Client: AnOther
When he was growing up, film and music weren’t prevalent in his Seoul-based family home, though his mother took a young Rowoon to church, where he would sing hymns with the rest of the congregation. He laughs: “Really, none of them have inspired me in the arts.” His father worked in real estate and his mother ran a hagwon (a private cram school). Aged 14, Rowoon joined FNC Entertainment as an idol trainee, where he spent six years in dance and vocal training. At the same time, he studied acting at high school, hoping to continue that at the university he ultimately wouldn’t end up attending. The way Rowoon tells it, he never had a preference – music or acting – so when the chance arose to debut as a fully fledged, multifaceted idol, he took it.
He was nominated as 2018’s best new actor by South Korea’s SBS Drama Awards for his supporting role in the series Where Stars Land, which follows the lives of young airline staff. When he didn’t win (it went to his close friend Ahn Hyo-seop), Rowoon was relieved and unsurprised. “Not with that acting,” he says, with a grimace. The nomination itself didn’t reassure him, either, that he was cut out for the profession: his first inkling that he was on the right path came when he worked on Extraordinary You. “There was a lot of pressure in being a main character, and my script almost fell apart because I’d read it so many times. I was so scared. But I was doing everything I could to prepare, so I was actually very liberated on set. By being so in touch with myself and the character, I felt a kind of catharsis.”
Taylor Glasby 