Ha Ji-won Lost 5kg and Couldn't Eat During 'Climax' Filming: 'I Was as Immersed as Someone with Anorexia'

Ha Ji-won says the role nearly consumed her, in more ways than one. The veteran actress, speaking to reporters in Seoul's Sangam-dong on April 6, revealed that her immersion in the character of Chu Sang-a for ENA's thriller drama Climax ran so deep that she found herself unable to eat during the filming period. "There was a moment where Sang-a couldn't eat, almost like anorexia," she explained. "I was so deeply inside the character that I actually couldn't eat during that time either."

The character of Chu Sang-a, a once-glamorous top actress whose life spirals into ruin, demanded an extraordinary physical transformation as well. Ha Ji-won shed 5kg from her usual weight to fit into the thin slip dresses the role required. "I naturally build muscle easily, so I stopped walking altogether and only did stretching to lose it," she said.

Climax is a high-stakes thriller drama that follows prosecutor Bang Tae-seop (played by Ju Ji-hoon) and his wife Chu Sang-a (Ha Ji-won) as they fight for survival at the apex of power, pulling back the curtain on the dark underbelly of politics, business, and the entertainment industry.

Now 30 years into her career, Ha Ji-won is winning praise for yet another bold transformation. She laughed recounting the reactions from people close to her: "My mom said my expressions in the drama scared her, and my friends joked that they were relieved they'd never given me a reason to be angry."

The drama's director was meticulous about keeping Ha Ji-won's own personality from bleeding into the character. "The director was extremely vigilant about any of my natural mannerisms or smile showing up in Sang-a," she said. "Even a hint of the real me on the monitor meant we went back and shot again." The psychological strain was real enough that she admitted to wishing the production would just end. "Sang-a is such a difficult character, and going through her identity crisis and transformation alongside her, there were moments I just wanted it to be over."

Climax tackles provocative subject matter, including the entertainment industry's sponsor culture and a same-sex relationship. Ha Ji-won said she tried to focus on the deeper human dynamics rather than the surface-level shock value. "Rather than specific events, I wanted to focus on how the desire for power drives people's choices and how each character changes," she said. "For the same-sex storyline, I tried to focus less on the fact that it was 'same-sex' and more on how this unstable person, Sang-a, sees and relates to the other character."

One of the most talked-about scenes in the drama is a same-sex kiss between Ha Ji-won and Nana, who plays Hwang Jeong-won. Ha Ji-won spoke warmly about her co-star. "Nana is someone who really puts the other person at ease, so filming the kiss scene wasn't difficult at all," she said. "I wasn't sure how well Sang-a and Jeong-won would look together, but when I watched the monitor, I thought they looked perfect."

The scene she found hardest to film, however, was one requiring a different kind of deception. In it, Sang-a confesses a false love to her bodyguard Park Jae-sang (Lee Ga-seop) while secretly orchestrating the murder of her agency CEO Oh Gwang-jae (Seo Hyun-woo). "I had to fool Jae-sang and the audience at the same time," Ha Ji-won said. "I didn't want Sang-a's true intentions to show, so we kept shooting over and over until dawn. I pushed through until I was genuinely dizzy."

When asked how she makes sense of Sang-a's morally complex choices, Ha Ji-won offered a clear-eyed interpretation: survival. "The Sang-a I analyzed is someone who makes choices for survival," she said. "Everything she does, the choices she makes, the way she changes, I saw all of it as survival." She pointed to one of the character's lines as encapsulating her perfectly: "I'd rather break than wither." "Sometimes reading the script felt cruel," Ha Ji-won admitted, "but I tried my best to understand her."

Her on-screen dynamic with co-star Ju Ji-hoon also drew strong praise. The two were working together for the first time, and Ha Ji-won said the connection came naturally. "Our chemistry was just so good," she said. "There were difficult action scenes involving physical combat, and we nailed them in just a few takes without even rehearsing." She was quick to note, though, that the characters' relationship is not a love story in the traditional sense. "It's more a marriage of mutual interests and ambition than love," she said, before adding with a smile that she hopes to reunite with Ju Ji-hoon for a proper romance in a future project.

With Climax heading into its final week, Ha Ji-won teased that the best is still to come. "Every scene has been as tense as a climax, but now it's really just getting started," she said. She specifically highlighted a late-episode verbal sparring match with actress Cha Ju-young, who plays Lee Yang-mi. "It's like a sword fight in words, it's really fun. Look forward to it."