Lee Joon-hyuk's First True Lead Ends at a Series-High 6.2% Rating

"I didn't make a fortune off my face from the start," Lee Joon-hyuk said, and he sounded a little aggrieved about it. The actor, who played team leader Gong Eun-tae in Lotto 1st Place Also Goes to Work, has spent the drama's run fielding compliments on his looks, and in a recent interview he pushed back with some comic frustration.

The series closed with a final-episode rating of 6.2% nationwide on tvN, its highest of the run, according to Nielsen Korea. Episode 8 had already set a then-best 5.9% on the 5th. The Tving original premiered on the 10th of last month and took the top spot for weekly subscriber contribution on the platform for four straight weeks, and it also reached No. 1 among Disney+ dramas in Japan.

"I get angry when I look in the mirror"

Lee, who says he is 43 by his own count, was blunt about the praise. "Honestly, there was nothing for 20 years," he said. He added that he struggled through a longer career than Eun-tae's, and that attention to his appearance seems to have arrived simply because he has stayed an actor for so long. Looks trends aren't fixed, he noted, and people may find him ordinary once they shift, so for now he is only grateful.

The humor sharpened when he talked about age. "What does a compliment about being handsome even mean at 43? I get angry when I look in the mirror," he said. Friends have married and settled into family life, and he described one close friend he hasn't seen in about three years: they mostly trade photos of the friend's child while Lee is shooting overnight.

He also explained why Eun-tae doesn't read as a fantasy figure. Rather than leaning on his looks, he thought about how people in their 20s see colleagues in their 40s and 50s, who look somewhat younger than before. The team cut a cigarette-smoking trait from the character and went for a cleaner office-worker feel.

A first true lead after nearly 20 years

Lee began acting in 2007 with the single-episode drama Drama City: The Way Love Moves Us. He has led The Good Bad Mother's... no, the Tving spin-off Dong-jae, the Good or the Bad, but because it belongs to the Stranger universe, he considers this his first real starring role.

Getting it made wasn't easy. He heard the script was rejected many times before production started, and he assumed his lack of hit titles didn't help. Having played supporting parts for a long time, he wanted any lead role to be an ensemble piece, with many actors getting their moment. "When it actually happened, I thought, I wasn't wrong," he said.

He likened the shoot to jazz: improvisation, with rhythm built between performers, camera movement, lighting and direction all landing together. Seo Hyun-woo, who plays assistant manager Yang Jun-ho, got special thanks. "I trusted that whatever direction I went, he would match me," Lee said, calling him the best actor and adding that praise for Seo felt better to him than praise for himself. He credited Baek Ye-in, Hong Jin-ki and Ha Yul-li as well.

The drama follows Eun-tae, a sales team leader at fashion distributor Hongsung International who keeps going to work after winning 1.3 billion won in the lottery. In the finale, the team beats the rival CGM to the Chinese market, Eun-tae is promoted to deputy general manager of a new planning department, and the perennial assistant manager Jun-ho becomes a section chief.

Lee found parallels with his own industry in the workplace story. Sometimes you have to push yourself forward, sometimes resist, he said, and few jobs shuffle rank regardless of age the way acting does. He also tried to copy Eun-tae's instinct to give junior colleagues chances once he has some authority. At the press event for Dong-jae, the Good or the Bad, newcomers couldn't attend, he said, but this time he had enough standing to bring everyone.

Chasing something different next

Lee's credits include the films Along with the Gods, The Roundup: No Way Out and 12.12: The Day, and the dramas Stranger, Designated Survivor: 60 Days and Vigilante. Next up are the dramas Awakening and Calm Lie, plus the film Vampir.

He says challenge and transformation drive his choices, and people around him often ask why he picks what he does. He heard it about Dong-jae, and when he first read the Stranger script the character was the strangest one on the page, even as polished leading-man offers came in. He also admits he bores easily, and after six months watching one project during a shoot, he wants something completely different.

Awakening, which he just wrapped, is an occult drama for SBS's Friday-Saturday slot. He went in boldly, then discovered how punishing it is, with constant all-night shoots, few references to lean on, and priest robes hotter than a suit. He approached it, he said, with the spirit of training.

What ties it together for him is respect for hard work behind the scenes. Watching other films and dramas, he notices where an actor or a scene clearly cost someone dearly, and he likes that Lotto 1st Place Also Goes to Work lets viewers look at pain from several positions.