[INTERVIEW] HOYA IN 10ASIA'S OCTOBER ISSUE - BETWEEN CALM AND PASSION

Hoya, “Even if for 15 seconds, after I acted as a different person there was a pleasant feeling”

In tvN , unexpectedly the one who was in charge of the mellow axis was Junhee (Hoya). Either him laying his head down on the desk, staring at his crush Yoonjae (Seo Ingook), or when he showed us how it felt when the person you like takes the confession you’re revealing after a long time as a joke. It was the reason why we got more curious than before about Hoya who has lived for 2 years as the one in charge of the group Infinite’s rap and dance. He whom showed us 100% of Junhee with a delicate look in his eyes or a sentimental way of talking, we wanted to hear what kind of young man he is. What kind of future did he expect? While saying “Even if I’m getting an interview by myself, I can’t feel the emptiness of not having the members?” with a joking expression on his face, the innocence of a 22 years old, the vigor of the 22 years old promising that he would keep on dancing, singing and acting even when he’ll get old, can be seen. 

How do you feel after completing ’s final shooting?

It didn’t really sink in. I originally thought when you say final shooting that the actors and staff would join together and yell at the same time “Wah, You worked hard!” but I was left alone. (laughs) When it was the product’s overall final shooting, it was not a scene I came out in so I didn’t go to the set. I could not go to the after party either because I was in Japan, so later I met (Lee) Siyeon hyung separately for about 30 minutes.

 

Do you feel your fan level getting wider after acting in the drama?

I felt it a lot recently. Even when I go on the Internet, not from our fans, but there are posts from others that say they like me. Recently we did two events and when it was my part, the cheering was a little different. I don’t know if it’s because of my mood but, because Junhee came out pitiful in the drama I feel like they cheer as if encouraging. (laughs)

Last May, you made a comeback with ‘The Chaser’ and were even promoting in Japan at the same time, but why did you make the bet to decide you would do Junhee’s role even so?

It was the busiest period of my life. (Laughs) Firstly, the script was funny, and I also had a vague curiosity about acting. And more than anything, I didn’t have any proper solo activities while being in Infinite, so I absolutely wanted to do it. So I took the audition but my CEO kept on asking ,“If you do it you will be extremely tired and it’s going to be hard, will you be able to endure it?” The CEO was slightly worried because I’m not a kid who acted before and he couldn’t imagine that the drama would be 100% successful. But in the end I could do well no matter what so I got to appear in it.

Did you not care about what role you would get?

At first it was like that but after awhile, I heard the explanation and I fell for Junhee. It felt like it would be more fun than a common character. Wouldn’t I be worried if I had a role like Yoonjae’s instead and had to act cool? I think it would make me cringe a bit too. (Laughs)

But it seems like you worried a lot about the way to express his feelings toward Yoonjae since you didn’t have a lot of lines.

There was a scene where Yoonjae is suddenly holding Junhee in his arms, and at first it was supposed to be only a full shot. When practicing, as a joke, I make a startled face and asked to the director how it was, he applauded and laughed, saying it was really good. So he added a camera and filmed my reaction. When Ingook hyung is patting my butt, originally there was also no startled expression but I inserted an adlib. At first I did it following only the script and was stiff, but as it continued I added little by little things like adlibs so the director really liked it.

The scene where Junhee confesses to Yoonjae was especially memorable.

When Yoonjae was saying something, I kept on anticipating what Junhee would do. Sometimes he’d be staring at the floor, sometimes he’d be looking at the side, blinking his eyes a few times, details like this. Even during the confession scene, to emphasize on the loving feeling, I even added again the adlib “It’s really you.” I felt like it would be sadder that way.

While being introverted, Junhee is a considerate character, it seems that you unintentionally picked up some of his characteristics.

Isn’t the Kyungsang dialect already dry and blunt? It was extremely awkward when I first tried to use this dialect in a delicate manner. When I was doing it I also thought ‘Ah I never talked like this before’. The manager who’s going with me told me the way I speak got softer than before, and that it sounded nicer. On the set, I was always acting and speaking like Junhee, even when we were on standby, so the other actors and the staff thought I had that I had this personality even in real life. (laughs) There was a scene where Junhee was swearing though, the director asked me seriously while worrying “Will you be able to swear?”. The staff was always talking carefully to me because they were scared of hurting me. Infinite members were the only one who didn’t felt that I was different than usual. I think that this image disappears when I’m with the members. (laughs)

It’s your first time having activities separated from the members, wasn’t it an unknown situation for you?

