Nam Ji-hyun and Kim Jae-young Reunite After 8 Years, Siblings Turned Lovers

Nam Ji-hyun has a ready answer for viewers wondering whether TVING's new rom-com is safe to watch outside the house: yes, even on public transit. The actress made the point on the 14th at a press conference in Seoul for Make Me Tremble (working English rendering of the Korean title 내가 떨릴 수 있게), which premieres on the 15th.

The joke addresses a real marketing problem. The series follows Gong Yeon-su (Nam Ji-hyun), a marketer at an ad agency with conservative views on dating, and Dokgo Dal (Kim Jae-young), the head of a sex toy startup. The two are tied together as client and agency, and gradually rub off on each other. For a streaming platform, a premise like that has to be sold as a romance first, and the cast and director spent much of the event doing exactly that.

A provocative premise, treated as a plot device

Director Kim Ye-ji said the subject required care. She did not want the series to dwell on the shock value of the product, and described it instead as a way to put two opposing value systems in collision and see whether that friction turns into love. She also chose to tone the material down, reasoning that trying too hard to look cool about it could put viewers off.

Nam Ji-hyun said much the same about why she signed on. The subject is unusual, she noted, but the story itself is an ordinary love story that anyone can relate to. She added that she had been wanting a romance after a stretch without one, and called the script a textbook example of the rom-com form. Kim described the finished work as harmless and lovable, something to watch "with a mother's smile."

Kim Jae-young admitted his first reaction was surprise at his character's job. What won him over was the script's pace: two people with opposite temperaments grow close quickly, he said.

Two leads with opposite instincts

Nam Ji-hyun plays the eldest daughter of a traditional head family who will not date without love. She described Yeon-su as someone with firm convictions who fears she may be trapped in a narrow world, and who keeps trying to break out of it. Mistakes and stubbornness come with that, she said, but the effort to overcome her limits is what she tried to capture.

Kim Jae-young's character holds that relationships have no set order. The actor said he is slow to approach people in real life, so Dokgo Dal's forwardness gave him pause at first. Having lived in the role, he said, he came to envy the character's lack of hesitation.

Both actors pointed to the clashes between the leads as the main draw. Nam called it the most intense fighting between a male and female lead in any rom-com she has done, less an emotional shouting match than a running effort to persuade each other, which gives the dialogue more to chew on. Kim found the same scenes endearing, and said the accumulation of those arguments makes the growing attraction feel realistic.

Reunited eight years after Tale of the Nine-Tailed... no, after siblings

The pairing carries history. Nam and Kim played siblings in tvN's Love in the Moonlight... in fact in tvN's 2018 drama 100 Days My Prince (백일의 낭군님), and this is their first project together since, now as romantic partners.

Nam said chemistry comes easier when you are comfortable with your partner, and credited Kim as a considerate, witty presence who kept the set light. Kim, for his part, said the woman he remembered as a younger sister now struck him as mature, and that her acting and reactions made him easy to lean on.

Make Me Tremble streams on TVING from the 15th.