Synopsis : At work, she’s a renowned assassin. At home, she’s a single mom to a teenage girl. Killing is easy. It’s parenting that’s the hard part.
- Rating: TVMA (Language|Smoking|Violence)
- Genre: Action, Mystery & thriller
- Original Language: Korean
- Director: Sung-hyun Byun
- Writer: Sung-hyun Byun
- Release Date (Streaming):
- Runtime:
- Distributor: Netflix
Interview with Actress Jean Do-yeon
Q: I know there’s a lot of secrets between mother and daughter in the end when it seems that everything is on the table, there’s a closeness between mother and daughter again. Do you think that that’s because secrets are revealed or because mother and daughter both realized that they just wanted to protect each other?
A: Instead of revealing the secrets, for Boksoon and Jae-yeong I think they’ve kind of ‘shared’ their thoughts on those secrets, and that’s how they got to grow together as people. I think it’s a very open end for the movie. I personally don’t think that you have to expose of all your secrets in order to have a good relationship. Sometimes I think secrets are needed to have a healthier relationship. I have a daughter myself, and looking at my mother-daughter relationship, I think there is a place where people do need secrets. So, I don’t think it was necessarily because they shared their secrets. But after sharing their secrets, they could have talks and that’s what was more important.
Q: I recently watched your Korean drama “Crash Course in Romance’.” Your character in Kill Boksoon is very different from “Crash Course in Romance. Did you feel like a bit of catharsis playing in this particular role? Because it’s very different from some of the other roles you’ve done.
A: I would say that I didn’t really feel a sense of catharsis when I was shooting for Kill Boksoon, but the fact that Director Byun came to me with this this movie and asked me to do “Kill Boksoon” did give me a sense of catharsis because this is what I have to work on as well. I think people have a very low expectations for female killers or, you know, female action movies and I kind of want to make sure that I go beyond that and make sure that people are interested in female killers in action. So that was the part that I felt a lot of catharsis.
Also, my character Haeng-son in ‘Crash Course in Romance,’ and then in Kill Boksoon, are two polar opposites – as you said. But you know, me as an actress, and then Haeng-son and Boksoon, they all have something in common. And that is that we are all very hardworking moms that try really hard to look after a kid.
Q: A key part of the film and its action sequences is how the characters imagine the fights playing out with the potential moves being shown on screen. What was it like filming the same scene in different positions and different conclusions?
A: I felt like I was caught up in an endless cycle of action scenes going on and on again. So I would film one position, and then I will think about it and then I’ll go shoot another sequence of the same action scene. So, I think it was, you know, five times or ten times more action than I would expect from an action scene. So, it was a struggle for me, yes.
Q: In the beginning of the film, your character fight who is actually Yakuza guy, where you are a Japanese character. Can you talk about practicing in Japanese languages and delivering those lines?
A: I think it’s always difficult to act in a different language that’s not your mother tongue, whether it be English or Japanese. But, I really tried hard to understand what I was saying in Japanese. I could just memorize the lines but I wanted to make sure that I know what I’m saying, so that I could put feelings of Boksoon into the lines. Thank God, I didn’t have really long lines. But, I just want to say that I really tried to understand what I’m saying so that I could add those emotions in the lines when I was speaking Japanese.
Q: I have seen the different characters that you’ve been playing over the years and now Kill Boksoon is such a different movie for you. And because aspiring Korean actresses take you as an inspiration because of the roles that you have done in the past, what’s been important for you when you select the roles you have selected over the years?
A: From the very beginning of my career, up until now, it was always the scenario that came first. I wanted the scenario to be something that I could relate to, and it had to be a story that I want to tell the audience. But this time it was quite different, because I chose to do the film without even looking at the scenario in the very beginning stages. So actually Director Byun and I would talk and we would kind of make the story together. So it was a very new type of challenge for me.
At first, when I read the scenario – because I didn’t look at the scenario when I chose to do it – I didn’t know if I could pull this off well or not. But you know, over the past years directors have come to me with different genres and I am very thankful for Director Byun for coming to me with such a genre that nobody would expect me to do. Because he chose me, I wanted to show people that I could actually be a very versatile actor who could pull off unexpected genres.
And in the movie there’s this phrase that says something about a dull old knife. They say it actually gives a bigger wound to you when you use a dull knife, it hurts even more. And Director Byun said that as a kind of tribute to seasoned actors like me. So, I think this was kind of like proof to me that people with longer experience can be versatile. They can be really good. So I really wanted to make sure that I pulled this off really well.
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Here’s the trailer of the film.