翻譯

Why Korean Superstar IU Relates So Deeply to Her Character in Netflix’s When Life Gives You Tangerines

為什麼韓國巨星 IU 與她在 Netflix 的《苦盡柑來遇見你》中的角色如此有共鳴

by Kayti Burt (翻譯 by Utopia)

(https://time.com/7265810/iu-interview-when-life-gives-you-tangerines/)

In 2011, K-pop star IU made her K-drama debut in Dream High, a series about young people trying to make it in Korea’s competitive music industry. But after more than a decade of superstardom on stage and on screen, IU says her latest role—as a working class dreamer fighting to become a poet in postwar Korea—is the one she relates to the most. IU plays Ae-sun in Netflix’s When Life Gives You Tangerines, a decades-spanning, slice-of-life drama streaming on March 7.

2011 年，韓國流行音樂明星 IU 在韓劇《夢想起飛Dream High》中首次亮相，該劇講述年輕人在韓國競爭激烈的音樂界中努力取得成功的故事。然而，在舞台和銀幕上成為了十多年的超級巨星之後，IU 說她最新的角色 —— 一個在戰後韓國努力成為詩人的工人階級夢想家 —— 是與她最有共鳴的角色。 IU 在 Netflix 的《苦盡柑來遇見你》中扮演愛純，這是一部跨越數十年、貼近生活寫照的劇集，已於 3 月 7 日開播。

“The way [Ae-sun] has such a fiery spirit, the way she's very competitive, the way she has a lot of dreams, and also her love of poems and literature,” IU tells TIME of her role. “All of those things are what I share as my actual personality in real life.”

「她（愛純）有著如此火爆的個性，她非常好勝，她有很多夢想，而且她熱愛詩詞和文學，所有這些都和我現實生活中的真實個性相似。」IU 向《時代》雜誌談到她的角色時說道。

IU, aka Lee Ji-eun, debuted into the K-pop scene as a soloist in 2008, when she was only 15, after a period of living in financial precarity with her family. Her first single, “Lost Child” didn’t make much of a splash, but 2010’s “Good Day” did, and the rest is pop music history. Last year, IU became the first female Korean soloist to perform at Seoul’s World Cup Stadium, playing to 107,000 fans over two nights for the conclusion of her world tour. Her music has built a massive, cross-generational following in Korea and beyond.

IU，又名李知恩，在與家人度過了一段經濟困難的時期後，於 2008 年以獨唱歌手的身份首次亮相韓國流行音樂界，當時她只有 15 歲。她的第一首單曲《迷兒Lost Child》並沒有引起太大的轟動，但 2010 年的《好日子Good Day》引起了轟動，其餘的都已成為流行音樂的歷史。去年，IU 成為第一位在首爾世界盃體育場演出的韓國獨唱女歌手，在她的世界巡迴演唱會結束時，她在兩個晚上為 107,000 名粉絲傾情演出。她的音樂在韓國乃至其他國家擁有大量跨世代的追隨者。

Simultaneously, IU has built a career as an actor. She played a modern woman transported back to the 10th century Goryeo dynasty in 2016’s historical romance drama Moon Lovers: Scarlet Heart Ryeo and a millennia-old, soul-bound hotel owner in 2019’s supernatural fantasy Hotel del Luna. But it was her turn as Lee Ji-an, a young woman struggling to get out from under debt and to care for her ailing grandmother, in 2018’s My Mister that IU calls a turning point.

同時，IU也建立了演員的職業生涯。她在 2016 年的歷史愛情劇《月之戀人—步步驚心：麗》中扮演了一位回到 10 世紀高麗王朝的現代女性，並在 2019 年的超自然奇幻片《德魯納酒店》中扮演了一位千年靈魂的酒店老闆。然而，IU 在 2018 年的《我的大叔》中飾演李至安，一個努力擺脫債務並照顧生病奶奶的年輕女子，這部作品被 IU 稱為轉捩點。

“Because I am someone who was originally a musician … for a long time, I don't think I felt like I had that talent or that I was satisfied with my performance,” she says. “[My Mister was] the first time where I felt like I was the most in sync with my character. And, when I saw the final result, it was something that I felt was a little bit different than what I felt on set.” The performance would lead director Hirokazu Kore-eda to cast IU in 2022’s feature film Broker, alongside acclaimed actors Song Kang-ho, Gang Dong-won, and Bae Doo-na.

