Kim Go-eun and Park Ji-hyun tackle thirty years of friendship — and one impossible request — in Netflix's upcoming "You and Everything Else"
Kim Go-eun was crying. Not the practiced tears actors produce on cue at press events, but real, chest-heaving sobs that brought Friday's production briefing at a Seoul hotel to a standstill. She tried to speak, stopped, tried again. The room waited.
This wasn't about dredging up some personal tragedy or career milestone. Kim was trying to explain her character in "You and Everything Else," the upcoming Netflix series about two women whose friendship spans three decades of affection and grudges before one asks the other for an extraordinary favor: accompany her to Switzerland for assisted suicide.
"This always gets me — it's like my crying button," Kim finally managed, dabbing at her eyes. "That's what makes this work so precious. I kept thinking, how do I send off Sang-yeon? How do I send her off right?"
The production pairs Kim with Park Ji-hyun as Eun-joong and Sang-yeon, childhood friends whose relationship cycles through admiration, jealousy, reconciliation and everything else the title promises. Eun-joong grows up poor with a single mother, but radiates confidence from being deeply loved. Sang-yeon comes from money but was starved for love — privileged yet wounded, unable to voice what she really feels.
It's a far cry from Netflix's other Korean offerings this year, no stylized violence of "Karma," no high-stakes revenge plots of "Mercy for None." If anything, it sits closer to the quiet ache of "When Life Gives You Tangerines," except with that devastating ask at its center.
Park, who last faced off against Kim over a man in Season 2 of "Yumi's Cells," wrestled with the sheer weight of her character's final request. "Dragging someone along to witness your death — that's pretty selfish, pretty shameless," she said. "But for Sang-yeon, Eun-joong's the only person she needs forgiveness from. There's literally no one else."
To prepare, Park immersed herself in documentaries and books about end-of-life decisions. "I couldn't stop thinking about life and death. How do you act out something you've never lived through? That kept me up.
"But Go-eun was there, helping me through it. I could really lose myself in it."
The trailer shown to the press revealed female friendship in all its messy glory: two frenemies screaming at each other across different decades, sharing secrets, growing apart, reuniting. This naturally meant that the actors had to age from their twenties through their forties, with each era bringing different jobs, different circumstances, different versions of themselves. And they tackled it with gusto.
"People think you need to dramatically transform yourself to play forty," Kim said. "But actually, when you hit forty, it's not like your looks suddenly change. It's the subtle things — your energy level shifts slightly, the vibe changes. That's what I focused on."
Park, likewise, found the transitions easier than expected. "The characters had completely different jobs and circumstances each decade, so we could really play with the styling, make it obvious." She even asked if she could play the middle school version of her character too — a request the director politely turned down.
Watching the two leads talk, it was hard to miss how their real-life chemistry shaped the performances. "Having Ji-hyun play Sang-yeon — I can't even tell you how thankful I was," Kim said. "That support, that feeling of gratitude — it hit me constantly during filming, even if I didn't always say it out loud."
Park seemed no less smitten. "I looked up to her so much. Maybe even envied her a little. But envy and jealousy are different emotions. I owned it, took it in, tried to pick up what I could from her."
Director Jo Young-min, who previously unpacked the nuances of romance in "Do You Like Brahms?" (2020), brings his knack for subtle emotions to this female-driven narrative. When asked how it differs from other female friendship stories like the 2019 Chinese drama "Another Me," Jo cut straight to the core.
"It all started with one question: If your friend shows up asking you to accompany them to death, what kind of relationship makes that ask even possible? What has to happen between two people for those words to come out? That premise drives everything."
"After all, it's about companionship," Jo said. "You follow these two from their teens through their forties. If you stick with them through that whole ride, something's gonna stay with you when it's over."
"You and Everything Else" drops on Netflix Sept. 12.
moonkihoon@heraldcorp.com
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