Seo Ye-ji slays role in It’s Okay to Not Be Okay in style

Believe it or not, Korean star Seo Ye-ji was initially not that okay with her character in the Netflix K-drama It’s Okay to Not Be Okay. She portrays Ko Mun-yeong, a popular but antisocial children’s author who has a penchant for dark fairytale themes. She gets entangled — nay, obsessed — with Moon Gang-tae (played by comebacking Kim Soo-hyun in his first starrer after mandatory military service), a nice guy who works as a caregiver at a psychiatric ward.

It turns out they have a shared past, but no spoilers here on the latest K-drama obsession on Netflix (always in the Top 10 most-watched in the country since its premiere) which is now on its 12th episode.

In a recent virtual presscon, the 30-year-old actress admitted that she was concerned that viewers would come to hate her character at first. “She only thinks of herself and is very selfish. I was worried about these points, but then she gradually improves on her ability to feel empathy as she listens to Gang-tae’s words and starts to sympathize and heal. I thought that viewers can look forward to this process and change in thinking of her positively,” she said.

In a series teeming with offbeat and eccentric elements, Mun-yeong fits right in. However, in the first episodes, the character’s aggressive actions towards her “love interest” stirred some controversy online. Still, thanks to her portrayal, it’s not hard to realize why Ye-ji is now being touted as the K-drama actress of the moment, especially with how she’s slaying the, in Pinoy parlance, bida-kontrabida vibe, deftly shifting from cray-cray to charming, then mean girl to being vulnerable and just longing to be loved.

Chun Youngsang for Netflix

According to Ye-ji, she enjoys the part of being a woman in love in the series. “As for the fun part, I felt stress relief through expressing her honest feelings for the man she loves so much without any reservations. While acting, I am very outspoken to Gang-tae and this relieves my stress as I’m acting. Ko Mun-yeong always says, ‘I have to get him’ and ‘I want him’ and it feels fun because it feels like resolving these things,” she said.

Ye-ji is getting more press for going a little extra in her fashion looks throughout the series. She said she really paid attention to Mun-yeong’s styling. “I tried to do a lot of research. I tried to look into some antisocial characters, and the actual personality disorder that my character probably has. And I referred to a lot of different characters. However, I came to the conclusion that (Mun-yeong) is extremely unique and really has a color of her very own. I tried to express a lot of that characteristic with what is seen from the outside so (that means) hair, makeup, costume and all of that,” she explained.

She knows that some of her fashion pieces might come across odd, outlandish or “difficult to understand.” However, she said, “I really tried to focus not on the character to be fashionable, but someone who is extremely expressive, somebody who can really express herself through what she wears. So, I think it’s important to understand that what she wears is not something to show off, but it’s actually something she puts on to defend herself.”

While It’s Okay to Not Be Okay is a story about relationships, from the romantic to the familial, the series also tackles mental health. When asked what was her favorite scene so far (at the time of the virtual presscon, they were yet to shoot more scenes), Ye-ji said that it was when Mun-yeong was taught by Gang-tae the Butterfly Hug Method. It’s a studied “therapeutic intervention” wherein you wrap your arms around yourself to help calm your anxious or agitated self. And in these trying times, it wouldn’t be a surprise if fans of the show tried it as well to feel okay, if not more than okay.

(New episodes of It’s Okay to Not Be Okay air Saturday and Sunday nights.)