「因為我原本是音樂人...很長一段時間以來，我都不覺得自己有那種天賦，也不對自己的表現感到滿意，」她說。 「《我的大叔》是我第一次感覺自己與角色最同步的作品。而且，當我看到最終結果時，我的感覺與在片場的感覺有些不同。憑藉著這場演出，是枝裕和導演決定邀請 IU 出演 2022 年的劇情片《嬰兒轉運站 Broker》，與她一同出演的還有著名演員宋康昊、姜棟元和裴斗娜。

For When Life Gives You Tangerines, IU reunited with My Mister director Kim Won-suk. When asked about how IU’s acting has changed since they last worked together, Kim said during a press conference for the new drama: “[My Mister] gave us the chance to showcase her wonderful talent to the world, but she was already a prepared actress. She was already talented and already detailed and nuanced.”

在《苦盡柑來遇見你》中，IU與《我的大叔》導演金元錫再度聯手。當被問及IU的演技自上次合作以來有何變化時，導演在新劇的製作發佈會上說：「[《我的大叔》]給了我們機會向世界展示她出色的才華，但她已經是一位有準備的女演員了。她已經很有才華了，而且已經很注重細節和細微差別了。

When Life Gives You Tangerines gives IU the unique challenge of portraying one character across multiple points in their life—and working with other actors who are portraying the same character. We first meet Ae-sun on Jeju, Korea’s biggest island, in the 1960s. As the young daughter of one of Jeju’s hard-working hae-nyeo, women who free-dive for seafood to feed their families, Ae-sun watches her mother risk her life everyday for the meagerest of catches. Still, she dreams—of becoming her class president, of becoming a poet, of making enough money to buy her mother nice things. From this beginning, we follow Ae-sun into middle and late adulthood, as she fights to make the most of what life allows.

《苦盡柑來遇見你》給 IU 帶來了獨特的挑戰，即在角色生命中的多個階段飾演同一個角色——並與飾演同一角色的其他演員合作。我們第一次見到愛純是在 1960 年代韓國最大的島嶼濟州島。愛純是濟州島一名勤奮的海女（婦女們透過潛水捕撈海鮮來養家糊口）的小女兒，她看著自己的母親每天為了捕撈到的微薄漁獲而冒著生命危險。儘管如此，她仍然夢想著成為班長、成為詩人、賺足夠的錢給媽媽買好東西。從這裡開始，我們就跟隨愛純進入中年和晚年，看她如何努力充分利用生命所賦予的一切。

Originally portrayed by a child actor, IU picks up the character of Ae-sun in her late teens and 20s, then passes the role into the capable hands of Moon So-ri (A Good Lawyer’s Wife) for Ae-sun’s 40s and 50s. “I went through a lot of discussions with the director and writer,” says IU, of the acting challenge of portraying Ae-sun in different life stages. She and Moon would say each other’s lines to one another to try to incorporate similar speech patterns. “As someone who loses both of her parents and who feels like she is left all alone in the world, you're going to get to see a lot of her defense mechanisms come into play,” says IU of teenaged Ae-sun. “She's someone who seems to be easily irritated. She, at times, feels very grumpy, and all of that is because she doesn't want to seem vulnerable to others.”

