Rain Played His First Villain After 28 Years, and It Nearly Broke Him

After 28 years in the entertainment industry, Rain, the K-pop icon and actor known offscreen as Jung Ji-hoon, finally played a villain. And by his own account, it was one of the hardest things he's ever done.

"Playing the villain was so painful," Rain told reporters at a press interview in Samcheongdong, Seoul on April 8. "I think I've said every curse word I'll ever say in my entire life. Honestly, I'm a genuinely kind person. I try to live with goodness and moral principles, so I had a lot of inner conflict while filming."

The role in question is Im Baek-jeong, the central antagonist of Hunting Dogs Season 2, now streaming on Netflix. A merciless operator of an illegal underground boxing league, Im Baek-jeong kills without guilt and obsesses over money, standing in brutal, bloody opposition to the show's two young boxer protagonists, Kim Geon-woo (Woo Do-hwan) and Hong Woo-jin (Lee Sang-yi). Season 1, released in 2023, pitted the duo against an illegal loan shark organization; Season 2, which dropped on April 3, escalates the stakes to a global criminal boxing circuit.

Rain described struggling to leave the character behind between takes. "Sometimes I'd feel a flash of rage that I couldn't explain," he said. "My wife [actress Kim Tae-hee] even asked me, 'Why do you have that look in your eyes?' Normally it wouldn't be a situation to get angry about, but I realized I was being affected by the role. So I made a conscious effort to say 'I'm sorry' and 'I apologize' more often than usual."

Director Kim Ju-hwan gave Rain significant creative freedom, deliberately leaving gaps in the script and encouraging the actor to let Im Baek-jeong emerge organically. The result is a character Rain describes as a man with no logical through-line: a narcissistic, runaway train of a human being. That interpretive openness was its own kind of pressure.

"There were many scenes with a lot of dialogue, and the director would say mid-shoot, 'Sorry, cut that line,'" Rain recalled. "I'd ask, 'Then what do I do?' and he'd say, 'Do whatever you want. How are you feeling right now?' After a while I was thinking, 'Why is he doing this to me?' In the end I just went back to the script and let myself sink into the situation. A lot of the unhinged cursing was ad-libbed."

The physical toll was equally demanding. Rain, who stays in rigorous shape year-round, brought an imposing physicality to Im Baek-jeong, a body built for violence, amplifying the character's cruelty. But achieving that look came at a cost. "I was taking painkillers every single day of filming," he said. "After shooting, I'd review the script, work out, and repeat, it wasn't easy. Even now I'm getting injections and physical therapy." He added, only half-joking, that he wants to retire from physically transformative roles: "If anyone will give me the opportunity, I'd love to do a lazy role, one that ruins my body in a different direction."

Rain said the reason he'd gone 28 years without playing a villain came down to justification. He'd been offered villainous roles before, but could never find a compelling enough reason to abandon his established image, or to ask his family to watch him on screen like that. Hunting Dogs 2 was different, specifically because of the boxing.

"I loved Season 1," he said. "When Season 2 was announced, I felt this urge: I want to show them something. I'd never fought with boxing, never shown anything through boxing before. It was completely different from any action I'd done. I went back to the absolute basics and practiced obsessively, thinking, let's go all the way to the end of what action can be."

For all the character's extremity, Rain also found an unexpected point of connection with Im Baek-jeong: the desire for recognition. "If I had to name something I have in common with him, it's the human need to be acknowledged," he said. "Life is strange, sometimes things go well, and other times you work as hard as you possibly can and it still doesn't work out. I've been through both. That's where I found a kind of sympathy for Baek-jeong."

Since the series dropped, audience reaction to Rain's performance has been mixed, with some viewers, often reacting to short clips, suggesting his physical action impressed more than his emotional range. Rain pushed back gently. "People judge based on shorts and clips, I think watching the full thing might change that perspective," he said. "But if after watching it all the way through it still doesn't land for someone, I'll accept that and work harder."