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Goong/Princess Hours: English Language Casting
So sometimes I watch Korean dramas. And sometimes I develop unhealthy obsessions with them. My favorite is Goong (which means "Palace" but is often referred to as "Princess Hours" in English), and because I am me, I couldn't resist casting an English language version. The plot revolves around a royal family, so I couldn't think of any way to transfer to America. Besides, I love British people! So: a British show it is!
Summary: In an alternate version of Korea that has a constitutional monarchy, the king is dying. His family’s keeping it a secret, but they’re worried because the monarchy appears to be weak. What if when the king dies, the people decide that monarchy is just too old-fashioned and decide to do away with it altogether? That just will not do. So the king, queen, and queen mother hatch a plan: they’ll marry off Shin, the crown prince. (Somehow this is supposed to restore stability. I don’t know either. Just go with it!)
Shin proposes to Hyo-rin, his girlfriend, but she’s a dedicated ballet student, and she doesn’t want to sacrifice her future, so she refuses him. That doesn’t stop the adults, though: they remember that the former king (Shin’s grandfather) had a BFF, and the two of them had promised that the king’s grandson would marry the BFF’s granddaughter.
So one day the authorities come knocking at the door of Chae-kyeong. She’s just an average girl, but apparently her grandfather was secretly friends with the former king! Pretty crazy! And now they want her to marry the prince! Chae-kyeong isn’t too pleased by the idea—she’s only 19! She’s still in high school! She’d have to leave home! But then her family gets into some money trouble, and like heroines throughout the ages, she agrees to marry so that her family will be taken care of.
Meanwhile, still more trouble’s brewing within the monarchy. The current king’s older brother had been the heir, but he died fourteen years before. There’s an inexplicable rule that only the heirs can live in the palace, and so the original son’s wife Lady Hwa-Young and his son Yul have to leave. Lady Hwa-Young is pretty pissed and sweeps off to England where she raises Yul and ~plots her revenge~. Now that fourteen years have passed and Shin is getting married, she decides it’s the time to act. She packs up Yul and brings him back to Korea. And she’s bent on getting him to be the crown prince again.
What follows is lots of shenanigans involving plotting for the throne, Chae-kyeong trying to adjust to being a princess, a love square that’s less annoying than most (since it actually feels like it’s character driven and not just for the sake of drama), and people learning and growing together. And most of Lauren’s bulletproof narrative kinks being hit left and right. GOOD. TIMES.
Chae-kyeong is an art student. She’s quirky and silly but genuine and almost unbearably adorable. She’s much more open with her emotions and more casual than the Palace is used to. There’s a running joke about her trying to speak in the more formal language, then just giving up and embracing modern slang and no one around having any idea what she’s talking about. She brings sunshine and light into the Palace, but also chafes against the rules and requirements and feeling like she doesn’t belong. She falls for Shin pretty early, but it takes him a while to come around (or at least to admit to it), so there’s lots of angst on her end. She’s also incredibly close to her family, and they all act like friends and playmates, which is just not done in the Palace.
This is actually an incredibly difficult role to play, I think. It would be far, far too easy to come across as aggressively quirky or hopelessly naïve, but Yoon Eun Hye sells the hell out of it: you absolutely believe in her. So the English version would need someone just as talented, and I’m convinced Freya Mavor can do just about anything. She can be adorable but also break your heart, and her face communicates emotion in the best of ways.
Poor Shin. He’s been raised to be formal and to follow the rules—one of the most heartbreaking scenes on the show is one in which his parents tell him at like 5 years old that he’s no longer allowed to call them mom and dad: he has to refer to them by their titles. This hurts him so much that he basically just withdraws into himself. So he comes across as arrogant and cold and even snobby, but really he’s just desperately trying not to get hurt anymore. He feels the weight of the monarchy’s future pretty heavily but he also resents it. At first he wants absolutely nothing to do with Chae-kyeong—she’s ridiculous and inexplicable and absolutely nothing like elegant and lovely Hyo-rin. One of the great joys of the show is watching him slowly warm to her; my favorite thing on the show is when he pretends to be annoyed but can’t quite hide the fact that he’s secretly charmed by her.
Again, this role is pretty demanding. You need someone who can pull off cold and arrogant but show all of the pain underneath, then show the slow thawing of his heart without it seeming out of character--and sell the idea that he's actually a good guy. Kit can absolutely pull off serious as hell, but he’d be able to communicate a hidden humor and affection as well. Plus he has a boyishness about him that's always lurking with Shin--he's just a kid, after all.
