Kim Young-kwang Wants to Keep Making Rom-Coms After 'Take Charge of My Heart'

"I think the best part of romance is that you feel like you're floating the whole time you're working on it," Kim Young-kwang said. "It kind of turns your heart and your thoughts into something more beautiful. I'd catch myself thinking, 'Why is the sky so pretty?'"

The actor's recent work has leaned heavily toward crime and thrillers. His credits include "Eun-soo Good Day" (Eunsu Joeun Nal), "Trigger" and "Evilive" (Agin Jeongi). His new Netflix series, "Take Charge of My Heart" (Nareul Chungjeonhaejwo), marks his return to romantic comedy after a long break. Kim said he initially felt awkward while acting in the genre. The more they filmed, though, the more he settled into the show's playful mood.

The series follows Baek Ho-rang (Kim), a man whose artificial heart battery has run out, and Na Bo-bae (played by actress Chae Soo-bin), a woman with electric powers. Just two days after its release, the show ranked No. 3 worldwide on Netflix's TV shows chart.

Kim said the cartoon-like premise caught his interest when he first read the script. The timing also worked. After a stretch of "genre dramas," a term commonly used in the Korean entertainment industry to describe crime and thriller series, he wanted a break from the heavy mood.

"A lot of people around me said it would be fun," he said. "I also felt like I needed to do it before I got any older. If I get older, offers like this might stop coming." He laughed.

Baek Ho-rang is a third-generation chaebol heir, the grandson of a family that runs a major business group. He lives by strict plans and has an artificial heart. Kim said he Kim said he considered every detail of the character, including his wardrobe.

"He's a character who chases perfection," he said. "So I tried to give his outfits a sharp, angular feel to show how thorough and precise he is."

The rich heir is one of the most familiar tropes in romance dramas. Kim said he didn't try to fight that.

"I decided to play the cliché like a cliché," he said. "My goal was for viewers to feel, 'Yes, this is the taste I know.'"

Even with a familiar setup, returning to romance after a long break made him nervous.

"There were a lot of embarrassing scenes, so I kept thinking, 'What if I can't pull this off?'" he said. "But the good thing about romance is that you naturally sink into the role while you shoot. Later on I got even more into it. I started thinking, 'So what? I'm Baek Ho-rang,' and I got bolder and bolder." He laughed again.

Some moments in the script were hard for him to understand. While reading Baek Ho-rang's lines, he sometimes asked, "Would a real person actually do this?" Each time, the production team and his co-star Chae Soo-bin cheered him on.

"Early on, it was a real fight with myself," he said. "I kept talking with the director, and we worked out a tone and attitude that fit this show. And the drama scenes that Na Bo-bae writes in the story are honestly so unrealistic. But it felt like a waste to just get through them. So I thought, 'Whatever,' and went all in."

His chemistry with Chae has drawn attention, too. At 190 cm tall, Kim towers over his co-star, and viewers picked up on what Korean fans call "size chemistry,"referring to the visual contrast between a taller actor and his shorter co-star. Asked what his strength is in romantic comedy, he looked shy and hesitated for a long time before answering.

"First of all, I'm tall," he finally said. "It can look good on screen."

"The more we filmed, the closer I got to Chae Soo-bin," he said. "I think that made the two leads look more natural, and I started seeing them as a lovely pair. She's really cute. She's like a squirrel, or a koala. She's the kind of actor who makes you feel like she might break if you touch her, like you have to handle her gently."

Kim said filming a rom-com made him noticeably brighter. "I didn't think genre affected me that much," he said. "Now I see that it does."

"When I was doing genre shows, it felt like there was a wall in front of people," he said with a laugh. "Doing a rom-com, that wall came down, and the world looks brighter."

He plans to stick with romantic comedies for now. His next project, which he is currently filming, is also a romantic comedy.

"I'm the type who digs into one thing once I start," he said. "After 'Take Charge of My Heart,' I'm shooting another rom-com, and I want to keep that mood going for a while. Later, if a good genre or a different project I want to try comes along, I guess I'll do that, right?"