Gong Myung Opens Up About His Ambitious Personality, What He Learned While Filming "Extreme Job," And More

Oct 17, 2021

“Lovers of the Red Sky” actor Gong Myung recently participated in a pictorial and interview for GQ Korea!

In the interview, which took place hours before the first broadcast of the drama, Gong Myung expressed his excitement and also curiosity for how the drama would turn out. “I’m curious how the director brought it to completion,” he said. “You know, one of the reasons I chose this drama was because of director Jang Tae Yoo.”

The actor had made a name for himself thanks to his role in “Extreme Job” and also received plenty of attention for his role in the JTBC drama “Melo Is My Nature.” Regarding the low viewership ratings of the latter drama, Gong Myung said that numbers and data meant little to him. Instead, what matters most to him are “the teamwork between the actors and other things related to acting.”

In “Lovers of the Red Sky,” Gong Myung takes on the role of the free-spirited Prince Yangmyeong, who wanders around in search of beauty. When asked what he personally finds to be beautiful, Gong Myung responded, “The small things. When I sit at a window frame made of wood on a sunny day, I think to myself, ‘Ah, this is beautiful.’ I think that when I’m driving in the pouring rain as well. When I exercise alone or go camping and slowly make my way home, I feel it when I see the sun setting beyond the bridge. Even if the scenery isn’t that magnificent, I think beauty can be found everywhere.”

When the conversation turned to his personality, Gong Myung pointed out his effort to never avoid things he doesn’t want to do. “I’ve done this since I was a kid,” he shared. “Even if something happens that I don’t want to happen, or even if I regret something I did, I simply remind myself that it will pass and that it’s okay as long as I learned something. You can use what you learned in order to not make the same mistake again.”

Gong Myung added that this doesn’t mean he never stumbles. “If something happens to make me stumble, I let myself fall. I enjoy challenging myself, but I also have a strong desire to succeed. I want to do well, and I hate losing.”

The actor emphasized his desire to see through every challenge he takes on, offering up an example regarding a book he had bought recently. “I had been reading Bernard Werber’s ‘Tomorrow the cats,’ but I hadn’t finished it due to the excuse of being busy. It wasn’t like I’d thought long and hard about buying the book. I just bought it because the cover was cute. Nevertheless, if I buy it with the intent of reading it, I have to read it. Yesterday I had some time so I decided to finish it, and I did just that.”

Gong Myung also revealed his empathetic side, noting that he has a tendency to empathize with things he sees in documentaries and on the news. When the interviewer mentioned that it could be a good quality for an actor to have, Gong Myung agreed, saying that it was one of his strong points. “Thanks to that, I’m able to concentrate more while acting, and also express my character more honestly.”

As he empathizes with and immerses himself in his role, Gong Myung also finds it hard to switch roles when the time comes. He commented, “At first, I couldn’t understand what other actors meant when they said it was hard and tiring to get out of a role after immersing themselves in it, but after acting myself I realized it’s true. Immersing yourself in a role and then coming out of that role just to immerse yourself in another is a form of training. I think I’ve trained myself after getting a lot of cuts and bruises along the way.”

Gong Myung is very strict with himself and considers his discipline to be a form of self-care. “As I work in a field where I have to be visible to other people, I have to be even stricter with myself,” he said. “There’s times when parents are strict with their children because they love them, right? Because they want them to do better.” He added with a laugh, “My self-love is kind of intense, huh?”

The actor also reflected on a time when he felt burned out by his acting career, saying that it was during that time that he got involved in “Extreme Job.” Describing how the film changed his outlook, he said, “Before that I wasn’t necessarily pessimistic, but the nuance was different. The cast members ranged in age from their 20s to their 50s, so I gained an immense amount of experience there. I learned many necessary facets of acting there, such as how to think deeply about acting, how to carry myself in a natural way, how to have a good-natured attitude, and how to be sensitive to small details. I learned not only about acting but about life as well.”

Gong Myung shared that now he has more of a grasp on what makes him happy and puts him in a peaceful state of mind. “Even if I only physically rest for a short amount of time, I’ve found a way to rest more effectively than before.”

When asked about the one thing he would hate to lose, Gong Myung’s answer was his ambition. He explained, “I’ve enjoyed exercising since I was a child and have done it for a long time, but I’m not particularly good at it. My ambition and my desire to not lose was what kept me going. Even now, no matter how insignificant it is, it’s my ambition that makes me want to focus and do better. If you took away my ambition there’d probably be nothing left of me, haha.”

The interviewer commented that although he has a desire to win, he doesn’t seem to be the type to want to beat others. Gong Myung replied, “There was a time when I tried to beat other people. When you exercise, you can win with your score. But now I’m not like that. It’s because I’m not competing against others, but against myself.”