這個角色最初由兒童演員飾演，IU 飾演愛純十幾和二十幾歲時的角色，然後將這個角色交給了文素利（《風流家族》）飾演愛純四十五歲時的角色。 「我與導演和編劇進行了大量的討論，」IU 在談到飾演愛純不同人生階段的演技挑戰時說道。她和文素利會互相說對方的台詞，試著融入相似的說話方式。 「作為一個失去雙親、感覺自己在這個世界上孤身一人的人，你會看到她的許多防禦機制開始啟動，」IU 談到十幾歲的愛純時說道。 「她似乎是個很容易生氣的人。她有時會感到非常暴躁，這一切都是因為她不想在別人面前表現出脆弱。」

It helped that IU had a partner in crime in Park Bo-gum (Reply 1988), who plays Ae-sun’s love interest, Gwan-sik, in his teenagehood and twenties. (Park Hae-joon, who previously worked with director Kim on Misaeng, plays Gwan-sik in his 40s and 50s.) IU and Park have known each other since they were teens themselves, slurping down noodles for a Nongshim commercial. “From the very first day of shooting, I felt very much at ease,” says IU. “And, after we shot together and worked on this drama series for about a year, what I felt was that, even more so than what I had already known about him: Bo-gum is someone who's just a really great person.”

IU 有一個搭檔－朴寶劍（《請回答1988》），對她很有幫助，朴寶劍在劇中扮演十幾歲和二十幾歲的時期愛純的戀人寬植。 （朴海俊曾與金導演合作過《未生》，這次在劇中飾演四五十歲的寬植。）IU 和朴寶劍十幾歲時就認識了，當時他們一起為農心拍攝泡麵廣告。 「從拍攝的第一天起，我就感到非常輕鬆，」IU說。 「而且，在我們一起拍攝並製作這部劇集大約一年之後，我感覺對他的了解更加深刻：寶劍真的是一個很棒的人。」

IU says she and Park put particular work into their scenes as teenagers. Both actors are currently 31, more than a decade past their teenagehood. “We wanted to bring out that really pure and lovable side when you meet the characters as teenagers and while, at the same time, not making it feel forced,” says IU. “So we tried our best to really bring about an organic and very lovable energy. We went through a lot of different discussions, and also we did many different versions of the takes when we were shooting.”

IU 表示，她和朴寶劍為拍攝青少年時期的戲花費了很多心思。兩位演員目前都 31 歲，早已過了青少年時期十多年。 IU 說：「我們希望展現角色在青少年時期真正純潔可愛的一面，同時又不讓人覺得太過牽強。因此，我們竭盡全力，真正帶來一種有機的、非常可愛的能量。我們進行了很多不同的討論，並且在拍攝時我們也嘗試了很多不同版本的鏡頭。」

For IU, who calls Lim Chang-wook’s (When the Camellia Blooms) script “a story about solidarity, helping each other and growing each other,” acting allows her a chance to be part of a team in a way that her solo music does not. “When it comes to acting, it's an ensemble, right?” IU says. “It's a group effort, where it's not just about what I can do well, but it's really about the overall chemistry and creating something together. So it gives me a stronger sense of belonging and I think, in that sense, it's a lot more rewarding too.”

IU 稱林恦賰（《山茶花開時》）的劇本是「一個關於團結、互相幫助、共同成長的故事」，對於她來說，演戲讓她有機會成為團隊的一員，而她的個人音樂卻做不到這一點。 「說到表演，它是一個整體，對吧？」 IU 說。 「這是一項團隊努力，不僅關乎我能做好什麼，還關乎整體的化學反應和共同創造一些東西。因此，它給了我更強的歸屬感，我認為，從這個意義上來說，它也更有意義。」

While most K-dramas, given the genre’s focus on community and connection, feature an ensemble, the ambitious scope of When Life Gives You Tangerines—which is rumored to be one of the most expensive K-dramas ever made—boasts an especially impressive team both in front of and behind the camera. The reported 60 billion won budget (roughly $41.5 million) may come as a surprise to some viewers, as big budgets tend to be associated with genres like action, fantasy, or science fiction. When Life Gives You Tangerines, however, is a slice-of-life story that finds drama in the ordinary. The series follows characters across four “seasons” of their lives, from the 1960s to today, as they love, grieve, dream, and find joy in the face of life’s cruelties. The sweeping generational drama, which was in production from March 2023 to February 2024, took almost a year to film.

