After what seems to be a promising first date, a heart surgeon and a school librarian find themselves on opposite sides of a police investigation.
She says he assaulted her. He insists their encounter was consensual. With two conflicting accounts of the same night, the people around them must decide whom to believe.
That battle for trust is at the centre of The Perfect Lie, a new K-drama releasing two episodes weekly on Disney+ until December 5. And as the tension ramps up, detectives try to establish what happened, both characters undergo lie-detector tests.
Yoo Yeon-seok plays the surgeon, a single father trusted by those around him. In preparing for the role, the South Korean actor sought out footage of real interviews.
“Since the theme of the series is about a lie, I’ve watched some series around profilers, and I also watched some video clips of criminals being on the lie detector and being interviewed,” he tells The National.
The part also gave Yoo a type of character he had not played before. “Joon-ho is an enigmatic character and the kind of character that makes you question about how good or evil this person is,” he says. “As an actor, it was a meaningful experience to portray this character.”
Seo Hyun-jin plays a teacher and librarian at the school attended by the surgeon’s son. She worked with director Jo Young-min to follow her character’s emotional arc, including a past she says will emerge during the series.
“I don’t have any experience playing this type of character before, but I’m glad that I met this character at this age because this is the right time to be able to understand this type of character,” she says.
The Perfect Lie reunites Yoo and Seo a decade after they starred as young surgeons who fell in love in the South Korean medical drama Dr Romantic. Their on-screen partnership became popular with viewers, many of whom hoped to see them work together again.
Seo thought about those fans when considering how they might respond to the new series. “The chemistry or the dynamics between the two characters would be completely different from what we saw 10 years back,” she says.
Yoo hopes their reunion will offer something unexpected. “When you watch the series, you will see a different type of tension, maybe at a different temperature from before,” he says.
The reunion also brought Yoo back together with director Jo Young-min, with whom he had worked before. For those hoping to see the actors share the screen again, Yoo is open to returning to their Dr Romantic characters or finding another project with Seo.
“With her, I would be interested in joining for any type of character because I had so much fun,” he says.
“Likewise,” Seo adds.
The Perfect Lie is now streaming on Disney+ across the Middle East
