Nana leads Netflix thriller Maderesa as a cold-blooded criminal psychologist

Nana is taking her first solo lead role on Netflix — and the character she's stepping into is genuinely compelling. In the upcoming 8-episode thriller Maderesa, she plays Ma De-resa, a cold-blooded genius criminal psychologist and professor who gets pulled into a string of unsolved murder cases she's been quietly chasing for years. The character carries deep trauma beneath that icy exterior, and Netflix describes Nana as portraying both the fierce, unfeeling surface and a complicated emotional interior that cracks open as the cases deepen. For anyone who's watched Nana build her dramatic range across Mask Girl, Glitch, and Scandal — all Netflix — this is the role that puts her fully at the center.

This is her fourth Netflix series, but the first time she's carrying a show as the sole lead. Her period drama Scandal is also set to drop on Netflix soon, so it's shaping up to be a dense stretch of Nana content for fans. The genre pivot here is real: Maderesa is a crime thriller, not a romance or a coming-of-age story, and the premise — unsolved murders, a psychologist who interviews criminals directly, hidden truths surfacing — reads closer to Son: The Guest than anything soft.

The supporting cast adds serious texture. Kim Dan plays Park Seol, Ma De-resa's long-time research assistant who works overtime to stay in her orbit. Park Seol presents as bright and eager on the surface, but the character is written with a secret that's hard to read — and that suppressed emotional volatility is framed as one of the show's central tension points. Kim Dan is a 2003-born actor currently at the Korea National University of Arts, and Maderesa is his second confirmed Netflix project alongside Harem's Men (also starring Bae Suzy). He's the only male actor at his agency AAP, which otherwise counts Go Yoon-jung and Noh Yoon-seo among its roster.

Jeong Geon-ju rounds out the trio as Yoo A-ram, a prosecutor and Ma De-resa's longtime friend who assists the investigation. Yoo A-ram's role is described as emotionally nuanced — she's the one watching Park Seol closely, wary of his proximity to Ma De-resa. The three-way dynamic between the lead, her assistant, and her prosecutor friend is clearly where the interpersonal tension lives, layered on top of the cold-case mystery.

Behind the camera: director Jang Young-woo, who helmed tvN's Queen of Tears (2024) and Bulgasal, is making his crime thriller debut here. The writers are Kwon So-ra and Seo Jae-won, the duo behind Netflix's East Palace and OCN's Son: The Guest (2018) — the latter being exactly the kind of tightly wound genre writing that Maderesa seems to be aiming for.

No release date has been confirmed yet. Netflix has announced the cast lineup and production details, but the premiere window is still open. Given that Scandal is dropping first, Maderesa is likely a later 2025 or 2026 release — but nothing is confirmed from the source.

Who this is for: fans of procedural crime thrillers with a strong female lead, anyone already tracking Nana's Netflix run, and viewers who liked the psychological tension of Son: The Guest and want more from that writing team. The combination of that director's emotional depth and those writers' genre instincts is the creative bet worth watching.