Yul’s almost as quiet as his cousin, but where Shin’s silence is a coping technique, Yul’s comes from straight-up shyness and the fact that he hasn’t really had a lot of friends. He becomes friends with Chae-kyeong pretty quickly and then falls completely in love with her. He mostly manages not to become a Nice Guy, though he does have his moments where you want to sock him. Mostly this is because you always believe that he also genuinely likes Chae-kyeong as a human being and wants to be her friend no matter what, even if he can’t have her romantically. He’s got a lot of tension with Shin—it breaks my heart to see them be so delighted to be reunited at the start of the show but then to watch them become alienated as they’re pushed by their mothers to vie for the throne…and as Chae-kyeong comes between them.
I think this would be a stretch for Rupert, but I’m convinced he’s capable. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from the last few HP movies, it’s that he can rip your heart out with the way he looks at a girl and just makes you believe he’s head over heels in love. I’d like to see him in a more serious role, and we all know he’s really excellent at playing a good friend.
It would have been really easy to cast this character as the villain, but the show never really goes there. I always retained sympathy for Hyo-rin because it had to be really hard to choose between the guy she’s in love with and the career she’s dedicated to. That’s her central conflict: how much is she willing to sacrifice for Shin? She would have made a great princess in a lot of ways: she’s elegant and self-contained and she really gets Shin. But she also knows what she wants in life, and all of that is tied up in her love of ballet.
Antonia’s so gorgeous that sometimes it takes a while to recognize that she’s also a really excellent actor. I think she could keep the audience’s sympathy and make you understand why Shin’s in love with her.
The Queen Mother is a thing of beauty and a joy forever. She’s very much a product of her time, and she can be very serious in being dedicated to the good of the monarchy and the country. But then Chae-kyeong will say or do something ridiculous, and the Queen Mother just dissolves into giggles. She absolutely loves her family and everyone keeps the scheming from her because they love her and it would hurt her so much. She’s lovely.
JULIE ANDREWS IS THE MOST DELIGHTFUL PERSON ON THE PLANET. And has played a queen. No. Brainer.
The villain of the piece! Lady Hwa-Young had her position stolen right out from underneath her, and she’s going to get it back. The thing that keeps her real, though, is that she really does love her son. She manipulates him sometimes, but she wants the throne for him as much as she does for herself. She’s the one who manipulates and schemes and keeps things interesting.
Gillain Anderson is a goddess. The end. Also: ginger.
Kwang Hoo, the Queen breaks my heart, poor lady. She’s weighed down by her husband’s secrets (and he has some doozies) and by her duties as queen. She can come across as cold almost to the point of cruelty, but there’s always fear in her eyes. She’s petrified of what’s going to happen to her and her son (and daughter, but less so—nobody seems to doubt that Hye-myung will land on her feet). She's also very alone: she and her husband are not close. She’s quiet and seems small and timid, but she’s fierce in fighting for her son and his position. She’s the one most scandalized by Chae-kyeong’s ways.
Olivia Williams usually plays crisply capable characters, so I'd love to see her play someone really vulnerable and scared but bent on getting what she wants.
Of the main cast, we get to know him the least. He’s dedicated to his position, but he’s actually very weak—his son really is a better man than he is. He can't see any of Shin's strengths, though, only his weaknesses. He's also got some really big secrets he's guarding, too.
Colin Firth can add layers to any role. And this one…kind of needs it. Plus: we all know he can play a king.
Hye-myung is really the lucky one. She’s older than Shin, but the crown traditionally passes to sons, so she’s really gotten to do what she wanted with her life. She’s absent during the first half of the show because she’s off doing aide work in third world countries and getting her hair chopped off and being a badass. She’s totally not in the show enough, but I like her lots.
Felicity would be excellent in this role: she can balance Hye-myung’s dedication to social justice and profound compassion with her touch of whimsy. Plus, she’s just awesome.
Lady Choi is the lady in charge of turning Chae-kyeong into a proper princess—educating her on history and etiquette and such. She’s very dedicated to her job and quite strict with Chae-kyeong, but Chae-kyeong brings her around eventually.
Freema is young enough to relate to Chae-kyeong but old enough to be an actual authority figure, and she lends a lovely grace to any production.
Chae-kyeong’s family is ridiculous but very lovable. Her mom’s an overworked life insurance salesperson, her dad’s a stay-at-home dad, her little brother is a typical little brother. And they’re silly and over the top and they love each other so much even when they’re annoyed with each other. Favorite scenes from the show include when Chae-kyeong takes Shin home for the weekend. TALK ABOUT CULTURE CLASH. Fun. Times.
Remember how much fun Miranda Richardson had with the silliness of Rita Skeeter? She’d fit into the manic environment of this family but can also roll her eyes and play put-upon with the best of them.
