The Drama Behind Dramas: Part 3
The Drama Behind Dramas
If you’re not completely new to Asian dramas then you probably noticed by now that the time between the announcement of a new drama and its premiere date is usually short. It’s common to hear that they only finished casting a couple of days before the drama starts (and sometimes that can delay the drama itself).
When you start watching a drama that is still airing, the future is uncertain. It’s best not to keep your hopes up because a million things could go wrong. Just when you relax and think “Man, I love this drama! It’s going on my favorites’ list!” it’s like you jinxed it and the rest of the drama is ruined.
In honour of all drama hot messes, we’ve compiled a list of drama scandals where we briefly explain how they affected the dramas themselves. Enjoy!
Bad
Bad Guy aired in 2010 and it was supposed to be Kim Nam Gil’s first leading role in a drama after his great success as a supporting actor in the huge 2009 drama Queen Seon Deok (which even earned him some awards).
It all sounded great in the beginning: 29-year-old Kim Nam Gil was finally getting his big break, the first episodes’ ratings were good, there were some really promising actors in the supporting cast and then…
… right in the middle of the drama our lead actor gets called to army duty. And although he asked permission to delay it, they didn’t let him.
Cue chaos.
The drama’s planned 20 episodes were cut back to 17. The shooting was re-organized so that Kim Nam Gil could shoot as many scenes as he could before being shipped off to the army. But it still wasn’t enough! In the end they even had to hire a double and have him shoot Kim Nam Gil’s scenes in the last couple of episodes.
In the end they somehow made it. Even if the end result looks very funny, at least they finished the drama. And although it did affect the ratings, even at the end they weren’t that bad (I suspect the viewers were just curious to see how they handled that hot mess).
East of
Lee Da Hae Says her Good Bye
East of Eden also had its troubles: it scored big ratings, but it also got some big budget cuts. Even the actors’ paychecks were cut after they started shooting.
But the most memorable scandal was Lee Da Hae quitting the whole thing in the middle. She even left a message in the drama’s website saying: “It was confusing to take on this character of Hye Rin, who even I can’t understand… As an actor in this drama, I feel a duty and responsibility to stay with it through the end. But I’m sorry to tell you I can no longer act in this situation, feeling this way.” She added, “I don’t want to act saying and doing such illogical, out-of-character things in this role that makes me look like an idiot.”
That attitude got her some mixed criticism. Some people hated her lack of professionalism, while others defended her. In the end her leaving the show meant the writer had to change the whole drama for the last 10 episodes. And other actors who played characters connected to her also departed earlier since they were no longer needed.
Nowadays this doesn’t surprise us anymore. It wasn’t the first nor last time where Lee Da Hae changed her mind about a certain role or drama.
Myung Wol the
Poor Eric Mun was supposed to make his post-Army comeback in 2010 with a drama called Poseidon, but the network never even gave it a timeslot. So in 2011 he joined the crazysauce drama called Myung Wol the Spy.
The first 10 episodes were really great. But then… the lead actress ran away. Literally.
Han Ye Seul was stressed and overworked because of the live-shoot system. So she had a breakdown, didn’t show up to the set and got on a plane to the US. A huge scandal broke out, obviously. The production team called and begged her to come back and she did. The whole thing lasted like 4 days or so.
Because of this, on the day that episode 11 was supposed to air, they replaced with a “Special” made of recycled scenes from previous episodes. And then the main character was supposedly “sick” in episode 11 so she didn’t show up. Han Ye Seul only made it in time for episode 12 (which was supposed to be episode 13).
So basically after episode 10 it became an entirely diferent drama, since everything had to be rewritten. I like to pretend that the drama ended with episode 10.
There are dozens more examples of such behind-the-scenes drama, but we can’t list them all. What other exemples do YOU know?
