Become A Star

Chapter 65

“I’ve always done my job to the best of my abilities, but that doesn’t mean I will sacrifice my needs.” Everything he had done was what he was capable of, and not once had he overdone himself. However, people had misunderstood that and demanded more from Woo-Jin many times before. Taking him for granted, he had been told something along the lines of, ‘Since you’ve done something similar previously, you can do it again this time.’

If it were something within Woo-Jin’s means, he would do it, but he was never the type of person who would do things for other people at his own expense. However, people only realized it after experiencing such situations. Or they criticized him, saying he had changed.

“Also, more importantly, I’ve kept my promise, so should you.”

When Woo-Jin was shooting the action scene at the buildings, he had yielded a lot to the production director’s demands. Of course, it was still within his means, and he had negotiated with the production director while making it seem as though he was making a concession. But, he had no intention of doing that without getting anything in return, nor did he have much trust in Park Jong-Hyuk. Woo-Jin simply left the dumbfounded Production Director Park Jong-Hyuk alone and got up from his seat.

It was now Monday, past midnight. In other words, he would be taking a five-day break from shooting starting now. Over the next five days, Woo-Jin forgot about the drama and solely focused on his studies. The first episode had premiered on Wednesday, but he didn’t even have time to watch it. Occasionally, people he didn’t know would walk up to him in the hallways and say good things about the drama, but it still felt very surreal to him.

The rating on the first day was 8.7%, which was definitely not a bad start when compared to Yoo Soo-Min’s previous productions. And the second episode that was aired on Thursday had a 10.3% rating. The results were very encouraging as it meant that not only had they retained their viewers from the first episode, but they had also gained new viewers.

Their competitor, The Blue Castle’s Master, continued maintaining a rating of 18%, and MBS’ drama ranked last among the three broadcasting companies with a rating of 5%. Since both the MBS drama and the highly-anticipated The Blue Castle’s Master were unable to hit 20% once again, they ended up getting mocked by amateurs. In particular, The Blue Castle’s Master became a laughing stock on the internet with people saying that the drama was all hype and no substance and that the episodes looked like a compilation of edited footage of the male and female leads’ terrible acting.

Compared to his previous performances, the male lead, Park Min, had improved a lot, but it didn’t mean that he had turned into an outstanding actor. So, the negative comments were unsurprising since people had already given up on Park Min to a certain extent, but this time around, their target was unexpectedly the female lead.

Until now, her reputation as an actress had been generally good. Her acting skills weren’t poor to the extent of suddenly becoming the center of a debate. But for some reason, both she and Park Min had performed terribly this time around. The crux of the issue was that her current role as an innocent and pitiful woman was on the opposite end of the spectrum compared to all her previous roles where she played a tough and strong-willed woman with a bright personality.

Perhaps, she wanted to diversify her role types, but judging from the results, it turned out to be a failure.  The inability of the two actors in the drama to act from start to finish created a negative synergy. Nonetheless, they took comfort in the fact that the ratings hadn’t dropped, and they were still the highest viewed Wednesday-Thursday drama by a large margin.

More importantly, the rights to the drama had been sold overseas at a high price because of Park Min’s popularity, so the producers didn’t express any dissatisfaction or complaints about him. Although the drama hadn't drawn as much attention and there was a bit of issue with the acting, it was still considered a success.