‘He gave it his everything’: The Wonderfools’ director on why he didn’t cut Cha Eun-woo’s scenes

SEOUL – It is 1999 all over again, and Park Eun-bin is back with the director who turned her into a global name, alongside a co-star nobody was sure would make the final cut.

Set on the cusp of the millennium, when Y2K paranoia and end-of-the-world chatter were everywhere, The Wonderfools follows four misfits in a small town who stumble into superpowers they are spectacularly ill-equipped to handle. The comedy-action adventure series is showing on Netflix.

It happens to be a near-full reunion for the team behind Extraordinary Attorney Woo, the 2022 megahit series that ran for 21 weeks on Netflix’s non-English top 10. Director Yoo In-sik is back, joined again by actors Choi Dae-hoon and Im Seong-jae, alongside Park.

Park plays Chae-ni, the local menace with a knack for trouble, who finds herself teleporting around at random.

“I wanted to do a project that was simply fun,” the 33-year-old South Korean actress said at a press conference in central Seoul on May 12. “The script struck me as wildly inventive from the first read. I figured if I could pull it off, I’d be having a blast – and I did.”

No surprise, then, that the chemistry between director and star was hard to miss. “Working on Attorney Woo, I came away convinced there’s nothing she can’t do. She’s got serious comic timing and she’s fearless,” Yoo said of his leading lady.

The name on everyone’s mind, though, was Cha Eun-woo, who plays a buttoned-up civil servant with telekinetic powers he would rather not flaunt.

The 29-year-old South Korean actor-singer is completing his mandatory military service in the wake of a widely publicised tax-evasion mess. He is said to have settled it in April for around 13 billion won (S$11.1 million), though the National Tax Service initially flagged closer to 20 billion won in undeclared income routed through a company in his mother’s name.

In South Korea, that kind of scandal can erase a star from a project entirely – cut from the final edit, scrubbed from the posters, memory-holed Soviet-style. There were whispers about whether Cha would get the same treatment or whether viewers would still be allowed to feast their eyes on the popular idol.

Turns out, The Wonderfools has done none of that. Cha’s pretty face is right there in the official poster, character art and trailer – every scene he shot looks to have made the final cut.

“We learnt about the news the same way everyone else did, through the headlines, after editing was already largely wrapped,” Yoo said. “This project was a long-held dream for me and a hard-fought labour for everyone involved. We prioritised the work as a whole.”

He declined to comment on Cha in personal terms, but added: “His performance was a real challenge – physically and emotionally – and like the rest of the cast, he gave it everything. I’m pleased with how it turned out.”

Park closed the event with a nudge towards the show’s setting. “We packed in a lot of turn-of-the-century flavour,” she said. “Soak that in, it’s part of the fun.” THE KOREA HERALD/ASIA NEWS NETWORK