Imagine going to school with its mundane routine one day, and suddenly, you’re thrust into war against extraterrestrial forces. Instead of studying for the final exams, high school students are now tasked at honing their weaponry skills frontline fighters to battle mysterious alien invading Mother Earth. It’s kill or be killed for the stars in “Duty After School” (방과 후 전쟁활동).
We recently spoke to Shin Hyun-soo (신현수), Kim Ki-hae (김기해),and Lim Se-mi (임세미), to talk about their characters – Lieutenant Lee Chun-ho, student Kim Chi-yeol and homeroom teacher Park Eun-young respectively. In this exclusive interview, the trio recall which scene stood out to them personally, battling aliens in this project, and what they each loved about their roles. Check out:
What was your favourite scene to shoot? Why?
Shin Hyun-soo: After the flour party scene where Choon-ho played happily with the children, there’s a scene where he, for the first time, gives the children an order that was emotional, instead of rational. I remember having to continuously hold my tears back as I spoke Choon-ho’s lines where he expressed his true feelings to the children for the first time. As the actor of Choon-ho, I think those were his most memorable lines.
Lim Se-mi: Every moment was great. I thought, all the children who’ll be leading the next generation of dramas, films and plays, are all gathered here. Every day was precious and priceless. The first time I entered the classroom set, when we heard the sounds of gunfire under the summer starry skies, and the day my character Park Eun-young died, I remember all of those moments.
Kim Ki-hae: There’s a scene where I lost everything and just break down while trying to suppress my emotions. I don’t mean to say my crying acting was the best.. what happened before and after that scene was really terrible and difficult for the character, it was really unbelievable, and felt completely hopeless, as if everything has come to an end. I really liked that kind of dramatic feeling and I still remember it vividly now.
Did you learn something new from this project or your cast members?
Lim Se-mi: I learnt about “attitude” from the director and Shin Hyun-soo, who acts as commander Lee Choon-ho. Despite it being tiring on set and having a lack of time, the director always gave each of the children time to allow them to come alive on screen. Shin Hyun-soo always took care of the children sweetly, which touched me and taught me a lot.
Kim Ki-hae: Firstly, there are a lot of fellow or senior actors who’re better at acting than I am. For me, apart from the movie “The Witch: Part 2”, I haven’t had a lot of experience with commercial works so while filming for “Duty After School” for more than a year, I think I’ve learned a lot from all the actors, staff and director, and have grown more. I heard you learn best through experiences and that’s exactly what it was. This felt like it was a school to me, a place to learn and I really learnt while starting from scratch.
What was the process of imagining yourselves battling aliens?
Shin Hyun-soo: It felt like I was acting out a play on stage. In theatre productions, the format itself often requires you to use your imagination and express with your eyes. For this production, I had to imagine the alien spheres and there were many scenes where I fought with them so it felt like I was acting in a play and it was really nice.
Lim Se-mi: The creatures I imagined was a bit different from the creatures I saw on set. They looked more beautiful than I imagined, and they were soft and elongated.
Kim Ki-hae: I had some experience with filming for CG scenes when filming the movie, “The Witch: Part 2” but the VFX filming for this drama was slightly different. Initially, having to fight with extra-terrestrial forces that doesn’t exist was unfamiliar and rather difficult. All the actors were mostly rookies, and it’s the first time we were working like this, so everyone found it unfamiliar and fumbled around. It was also not easy to know where to look so we went through quite a bit of hardship.
I remember the longest time we spent on rehearsals was 4-5 hours. But after going through all that and having filmed for a year, we gradually got the hang of it, and later on, we knew what to do without saying anything, and just by looking at each other.
Lim Se-mi: How did you relate to Park Eun-Young as a teacher?
Lim Se-mi: There were many difficulties while acting as Park Eun-young. With just a few scenes to portray this character, or to study her narrative, that’s a really short time. So, I went into filming with the idea to just portray one aspect clearly. “I’m here because of the children. It is enough with just my love for the children.” That was what I felt was the most important.
If I had her as my teacher back in school, I think I’ll remember her even after graduation. She would have been like a friend to me, and would even give me advice on love.
Shin Hyun-soo and Kim Ki-hae, how did you relate to your characters?
Shin Hyun-soo: In this universe, Choon-ho is the first to realise the danger of the alien spheres, and after the attack by the spheres, he is appointed to Sungjin High School Class 3-2 as the platoon leader. He tries his best not to lose any of the children from the class. Choon-ho’s strength and weakness is simultaneously his tendency to “put the children first”. I couldn’t help but love Choon-ho as I portrayed that side of him, which is both his strength and weakness.
Kim Ki-hae: First of all, when I first received the character Kim Chi-yeol, my first impressions of him were that he’s a really timid and shy person who doesn’t stand out among his friends, an outsider so to speak.
His personality is very different from mine and I felt it’ll be difficult to portray him so I really focused my energy on analysing the character. I also worked on establishing the character together with the director.
According to the director, he really hoped that Chi-yeol can be a really ordinary guy, like a person we can see anywhere around us, such as our neighbour, or in the train after school etc. But he also requested for me to focus on his emotions as this extremely ordinary student grows into someone who is no longer ordinary, when he experiences something unusual and leads an unusual life.
So, in the earlier episodes of the drama, he is someone who doesn’t readily takes action and is really quiet but in the later episodes, as he experiences a lot of death and difficulties, he changes into someone who would take action first and takes charge. That’s how I acted so if the viewers can focus on that, I think they’ll be able to feel closer to Chi-yeol, and enjoy the drama more. 🙂
Be sure to catch “Duty After School” on Astro Ch395 & Astro GO ǀ unifi TV Ch211 & unifi playTV | tonton.