Since I’m very shy with strangers, it was a bit uncomfortable at first. But we all had to get very close to appear naturally as friends, I did my best to get along with other people. I usually don’t like to go out but when I didn’t have schedules, we often gathered and played at Ingook hyung’s home with Sieon hyung, every time we had some free time, all the actors gathered to eat as well. I also did a lot of gags but the hyungs treated me pretty nicely. As for (Eun) Jiwon hyung, he’s a big senior so at first I wasn’t comfortable with him, but since I usually play a lot of jokes, he liked it and laughed brightly. While filming, during four days straight I couldn’t sleep properly aside from 30 minutes now and then in the car, but I had so much fun on the filming set that I kept on laughing.

But during those days, taking care of your stamina must’ve been crucial.

I couldn’t do it properly. I normally can’t take care of my body, eat without skipping meals, or do these kind of things well. So my level of immunity dropped and I got sick, I caught an eye infection, I even had a sty. Once, I wanted to sleep an hour before going back to the filming set, but because I was exhausted, I struggled with the ladder of my double-deck bed and tore open my forehead. I went to the emergency room at dawn to stitch it, I still have a scar from it. I had a lot of fun mentally but my body didn’t follow.

Even if you could just enjoy during the filming, wouldn’t you be a bit anxious before the broadcast?

Truthfully, I didn’t think that I had to become famous through this drama or that I absolutely had to be successful. I think that my company didn’t expect much from it either. The CEO, the other people from the company didn’t know it would be this successful but they were all surprised that the reaction was much better from what they expected. I was in Thailand during the first broadcast, when I tried to watch it the next day on Youtube, I had to wait 30min to watch 1min. So between swimming and playing, I barely watched it but, even if I didn’t appear much, it was objectively really funny.

Seeing the idols currently promoting, there must’ve been a lot of things making you think about your fans?

First, I thought that idols can’t last forever. I thought that I couldn’t be too relaxed now that we are popular, I have to keep on progressing until I can create my own thing. I, of course, also thought a lot about the fans. We filmed a scene where we were queueing because of H.O.T., we were wearing raincoats so it was hot and I was all sweaty. After sitting for some hours, I even had cramps. When I saw the fans who were staying up all night in the past, I thought it must’ve been kind of tiring, but after actually filming it, I realized that you couldn’t do that if you didn’t have sincere loving feelings.

Moreover while filming you had the concert in a concert hall that was relatively small. Since it was a concert with mainly standing seats, you must’ve had mingled feelings seeing the fans tired while pushing and pulling each other.

Because I couldn’t focus well, after a while I looked at the upper side to perform. Because looking in the eyes of these exhausted people and singing while pretending nothing was wrong was way too difficult. And even so I couldn’t stop singing in the middle.

At that concert, you performed the new song ‘When you’re not here’ forming the unit Infinite H with the other member, Dongwoo.

At first we weren’t going to do it but then we suddenly got to do it. We practiced and divided our rapping parts in the car coming back from an event in Yeosu, and then recorded it at 4AM. There was originally someone featuring for the vocal parts, but since that person told us a day before getting on stage that she couldn’t come so we got to do it. We memorized the melody just the day before so we had a lot of dissatisfactions and we were very stressed. Since I’m the type to be really anxious if I can’t practice, it was very hard. There weren’t even stage directions, so when we rehearsed the day before, I explained with detail that it would be nice if it was done like this with the chairs, so it got prepared. I wanted to showcase a perfect stage, but since we revealed the performance at an incomplete state, it was really embarrassing, like we were half-naked.

You seems to have a tendency for perfectionism.

I don’t even clean up well at the dorm but, I’m the type to be really careful about our performances. I have the tendency to be obsessed about the degree of completion of it, it’s like a disease. Even when putting on our in-ears, the other friends stick only one piece of tape but I stick two, I also use two pieces of tape when we have to stick a wire behind our neck. If I make a mistake, I get upset so I try to do it perfectly.

To recover from your disappointment, should Infinite H promote? (laughs)

Our CEO didn’t make a definitive decision yet. Actually, in the middle of each concert I asked “Everyone, you like this song right? Should we promote it?” on purpose to let our CEO hear the reactions. Since we’re a team that prepared a lot, we’re firstly receiving several songs and are actually recording them. I don’t know if Infinite’s album or something else is going to be released before this, but even if we release an album, we didn’t decide yet about whether we will promote it or not.

