‘The East Palace’ star Nam Joo-hyuk: “I took inspiration from the game’s ‘movie cuts’… Filming ‘The East Palace’ felt like playing a game for me”

Actor Nam Joo-hyuk revealed how he prepared for his role as “Goo-cheon” in <동궁>—〈The East Palace〉.

On the afternoon of the 21st, in some location in Jongno-gu, Seoul, Nam Joo-hyuk, a lead actor in the Netflix series <동궁>—〈The East Palace〉, met with Cineplay to discuss a range of topics, from behind-the-scenes stories about the project to the process of preparing for his role. Released one episode at a time as of the 17th, <동궁>—〈The East Palace〉 is a Netflix series in which Goo-cheon (Nam Joo-hyuk), a man who can move between the world of ghosts and the real world, and Saenggang (No Yoon-seo), a palace lady who harbors secrets, receive a summons from the king (Cho Seung-woo) and set out to unravel the curse embedded in the Crown Prince’s palace. In <동궁>—〈The East Palace〉, Nam Joo-hyuk plays a character who cuts down ghosts, moving between the real world and the ghost world, and takes on action using a sword as he faces off against surreal beings.

Nam Joo-hyuk said, “I played ‘PlayStation’ games from when I was young. In PlayStation games, there’s something called ‘movie cuts,’ where in-game scenes are made like movies. I even played the game just because I wanted to watch the movie cuts.” He added that when preparing for the action in <동궁>—〈The East Palace〉, he used the game’s “movie cuts” as a reference. He then said, “The genre is different from <동궁>—〈The East Palace〉, but the experience I built up by playing things like ‘Call of Duty,’ ‘The Last of Us,’ and ‘Elden Ring’ helped me when it came to doing action in the ghost world of <동궁>—〈The East Palace〉.”

<동궁>—〈The East Palace〉 is streaming all episodes on Netflix.