Building the Yumi’s Cells musical from scratch still scares K-pop star Tiffany Young

SEOUL – Over nearly two decades, Tiffany Young has performed as a member of K-pop girl group Girls’ Generation, its sub-unit TaeTiSeo and as a soloist.

She has mastered the three-minute pop stage and made her own music.

In 2011, she made her foray into musical theatre with Fame, then established herself as a stage actress, appearing in Chicago for two seasons – in 2021 and 2024.

But stepping into an original production made her nervous, the Korean-American star said.

That production is Yumi’s Cells, a musical based on the hit webtoon and TV series (2021 to 2026).

Young plays the title role of Yumi during a landmark period: She recently married South Korean actor Byun Yo-han, signed with Pacific Music Group and will celebrate Girls’ Generation’s 20th anniversary in 2027.

Her role in Yumi’s Cells was written and rewritten up to the last minute as the team searched for the right emotional pitch.

“Dozens of versions are still in my head and in my files,” Young, 37, said.

“I’d ask, ‘Should I pull up the May 11 version? Should I give you the June 28 one for these few bars?’”

If anything, the constant revision became the point, and the team’s confidence carried her through it. “They told me, ‘We brought in a veteran; Tiffany can pull this off,’” she recalled, and she came to see the whole process as an exercise in building flexibility.

Building Yumi, oddly, meant getting out of the way. Normally outspoken, Young held back during rehearsals.

“I just wanted to be an instrument,” she said. She was so quiet that director Yang Jeong-woong told her to speak up if she had something to say.

Everyone kept telling her she was Yumi already, so she let the team shape the character around her. She said: “Yumi was already such a complete character that even someone as opinionated as me had nothing to add.”

Young is, by her own account, a compulsive researcher who will “dig to the ends of the earth”.

For Yumi’s Cells, she pored over the webtoon, its merchandise, and even old reader comments. Yet, during the musical’s run, she is deliberately not reading reviews.

As a pop performer, she said, a stage lasts three minutes and the job is to read the crowd’s response within that window. A musical is different: Her task is to deliver the story the team designed the same way every night, and for that, she leans on the directors. The reactions can wait. “For now, I’m not watching them,” she said.

Publicly, Young reads as the polished one – sharp, composed, the Girls’ Generation member who has it together. Yumi is the opposite: awkward, forever tripping over herself.

Young found that freeing. “I got to pour out all the clumsiness in me,” she said. “So what if I fall short? This is who I am.” The role, she added, let her show a human side and give the audience something to recognise in themselves.

The musical, which runs through Aug 23, arrives amid a busy year as she tours and prepares new music alongside the show.

In celebration of her 10th anniversary as a solo artiste, she will perform in Singapore at Arena @ Expo on Sept 26 as part of her 2026 Edge Of Calm Asia Tour, in support of her first full-length studio album Edge Of Calm, which drops on Aug 20.

For Young, the crowded schedule is not a burden, but a pace she knows well.

“I’ve always lived this busy,” she said, crediting Girls’ Generation for making the pace second nature and her 40-year-old husband for the steadiness beneath it. It is less about flooring the gas, she added, than about showing up steadily and with good work.

A single thread, she said, runs through her career: She chases good stories. Into The New World, Girls’ Generation’s 2007 debut single, carried one; so did Twinkle, the 2012 TaeTiSeo single, she said.

Following that instinct is what led her to the Yumi’s Cells script.

“The reason I stand on stage is to give someone comfort,” she said. “I hope people watch this and leave with some of it.” THE KOREA HERALD/ASIA NEWS NETWORK

Book it/Tiffany Young: Edge Of Calm Tour in Singapore

Where: Arena @ Expo, 9 Somapah Road
When: Sept 26, 7pm
Admission: $158 to $288 from Sistic (sistic.com.sg or call 6348-5555)