Actor Chae Won-bin portrays show host Dam Ye-jin in the SBS drama “We Sold Out Again Today.” Courtesy of SBS

From the actor came the words, “It feels like debuting again.” For Chae Won-bin, each project is not about becoming accustomed but about beginning anew every time.

On the 2nd, at a building in Gangnam-gu, Seoul, during a wrap-up interview for the SBS drama “We Sold Out Again Today,” Chae Won-bin said that each time entering a new project feels like debuting again. Chae said, “Because the set always begins in a new space with a new person, this still does not feel familiar.” Although Chae has learned and grown in big and small ways since debut, the moment of meeting the camera again always feels like the first time.

In the first rom-com taken on with nerves, Chae Won-bin played sellout show host Dam Ye-jin. In the story, Dam Ye-jin is a top show host who rings up $75,000 (100,000,000 KRW) per minute and $750,000,000 (1,000,000,000,000 KRW) in cumulative sales. To shape the character, Chae previously visited an actual home-shopping broadcast set, and confessed that the pitch was so persuasive that even she felt tempted to buy sunglasses. More than flashy eloquence, the bigger task was how to show the kind of trustworthiness that ‘makes you believe.’

The most vivid on-set memory was, unexpectedly, “chickens.” “Among the outdoor scenes, the scene of catching a chicken that had run away remains the most memorable,” Chae said. “They told me, ‘Use your blocking however you like. We will place the chickens however we want,’ so I remember filming freely and joyfully.” It was also the first time doing everyday CG. “I have done CG in action genres, but everyday CG was a first. The chickens looked so real that I thought, So it can be made this way, too.”

The mindset toward work was firm. “I consider every genre and every project a healthy kind of pressure,” Chae said. Chae also said, “If something comes to my heart and I do not do it, I will meet it again someday,” adding, “It is always an assignment to overcome.” When faced with things beyond control or with stress, “I take a step back and look,” Chae said. At the same time, Chae added, “Acting should be one of my identities, not everything that makes me who I am, so it will feel less hard.”

“We Sold Out Again Today” is a project that will stay for a long time. “The atmosphere on our set was truly good,” Chae said. “I remember not just the scenes but also the feelings when we filmed them and the conversations we shared. That is why it feels like a project I will take out and revisit for a long time.”

Now comes the next challenge. As a next project, Chae is preparing the fusion period drama “Suseong Palace Affair Records.” “The script was fun and the character was attractive,” Chae said. Although it is not the first historical drama, both the character and the manner of speech are completely different, so Chae is repeatedly speaking the lines out loud to refine them.