Speaking with press at a cafe in Seoul’s Samcheong-dong on the 23rd, the Netflix star shared that she helped close their 10-year age gap by introducing Kim to trending internet jokes. “Our hair, makeup and styling team is always trading memes,” she said. “Seon-ho oppa asked, ‘What’s so funny?’ He didn’t know any of them, so I started teaching him one by one.”
Trends move fast ― but so does Kim. “These days he’s the one who suddenly starts singing a viral song,” Go laughed. “When I ask what it is, he goes, ‘You need to step it up.’ I may have created a monster. Now he’s even more on top of trends than I am.”
"Can This Love Be Translated?" follows multilingual interpreter Joo Ho-jin (Kim Seon-ho), who’s assigned to the world’s biggest A-list star, Cha Mu-hee (Go Youn-jung), sparking an unpredictable romantic comedy. As Mu-hee ― a global icon with a carefully guarded inner life ― Go layers glamour with nuanced emotion, carving out standout rom-com presence.
Go still remembers the thrill of hearing she’d be working with Kim. “I was obviously excited. I’ve admired his acting for a long time,” she said. “He’s so natural ― he knows when to lean in and when to pull back. Comedy is hard for me, but he’s great at it. He’s versatile, and I always hoped I’d get the chance to learn from him. I was lucky to have him as a partner.”
On set, she made a point of studying him. “I watched Seon-ho’s performance and mirrored parts of it. Things like his attitude on set,” she explained. “Having a great model right next to me was motivating and inspiring. Seeing someone with 10 more years of experience genuinely enjoy the work made me think, ‘I want to be that happy doing this in the future.’”
While Mu-hee is impulsive and blurts things out in stressful moments, Ho-jin is measured and logical. Off-screen, they’re the reverse: Kim is the feel-first “F,” and Go is the more analytical “T.” To deepen their understanding, they even swapped lines during table reads. “If I set Mu-hee’s mood swings at a certain level, he pushed the range wider,” Go said. “It showed me, ‘Oh, I can go that far ― I can broaden this.’ It helped a lot.”
As with any romance, chemistry is everything ― and Go credits much of theirs to Kim’s reactions. “I handled the action; he handled the reaction,” she joked. “In rom-coms, the heroine reads as lovable because the hero looks at her that way. He did that so well. I had plenty to do, but without him, it wouldn’t have come together. I relied on him a lot and learned so much. That’s how we built each scene.”
All 12 episodes of "Can This Love Be Translated?" premiered on Netflix on Jan. 16 and are currently trending, reaching No. 2 on Netflix’s Global Top 10 for Non-English TV.
[Photo= Netflix]
(SBS Entertainment News | Kang Sun-ae)