Philip Glenister usually plays more gruff and/or badass parts, so I think it'd be fun to watch him really let loose and be ridiculous.
Will Poulter was great in Chronicles of Narnia, and I think he’d relish playing the annoying little brother.
Summary: In an alternate version of Korea that has a constitutional monarchy, the king is dying. His family’s keeping it a secret, but they’re worried because the monarchy appears to be weak. What if when the king dies, the people decide that monarchy is just too old-fashioned and decide to do away with it altogether? That just will not do. So the king, queen, and queen mother hatch a plan: they’ll marry off Shin, the crown prince. (Somehow this is supposed to restore stability. I don’t know either. Just go with it!)
Shin proposes to Hyo-rin, his girlfriend, but she’s a dedicated ballet student, and she doesn’t want to sacrifice her future, so she refuses him. That doesn’t stop the adults, though: they remember that the former king (Shin’s grandfather) had a BFF, and the two of them had promised that the king’s grandson would marry the BFF’s granddaughter.
So one day the authorities come knocking at the door of Chae-kyeong. She’s just an average girl, but apparently her grandfather was secretly friends with the former king! Pretty crazy! And now they want her to marry the prince! Chae-kyeong isn’t too pleased by the idea—she’s only 19! She’s still in high school! She’d have to leave home! But then her family gets into some money trouble, and like heroines throughout the ages, she agrees to marry so that her family will be taken care of.
Meanwhile, still more trouble’s brewing within the monarchy. The current king’s older brother had been the heir, but he died fourteen years before. There’s an inexplicable rule that only the heirs can live in the palace, and so the original son’s wife Lady Hwa-Young and his son Yul have to leave. Lady Hwa-Young is pretty pissed and sweeps off to England where she raises Yul and ~plots her revenge~. Now that fourteen years have passed and Shin is getting married, she decides it’s the time to act. She packs up Yul and brings him back to Korea. And she’s bent on getting him to be the crown prince again.
What follows is lots of shenanigans involving plotting for the throne, Chae-kyeong trying to adjust to being a princess, a love square that’s less annoying than most (since it actually feels like it’s character driven and not just for the sake of drama), and people learning and growing together. And most of Lauren’s bulletproof narrative kinks being hit left and right. GOOD. TIMES.
Chae-kyeong is an art student. She’s quirky and silly but genuine and almost unbearably adorable. She’s much more open with her emotions and more casual than the Palace is used to. There’s a running joke about her trying to speak in the more formal language, then just giving up and embracing modern slang and no one around having any idea what she’s talking about. She brings sunshine and light into the Palace, but also chafes against the rules and requirements and feeling like she doesn’t belong. She falls for Shin pretty early, but it takes him a while to come around (or at least to admit to it), so there’s lots of angst on her end. She’s also incredibly close to her family, and they all act like friends and playmates, which is just not done in the Palace.
This is actually an incredibly difficult role to play, I think. It would be far, far too easy to come across as aggressively quirky or hopelessly naïve, but Yoon Eun Hye sells the hell out of it: you absolutely believe in her. So the English version would need someone just as talented, and I’m convinced Freya Mavor can do just about anything. She can be adorable but also break your heart, and her face communicates emotion in the best of ways.
Poor Shin. He’s been raised to be formal and to follow the rules—one of the most heartbreaking scenes on the show is one in which his parents tell him at like 5 years old that he’s no longer allowed to call them mom and dad: he has to refer to them by their titles. This hurts him so much that he basically just withdraws into himself. So he comes across as arrogant and cold and even snobby, but really he’s just desperately trying not to get hurt anymore. He feels the weight of the monarchy’s future pretty heavily but he also resents it. At first he wants absolutely nothing to do with Chae-kyeong—she’s ridiculous and inexplicable and absolutely nothing like elegant and lovely Hyo-rin. One of the great joys of the show is watching him slowly warm to her; my favorite thing on the show is when he pretends to be annoyed but can’t quite hide the fact that he’s secretly charmed by her.
Again, this role is pretty demanding. You need someone who can pull off cold and arrogant but show all of the pain underneath, then show the slow thawing of his heart without it seeming out of character--and sell the idea that he's actually a good guy. Kit can absolutely pull off serious as hell, but he’d be able to communicate a hidden humor and affection as well. Plus he has a boyishness about him that's always lurking with Shin--he's just a kid, after all.
