different.
Not every member was so devoted that they lived inside the group chat, so most of them, like everyone else, absorbed both pieces of news at once.
And the first thing that rose in those fans' hearts was not worry or relief — it was fury at the reporter who had broken the false story.
The arrows the community users and the fandom aimed at reporter Choi Un-gyu were razor-sharp.
Every single online article NK News published — regardless of content — began filling up with protest comments demanding a clarification.
Rrrring—.
"Yes. NK News, this is— Ah, yes. We're deeply sorry for the inconvenience caused by the inaccurate repor—"
On the sixth floor of a building on Teheran-ro in Gangnam, NK News was a war zone. Phone bells rang so loud they could be heard from other floors.
"Hey! Is that bastard Choi Un-gyu still not answering?!"
"He definitely came in this morning, but he vanished after lunch and went dark. He must have realized himself that this is way bigger than he can handle."
"Jesus. This guy is completely insane. He doesn't just dump a truckload of shit on the company — he aerial-sprays it over the whole city and then runs?!"
Editor-in-Chief Lee Sang-gi clutched his head and shook it, his temples throbbing.
He tried to remember whether, in all his years at NK News, he had ever taken this many complaint calls. He was fairly certain he had not.
Even a few years back, when a false report about a presidential candidate had gone out during a sensitive election season, the fallout had not been this severe.
"No, the more I think about it, the less it makes sense. Why the hell did this lunatic suddenly publish that article on his own? I'm going to lose my mind. Is he a plant from some other paper? Team Leader Han — dig through Choi Un-gyu's computer. I want to know exactly what tip he got and from where that made him write that piece."
"His work PC?"
"Everything. Personal messengers, all of it. Whether it's legal or not is not the point right now. We need to find something — anything — so we can put out an apology report as soon as possible."
The man called Team Leader Han nodded.
Watching him, Editor-in-Chief Lee Sang-gi let out a long, heavy sigh.
"That bastard is already not one of our reporters. Whether he stays underwater or comes back, he's fired — that's a given. Treat him as a former employee and shake him down until something falls out. If there's any sign he was put up to this, the company will take legal action."
Dark clouds were gathering thick over Choi Un-gyu's future.
Meanwhile, Lake Film CEO Jeong Yang-gi and Daytona director Jo Hoon-gwang were already standing in the rain those clouds were dumping.
Jo Hoon-gwang glanced around with uneasy eyes.
He himself had directed dramas with prosecutors as the leads more than once, but this was the first time he had ever been dragged into an actual interrogation room at the Prosecutors' Office.
It was not the structure he had staged in dramas — a dark room with a pinpoint light and someone watching through one-way glass from outside.
Just bright lighting and an ordinary desk. And that made it more terrifying.
It kept reminding him, relentlessly, that the situation he was in was not a movie or a drama. It was real.
Click—.
The door opened and a man walked in.
A man with a strong face and broad shoulders looked at Jo Hoon-gwang and smiled.
An unnameable chill washed over him.
This would be the prosecutor assigned to his case.
"Mr. Jo Hoon-gwang?"
"Y-yes, sir!"
"I went through the file before I came in. Looks like there are quite a few points where you might feel wronged."
Taking that as a friendly opening, Jo Hoon-gwang nodded vigorously.
"Th-that's right! I didn't really do anything myself — I just—"
The prosecutor cut him off and sat down.
"We'll get to that in due course. I'm the prosecutor assigned to Mr. Jo Hoon-gwang's case."
The man paused a beat in his introduction, then smiled again and continued.
"Prosecutor Han Hae-un. Looking at this, it seems we have a great deal to talk about. Wouldn't you agree?"
Jo Hoon-gwang stared at Prosecutor Han Hae-un's smile — a smile he could not read as friendly or otherwise — and nodded with a blank face.
While Han Hae-un was having that warm little conversation with Jo Hoon-gwang behind closed doors, on the opposite side of the planet, in New York, drama filming was in full swing.
Because New York ran on the reverse clock from Korea, most of the crew only learned about the rumor-and-rebuttal episode involving Yeon-woo the following day.
There had been a brief late stir over the news first thing in the morning, but everyone was too busy with the schedule — scrambling to prep for the shoot — to dwell on it.
The single hour of access they had been granted by Madison Square Garden vanished in a blink.
Because that hour had to cover setup as well, the actual time they could spend filming was barely twenty minutes.
