The rise of Kim Nam Gil is one of those odd stories that doesn’t quite have the same impact unless you lived through it, like I did. Here was this career character actor, that at most played a second lead in Goodbye Solo and was remembered as the dead ex-husband of the heroine in the daily drama Be Strong Geum Soon that launched Kang Ji Hwan and Han Hye Jin into stardom. He gets this secondary part of Bidam in the mega-sageuk Queen Seon Doek, where Uhm Tae Woong is the male lead with Lee Yo Won, and then proceeds to steal the drama so utterly and thoroughly that MBC rewrites freakin’ Shilla history for him to make the titular Queen love him instead of the lead. Talk about “woah”. I think it’s a shame Kim Nam Gil was schelpped off to military service just when he made it, and he left at the tail end of Bad Guy rendering the already wobbly drama into a mess of epic proportions. The ending made no sense to the point I wondered if I hallucinated it all. But time passes without a glance, and in two weeks Kim Nam Gil finishes his MS and returns to K-ent. What’s in store for him? Looks like he’ll pick a project to jump into right when he comes out. Continue reading →