Nana Gets Real

From a singer in the South Korean girl group after schoolto an actress fronting the small screen, this enigmatic star has done it all. She reflects on her reinvention as an idol-turned-actress and her unapologetic ambitions

- Farisia Thang

Nana has lived many lives over the last 14 years.

She debuted as a member of After School, one of South Korea's top girl groups at the time, then continued her career as an artist with After School’s sub-group Orange Caramel before joining the sub-unit A.S. Red shortly after. She has also walked runways, modelled and hosted. And she did all this for six years before she entered the realm of acting.

Acting had never interested her — not at first, anyways. She recalls, “I just loved to sing and dance, and I didn’t even think about this other world called acting amidst my busy schedule.” Things started changing when she started getting calls for roles that would fit her image. “I took a short class and went for the auditions without having any knowledge of what to do. And at every audition, I would receive disappointing feedback — that my acting skills were poor, or that my image was good, but that I was lacking in acting skills, and that I should practise more.”

Such feedback might have come across as harsh, but she never took the critique personally or let it intimidate her. Instead, it served as a question she was committed to find answers to. The 31-year-old shares, “I became curious every time I would hear such things from so many experts. What is acting? My curiosity multiplied with every audition I would fail. So I decided to properly study acting and I started by copying my acting teacher. Breathing, vocalisation, emotions, facial expressions, everything.”