But aren’t you originally a member focusing on rapping and dancing in Infinite? We already felt it in the ballad ‘Only Tears’ from the last album but it feels like your vocals improved a lot.

Since I liked the song, I wanted to do well whether we released a CD or not. When we first debuted, someone told me “You can just dance. Why are you trying to rap and sing as well? If you want to be outstanding, you should just develop your already good dancing skills”. So at that time, I practiced even more out of spite, instead. Of course, it feels like that person wanted the main vocals to just sing well, the one in charge of dancing to just dance well and the rapper to just rap well for the whole balance of Infinite to be good but I didn’t think so. Because it’s the best if I do everything well.

A concert is a concert, but wittily, in the middle of each concerts or even during Mnet ‘Infinite’s Ranking King’ (aka ‘Ranking King’), you showed your entertainment skills by creating punch lines and such.

I actually don’t have a big ambition in entertainment but if you tell me to, I can really….. do well. (Laughs) As for the punch line, it just came out accidentally. The thing I want to thank Ranking King’s staff crew for is that, when I said something even only once, they kept on bringing it back up in the captions. So when watching it, even I thought ‘Ah, I think it would work if I give it a punch line feeling’. On the reality programs the funny comments just come out well when I film with the members, but I don’t know if it would come out well if I was filming by myself.

It seems that you’re more at ease on stage but in other fields like entertainment and dramas as well.

I definitely got more confident about it since I accumulated another experience. When I was promoting 2 years ago, I was scared of the camera but now, I don’t care whether the camera is here or not.

It seems that you’ve subtly adapted to the camera angles.

The camera director and the people in charge of the lighting taught me a lot. “Lower your head a bit more,” they taught me like this about the angles. Ingook hyung also gave me this advice, “If you want to come out prettily, show yourself well to the camera director.” They showed me things like these so I learnt a lot while watching it.

So how do you look best while filming? (laughs)

I don’t know what I have to do to look good, but I have to know for sure what angles make my face look weird. For example, isn’t there a scene where Yoonjae and I see Taewoong hyung (Song Jongho) and Siwon (Jung Eunji) hug in front of the house? Back then, there was a shot where they filmed me from the bottom right, and when I monitored it after that, it came out really ugly. Luckily it got edited out and it didn’t get broadcasted. (laughs)

You must’ve thought about formally learning how to act while learning about these aspects of dramas.

I want to learn properly. But it’s not like anyone was learning acting. Even in my opinion, I don’t know by how much my skills are going to improve when learning this, and I don’t really have the chance to learn it either. Even when I got in the crew for , I thought that the company was obviously going to give me acting lessons, but they didn’t. (laughs) So I tried to study by myself. Even when watching movies, I’m not just watching, I plan to study how does this person act.

Don’t you want to have a role with a different image that then the one you showed in this drama?

It’s fun to act out a role that is different from how I am in reality. Since it’s something I can’t do usually. So I want to try to do a movie of a slightly higher level, with action and swearing. Wouldn’t I be able to show things I couldn’t show since I’m an idol? In the past, I thought that since actors release stress while acting, I should divide it in small parts to film, but even when I’m in front of the camera for just 15 seconds, it was pleasing to act as another person.

Since you started to have fun like this while acting, wouldn’t you want to immediately start another acting project?

Since I don’t know when I’ll get to act again, I am worried. I wonder if the next time won’t happen in a very long time. I’m slowly getting to grasp the feel of acting but it’s a bit sad to end it so suddenly. I also think that if I do it again I would be able to do better, but isn’t my first job Infinite? I think I have to promote as a singer for a while, give it more time and work hard.




As expected Infinite is the most important thing to you. (laughs)

Infinite is number one. Since it got edited out, it didn’t appear on broadcast but, Sunggyu hyung asked me on ‘Ranking King’ “Is    more important or is ‘Ranking King’ more important?”.  I replied without hesitating ‘Ranking King’. I’m doing the drama with other people but ‘Ranking King’ is under the name of Infinite. But if people from ask me, wouldn’t I say that the drama is more important? (laughs)

trans. cr; emilie & nahbit @ infinite updates | source cr; 10asia via boo0412 ; take out with full credits