Cha Tae-hyun joins variety drama The Best Hit as actor and director

by tineybeanie

Actor Cha Tae-hyun (The Producers) will be co-producing upcoming KBS variety drama The Best Hit with 1 Night 2 Days PD Yoo Ho-jin, serving as both director and actor on set. That’s super interesting, as it will be Cha’s first attempt at taking on a directorial role. From the current plot description, it sounds like a low-key slice-of-life drama about young adults in their early twenties as they worry and learn how to connect with people, how to love, and how to succeed in this harsh world. And I can definitely see that concept working out with a reality-TV-type format.

Cha joins Yoon Shi-yoon (Mirror of the Witch), who will play a popular boy band member whose complicated love life is the favorite fodder of tabloid magazines, while Kim Min-jae (The Lonely Shining Goblin) will be an idol trainee with dreams of making it big. Lee Se-young (Laurel Tree Tailors) is set to play Kim Min-jae’s best friend, who has been studying for, taking, and failing her civil servant exam for the past three years. Cha’s role in all of this is as a small entertainment company CEO, who used to be a hotshot manager back in the day. For years, he’s harbored a one-sided love for Yoon Son-ha’s (Six Flying Dragons) character, who was a famous singer a long time ago.

For a while, the plot included a storyline about a top celebrity father who suddenly vanishes and then comes back twenty years later to reunite with his son. But I’m not sure how that aspect will fit in with the current cast of characters, or even whether that melo arc will be kept with the addition of funny-guy Cha to this project.

This project will also be a collaboration with Green Snake Media’s PD Seo Soo-min, the veteran variety PD who was was the initial director behind The Producers, which attempted to bring mockumentary-style drama to dramaland. It’ll be PD Yoo’s first foray into the drama genre, and also Cha’s first project as a producer (in real life); but while he’s primarily an actor, he’s a funny entertainer all around and has been a regular in the variety world for decades, culminating in his current position as one of the core cast members of 1 Night, 2 Days.

In an interview that they did for The Best Hit, Cha and PD Yoo spoke about how they have defined their respective roles. Cha will be the main liaison with the actors, directing the performance aspect because he has more experience with dramas, while PD Yoo will take care of editing and production because he knows how to pull out the best emotional gems from each scene. Cha had always wanted to try his hand at being behind the camera, but he thought it might have been beyond his level of ability.

So he was surprised but immediately interested when PD Yoo asked him to help him out with The Best Hit. After a period of deliberation, he decided that he wanted to take on this challenge of doing a drama and serving in a new capacity, and his decision was tipped in that direction largely because he really likes PD Yoo. He believes that Yoon Shi-yoon, who is also a 1N2D cast member, probably signed on because of PD Yoo as well. On the other side, PD Yoo could think of no better person to help him transition from the variety to the drama world than Cha Tae-hyun, who has been such an important figure in both.

KBS’s The Best Hit is planned to be broadcast this May.

Via Sports Chosun, MBN

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