Actor Baek Ji-hye. Provided by Eljulai Entertainment
It is clearly an unlikeable character, yet you keep finding yourself watching. The actor's charm has even raised the character's likability.
Actor Baek Ji-hye, in ENA's Monday-Tuesday drama ‘Honor : Their Court’, plays a character who is unlikeable yet impossible to turn away from, revealing a powerful presence that drives the narrative.
Lee Seon-hwa is a character who is not easy to like at first. She is rude, rough, and calculating. Even so, strangely, you cannot take your eyes off her. She is portrayed as unlikeable but impossible to ignore. From the moment she appears, she grabs the public's attention, eliciting reactions such as “A character so intense it is hard to watch” and “It is uncomfortable, but I cannot look away” right after the broadcast.
Provided by Eljulai Entertainment
Actor Baek Ji-hye. Provided by Eljulai Entertainment
Lee Seon-hwa calls herself ‘mom’ and refers to Min-seo (played by Jeon So-young) as her ‘daughter’, but this relationship cannot be explained in the language of family. What binds the two is not blood or protection, but the time of survival they have spent back-to-back for a long time. It is closer to a relationship that has endured by leaning on and pushing away each other than one of having protected each other.
In episode 3, the fissures in this relationship become clearer. After recognizing that Min-seo is connected to Connect, Lee Seon-hwa treats it as a piece of information. At the L&J law firm, she says, “I know a kid who works at Connect,” and demands 30 million won from Yoon Ra-young (played by Lee Na-young) and Hwang Hyun-jin (played by Lee Chung-ah) in exchange for providing the information. This goes beyond a simple negotiation; it is a choice to pull out danger as a bargaining chip.
Baek Ji-hye does not reduce Lee Seon-hwa to a simple villain. The face that proposes a deal is layered with both anxiety and conviction, and the words toward Min-seo mix control with concern. She does not speak of love. Instead, she repeats only the logic that “We must survive.” That harsh, selfish language is the only survival method Lee Seon-hwa has learned.
Actor Baek Ji-hye. Provided by Eljulai Entertainment
Meanwhile, Baek Ji-hye has steadily drawn attention for performances that finely capture her characters' inner worlds across films and dramas. Through the dramas ‘Parole Examiner Lee Han-shin’, ‘Doona!’, and ‘Race’, and the film ‘Woongnami’, she has built an acting style that convincingly layers cracks of emotion within unexaggerated expression. In particular, she has shown strength in rendering realistic characters by expressing anxiety, deficiency, and tension with controlled breathing.
Baek Ji-hye's starring film ‘Chung Chung Chung’ won the Jury Special Award at the 30th Busan International Film Festival, and in the work she played the role of the unstable teenage girl ‘Ji-suk’, drawing raw emotions and a precarious psyche with density and earning critical acclaim. Through this, she once again proved her powerful presence.
Meanwhile, the ENA Monday-Tuesday drama ‘Honor : Their Court’ airs every Monday and Tuesday at 10 p.m. on ENA. It is also available on KT Genie TV and Coupang Play.