Yul’s almost as quiet as his cousin, but where Shin’s silence is a coping technique, Yul’s comes from straight-up shyness and the fact that he hasn’t really had a lot of friends. He becomes friends with Chae-kyeong pretty quickly and then falls completely in love with her. He mostly manages not to become a Nice Guy, though he does have his moments where you want to sock him. Mostly this is because you always believe that he also genuinely likes Chae-kyeong as a human being and wants to be her friend no matter what, even if he can’t have her romantically. He’s got a lot of tension with Shin—it breaks my heart to see them be so delighted to be reunited at the start of the show but then to watch them become alienated as they’re pushed by their mothers to vie for the throne…and as Chae-kyeong comes between them.
I think this would be a stretch for Rupert, but I’m convinced he’s capable. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from the last few HP movies, it’s that he can rip your heart out with the way he looks at a girl and just makes you believe he’s head over heels in love. I’d like to see him in a more serious role, and we all know he’s really excellent at playing a good friend.
It would have been really easy to cast this character as the villain, but the show never really goes there. I always retained sympathy for Hyo-rin because it had to be really hard to choose between the guy she’s in love with and the career she’s dedicated to. That’s her central conflict: how much is she willing to sacrifice for Shin? She would have made a great princess in a lot of ways: she’s elegant and self-contained and she really gets Shin. But she also knows what she wants in life, and all of that is tied up in her love of ballet.
Antonia’s so gorgeous that sometimes it takes a while to recognize that she’s also a really excellent actor. I think she could keep the audience’s sympathy and make you understand why Shin’s in love with her.
The Queen Mother is a thing of beauty and a joy forever. She’s very much a product of her time, and she can be very serious in being dedicated to the good of the monarchy and the country. But then Chae-kyeong will say or do something ridiculous, and the Queen Mother just dissolves into giggles. She absolutely loves her family and everyone keeps the scheming from her because they love her and it would hurt her so much. She’s lovely.
JULIE ANDREWS IS THE MOST DELIGHTFUL PERSON ON THE PLANET. And has played a queen. No. Brainer.
The villain of the piece! Lady Hwa-Young had her position stolen right out from underneath her, and she’s going to get it back. The thing that keeps her real, though, is that she really does love her son. She manipulates him sometimes, but she wants the throne for him as much as she does for herself. She’s the one who manipulates and schemes and keeps things interesting.
Gillain Anderson is a goddess. The end. Also: ginger.
Kwang Hoo, the Queen breaks my heart, poor lady. She’s weighed down by her husband’s secrets (and he has some doozies) and by her duties as queen. She can come across as cold almost to the point of cruelty, but there’s always fear in her eyes. She’s petrified of what’s going to happen to her and her son (and daughter, but less so—nobody seems to doubt that Hye-myung will land on her feet). She's also very alone: she and her husband are not close. She’s quiet and seems small and timid, but she’s fierce in fighting for her son and his position. She’s the one most scandalized by Chae-kyeong’s ways.
Olivia Williams usually plays crisply capable characters, so I'd love to see her play someone really vulnerable and scared but bent on getting what she wants.
Of the main cast, we get to know him the least. He’s dedicated to his position, but he’s actually very weak—his son really is a better man than he is. He can't see any of Shin's strengths, though, only his weaknesses. He's also got some really big secrets he's guarding, too.
Colin Firth can add layers to any role. And this one…kind of needs it. Plus: we all know he can play a king.
Hye-myung is really the lucky one. She’s older than Shin, but the crown traditionally passes to sons, so she’s really gotten to do what she wanted with her life. She’s absent during the first half of the show because she’s off doing aide work in third world countries and getting her hair chopped off and being a badass. She’s totally not in the show enough, but I like her lots.
Felicity would be excellent in this role: she can balance Hye-myung’s dedication to social justice and profound compassion with her touch of whimsy. Plus, she’s just awesome.
Lady Choi is the lady in charge of turning Chae-kyeong into a proper princess—educating her on history and etiquette and such. She’s very dedicated to her job and quite strict with Chae-kyeong, but Chae-kyeong brings her around eventually.
Freema is young enough to relate to Chae-kyeong but old enough to be an actual authority figure, and she lends a lovely grace to any production.
Chae-kyeong’s family is ridiculous but very lovable. Her mom’s an overworked life insurance salesperson, her dad’s a stay-at-home dad, her little brother is a typical little brother. And they’re silly and over the top and they love each other so much even when they’re annoyed with each other. Favorite scenes from the show include when Chae-kyeong takes Shin home for the weekend. TALK ABOUT CULTURE CLASH. Fun. Times.
Remember how much fun Miranda Richardson had with the silliness of Rita Skeeter? She’d fit into the manic environment of this family but can also roll her eyes and play put-upon with the best of them.
Philip Glenister usually plays more gruff and/or badass parts, so I think it'd be fun to watch him really let loose and be ridiculous.
Will Poulter was great in Chronicles of Narnia, and I think he’d relish playing the annoying little brother.