Lee Tae-gon recalls nepotism accusations and 3-hour director standoff at his 2005 lead debut

Episode 49 of tvN STORY's Nam-gyeoseo Mwohage aired June 29. Actor Lee Tae-gon sat down and went back to the controversy that surrounded his very first lead role.

Lee and fellow actor Lee Su-gyeong both debuted in the 2005 drama Haneulisiyeo, playing siblings. The story itself was already drawing attention for its plot — a setup in which a father unknowingly takes his own biological daughter as a daughter-in-law.

For Lee Tae-gon, the drama's controversy was the least of his problems. He came in as an advertising model with no prior acting credits. Skepticism hit immediately. "Nepotism, the boss's nephew," he said, recalling the labels thrown at him. Newspaper articles at the time questioned how an ad model could carry a 50-episode drama and predicted it would fail. "I was really upset," he said. "I was determined to succeed no matter what. I gritted my teeth and did it."

Lee Su-gyeong described the pressure differently: "Not a single particle in the dialogue could be wrong."

For Lee Tae-gon, the emotional demands of the role were the hardest part. The script had crying cues written in — specific moments, specific amounts. "One tear here. Not like a faucet," he recalled. He couldn't connect to the emotion at all. "It's a love story between a man and woman, so why should I cry? Why should I be sad here? I didn't understand." He described it as a battle between himself and his character, Gu Wang-mo. The director held him for three hours trying to talk him through it. "I've never cried because of a woman, so I didn't know what emotion that was," he said. "It was really difficult."

(Twenty years on, he's apparently still processing it.)