Suho asks Sieun, “Have you been living well?” Those words, once a last greeting, became a greeting of the beginning again. – from 『Next Actor Choi Hyunwook』
U: Sitting in a wheelchair, he only says three lines. Though short, I thought they were so inherently Suho.
S: As an actor, it’s been three years since he played Ahn Suho. Maybe that’s why he came to the set with much more pressure and worry than I expected. The script, too, had only three lines, but the actual dialogue was different. In the script, it was written as “Have you been well(잘 지냈냐)?” but Hyunwook changed it to “Have you been living well(잘 살았냐)?”. I only noticed the difference during editing. That was Suho’s first line during the last time he went to Sieun’s house in Class 1, and I realized the actor changed it to reflect that connection.
The middle line, “Who are those people in the back(저기 뒤에 분들은 누구셔)?” stayed the same. But Hyunwook said that line didn’t feel right in his mouth, so after a couple of takes, we cut it on set. However, we wanted to keep the intention, so we ended up restoring it during editing. To be honest, in Suho’s eyes, he probably couldn’t even see who was in the back. He was only looking at Yeon Sieun. Maybe Hyunwook wanted to cut that line because suddenly shifting his gaze away from Sieun to someone else felt too difficult?
The next line was, “Our Sieun has grown up, made friends too(우리 시은이 다 컸네, 친구도 생기고),” but Hyunwook condensed it into “It is good to see(보기 좋네).” Looking back, if we’d kept the original, it would’ve felt too contrived and overly explanatory of the director’s intent. So, Choi Hyunwook… he’s really something, isn’t he?
They fall into the same sleep. During the seasons when the Catcher* was gone, the children fell, got hurt, and rose again. Sieun, now the Catcher of the new friends, comes to find an old friend who has finally awakened from sleep. Suho asks Sieun, “Have you been living well?” Those words, once a last greeting, became a greeting of the beginning again.
*translating 파수꾼 (Watchman, Guardian, Sentinel) as the Catcher to keep the reference to The Catcher in the Rye in tact.