They just managed to get the shot of Yeon-woo slipping out of the arena mid-game and setting off in search of an address scrawled by hand on a crumpled scrap of paper.
Come to think of it, between this and Sketch, it's basically a whole 'Mother, Find Me Across the World' arc.
Once the arena scene was wrapped, the party piled into cars in a hurry and headed for the next location.
"Whew. We're shooting like we're roasting beans over a lightning strike. This is bringing back memories of student film assignments in college."
They were about to shoot the final scene of the drama — the culmination of a sixteen-episode odyssey in which Yeon-woo would reunite with his mother on a quiet residential street on the outskirts of New York.
Yeon-woo smiled at Director Kim Han-su's muttered remark as the director watched the crew set up.
"Spending a long time on something doesn't automatically mean you get a better result."
"You're right about that. All right — let's roll. Actor Ryu, Actor Seo, standby."
Yeon-woo stepped into frame with Seo Ju-gyeong, the supporting actress playing his mother in the drama.
Hmm…
Yeon-woo thought of the drama's structure and the arc of its story as a staircase built for this single moment.
The reunion of the protagonist Ryu Yeon-woo with the mother who had been so far away.
In the end, every story had been buildup for this instant.
Which means the emotion has to explode here…
Yeon-woo had one concern.
Whether Seo Ju-gyeong, playing the mother, would be able to match his emotional level.
It was not that he doubted her skill.
Seo Ju-gyeong was a senior actress with a long career, and of course he expected her to do well — but the narratives they had each built were different.
Yeon-woo had shot every step of the sixteen-episode journey. Seo Ju-gyeong had not appeared once across the entire drama.
In other words, this was the final scene of the series — and at the same time, the first scene she was shooting.
To Yeon-woo she was the mother he had longed for across sixteen episodes of story. To Seo Ju-gyeong, he was simply a junior male actor who happened to be doing well these days.
Will she be able to make the emotion explode?
He would only know once they tried.
"Okay! Ready!"
As the set locked in, Director Kim Han-su's cue came through, and Yeon-woo sank into the emotion.
"Action!"
At the signal to begin, Yeon-woo looked at Seo Ju-gyeong.
Longing rose in his unsteady eyes.
And though this was the moment he had been waiting for, the moment his mother stood before him, his feet would not move easily — he poured guilt into every reluctant step.
His mouth looked ready to fall open and call for his mother at any second, yet his lips only trembled and would not part, carrying a tangle of complicated feeling.
On the other side, Seo Ju-gyeong walked slowly forward with a paper bag of groceries, then froze at the sight of the son who had appeared in front of her, her face full of disbelief.
And she spoke.
"Y-Yeon-woo? Is that you, Yeon-woo? No — how…"
"Cut!"
Director Kim Han-su's call came, and Yeon-woo immediately looked at the director's face as he studied the field monitor.
Yeah. Not it.
Director Kim Han-su's expression was not bright.
Seo Ju-gyeong's performance had been exactly as written, of course.
Like the veteran she was, she had hit every beat without a single miss.
There was nothing to fault in the acting itself — but just as Yeon-woo had feared, the depth of emotion each of them was carrying was different.
Yeon-woo raised his hand high.
"Could we go one more time? I'm not happy with my performance."
The crew on set turned to look at him.
Yeon-woo was famous for finishing nearly every scene in a single take, with almost no NGs or reshoots.
For him to ask for another take when neither the lines nor his scene partner had gone wrong was extremely rare.
Director Kim Han-su seemed to sense something as well, and nodded.
"This is the final scene of the drama, after all. Let's do a few more before the light goes."
Yeon-woo and Seo Ju-gyeong took their positions again.
Yeon-woo looked at Seo Ju-gyeong standing far across from him and gave a small nod.
His claim that he wanted another take because he was unhappy with his own performance had not been a lie.
Strictly speaking, Seo Ju-gyeong's acting had not been the problem.
Yeon-woo was the one who had to match the emotional level.
Not by dialing his own emotion down — but by drawing hers up.
Yeon-woo closed his eyes quietly.
I have to act with absolute precision.
This scene would not be solved by performing at the camera for the audience.
I have to make Seo Ju-gyeong, standing right in front of me, actually believe that I am her son…
That was the essence of acting.
Making someone believe that what is not real is real.
And as Yeon-woo slowly opened the eyes he had closed, Seo Ju-gyeong, standing opposite him, immediately sensed that something in the air had changed.
"……!"
At the same moment, Director Kim Han-su's cue came through.
"Ready, action."