當大多數韓劇都會有全明星陣容，由於這部韓劇類型注重社群和連結，《苦盡柑來遇見你》的製作規模宏大——據傳是有史以來製作成本最高的韓劇之一——在鏡頭前和鏡頭後都擁有一支尤其令人印象深刻的團隊。根據報道，600億韓元（約4,150萬美元）的製作成本可能會讓一些觀眾感到意外，因為巨額製作成本通常與動作片、奇幻片或科幻片等類型有關。然而，《苦盡柑來遇見你》是一個在平凡中發現戲劇性的生活寫照劇集。該劇講述了劇中人物從1960 年代到現在的四個「季節」的人生，他們在生活的殘酷中愛著、悲傷著、夢想著、並找到了快樂。這部橫跨世代的劇情片從 2023 年 3 月開始拍攝，至 2024 年 2 月結束，拍攝時間長達近一年。

“It’s quite difficult and challenging to capture the passage of so many generations in one series, and it’s quite a rare thing as well,” says Kim. “I think it’s rare because it’s challenging to put together. It requires a big budget. There has to be a talented staff and crew.” For When Life Gives You Tangerines, Kim tapped Ryu Seong-hie, the production designer behind some of Korea’s most-celebrated films, including Park Chan-wook’s The Handmaiden and Bong Joon-ho’s The Host. “We had the best production designer in the world working with us, and the best cinematographer [in Choi Yoon-man],” Kim said. “So many talented staff members in the art department. They worked on every single detail to make sure everything is believable.”

「在單一劇集中捕捉這麼多世代的變遷是相當困難和具有挑戰性的，這也是一件相當罕見的事情，」導演說。 「我認為這很罕見，因為拼湊起來很有挑戰性。它需要很高的製作成本。必須擁有一支才華橫溢的工作人員和團隊。」在創作《苦盡柑來遇見你》時，導演邀請了柳星姬，她是韓國多部最受好評的電影的製作設計師，包括朴贊郁的《下女的誘惑》和奉俊昊的《駭人怪物》。導演表示：「我們有世界上最好的製作設計師和最好的攝影師（崔允萬）與我們合作。藝術部門有這麼多才華洋溢的工作人員。他們關注每一個細節以確保一切都令人信服。」

It’s all in service of telling a simple, timeless story of life and love that, while grounded in Korean history and culture, is poised to find a global audience as its 16 episodes are released in four installments every Friday in March. “This series is a tribute to past generations of our fathers and mothers, and it’s also an anthem of encouragement for the daughters and sons who will now navigate the world ahead,” says Kim. “We were hoping that the story will help break down the invisible barriers between generations, genders, and just people in general. We just hope it will be able to contribute to that, even a little bit.”

這一切都是為了講述一個簡單、永恆的生活和愛情故事，該劇紮根於韓國歷史和文化，將於 3 月的每個禮拜五分四期播出，共 16 集，將吸引全球觀眾。導演說：「這個系列是對我們過去幾代父母親的致敬，也是對現在即將在未來世界中前行的兒女的一首鼓勵之歌。我們希望這個故事能夠幫助打破世代、性別以及人與人之間無形的障礙。我們只是希望它能夠為此做出貢獻，哪怕是一點點。」

IU has played time travelers and supernatural CEOs. She has sung alone on a stage in a stadium built for thousands. But, after 15 years in the public eye, she finds herself seeking out roles that are relatable to all of us. In her younger years, she sought out more fantasy and other genre-related roles. “I was drawn to stories that you don't find or you don't think will happen in your actual daily life,” she says. “Since I've become over 30, I am more drawn to stories and characters that feel very natural, grounded, that tell the human side of things.”

IU 曾飾演時間旅行者和超自然的 CEO。她曾在可容納數千人的體育場的舞台上獨自演唱。然而，在公眾視野中度過了 15 年後，她發現自己正在尋找與我們所有人都能產生共鳴的角色。在她年輕的時候，她尋找更多奇幻和其他類型相關的角色。她說：「我被那些你在現實生活中找不到或認為不會發生的故事所吸引。自從我過了 30 歲，我更加被那些感覺非常自然、紮實、講述事物人性化一面的故事和人物所吸引。」