An Eun-jin Hid Facial Palsy for Months While Filming Bad Mom in 2023

Actress An Eun-jin first noticed something was wrong on a shoot day, while brushing her teeth. Water kept slipping from one side of her mouth, a small thing she initially brushed off, until it became impossible to ignore.

Appearing as a guest on Jung Jae-hyung's YouTube channel Yojeong Jaehyeong, released on the 13th, An Eun-jin opened up about the health crisis she quietly endured during the 2023 JTBC drama Bad Mom. "I had a stroke of wind, facial palsy," she explained. "I was washing my face and brushing my teeth on a filming day, and water was leaking from one side of my mouth."

From a Small Sign to a Full Diagnosis

She admitted she didn't take it seriously at first. But as the days passed and the symptoms worsened rather than cleared up, she went to hospital and was diagnosed with facial nerve palsy. "I thought I'd rest for a few days and it would go away," she said, visibly emotional as she recalled the period. "It just kept getting worse. I was so depressed and sad."

Treatment was intense and ran on two tracks at once: daily acupuncture at a Korean traditional medicine clinic alongside strong steroid injections at a conventional hospital. Neither produced the improvement she was hoping for. The steroids brought their own complications, her face and knees would swell after something as gentle as a short walk.

How the Production Adapted

What makes her account particularly striking is what the Bad Mom team had to do to work around her condition. Because the palsy caused the two sides of her face to move on a delay relative to each other, the production shifted to filming her predominantly from the side. She finished the drama that way, swollen, and said plainly: "I completed filming still swollen like that."

She described finding it almost impossible to stay positive through the process, a rare candid note from an actress who spent those months showing up to set regardless.

An Eun-jin is currently back on screen in the KBS2 weekend drama Someone Other Than You, where she stars opposite Seo Kang-joon. The contrast with the Bad Mom period is hard to miss: she looks, by every visible measure, well.