EXCLUSIVE: Actor Kim Moo-yul says he hated his despicable character in Korean movie 'On The Line'

'It is hard to feel good when you play a person like this,' says the 39-year-old of his character in 'On The Line'. Photo: CjNet

In order to tackle the role of a villain, actors would never view the character as the bad guy but instead would provide reasons as to why he or she is behaving badly.

Likewise, Korean actor Kim Moo-yul admitted to StarLifestyle that he tried to understand his character Pro Kwak in the movie On The Line. However, he didn’t quite succeed.

And Kim is no stranger to playing such a role as he did so in the drama Bad Guys: Vile City.

The actor who turns 40 in May this year, said via email: “I usually try to understand the character and sympathise with him, in order to really immerse myself into the character.

“However, the Pro Kwak role required much more effort to understand than any other roles. And yet, despite this extra effort, I still struggled to sympathise with him.

“So, in order to really play the part, I built the character by maximising my imagination and asking ‘just how evil can a human being be?’”

On The Line explores the world of voice phishing, showing how extensively the perpetrators do their research in order to con people out of their money.

Pro Kwak is one of the managers at a branch who comes up with different scenarios and scripts for callers to ensure the con goes through without anyone suspecting they are being duped.

According to Kim, playing Pro Kwak left a bad taste in his mouth.

He explained: “It is hard to feel good when you play a person like Pro Kwak.

“On the contrary, I felt anger towards the character and hated him while playing him.

“I hope that the audiences feel the same way as me – I want everyone to hate this guy and be glad when he’s forced into a corner.”

Kim has been acting since 2007, and has appeared in various films including Forgotten, Illang: The Wolf Brigade, The Cop, The Devil (opposite Ma Dong-seok), Intruder and Space Sweepers.

While Kim focuses more on films, one of his next projects is the TV drama Grid which is a Disney+ production headlined by Seo Kang-joon (When The Weather Is Fine) and written by Lee Soo-yeon (Stranger and Life).

Kim mentioned that it’s exciting that the Korean content is getting global attention.

Although on the set of Grid, he didn’t notice much difference as the crew and cast members are all Korean, Kim said that it’s great there are lots of different kinds of content being produced now in South Korea, and some of them are backed by non-Korean companies.

“I believe the Korean entertainment industry is well and ready to meet the world’s expectations, where content is concerned,” he stated.

Catch On The Line now on Tonton Cinema and On Demand on Unifi TV.