Acting Badly

Acting Badly

Veteran actor Cha Jae-hwan has built his career on discipline and perfection. So when a close director friend asks him to star in the historical film Jahwa, he expects a challenge, but not this one. At the first script reading, Jae-hwan meets his co-star, Shin Seong-hyeon, a rookie actor with raw potential but zero polish. His delivery is flat, his timing off, and his presence all over the place. For someone like Jae-hwan, who breathes precision, it’s unbearable. Yet instead of walking away, he finds himself guiding Seong-hyeon, patiently at first, then with a curiosity he can’t quite name. “Shin Seong-hyeon is an invasive species,” the director jokes. “You can’t control him. You just have to let him adapt.” But as rehearsals blur into something far more intimate, Jae-hwan begins to wonder who’s really changing whom… The performance, it turns out, isn’t just on camera.