{"id":6375,"date":"2016-07-12T09:08:59","date_gmt":"2016-07-12T13:08:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/qa-with-dramaworlds-chris-martin\/"},"modified":"2016-07-20T09:29:33","modified_gmt":"2016-07-20T13:29:33","slug":"qa-with-dramaworlds-chris-martin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/qa-with-dramaworlds-chris-martin\/","title":{"rendered":"Dramaworld\u2019s Chris Martin"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dramaworld<\/span>\u00a0co-creator Chris Martin, who also directed and co-wrote the scripted series, speaks\u00a0<\/span>about the K-drama\u2019s milestones, the relationship between the characters and plans for the coming seasons.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

TV DRAMA:<\/strong> How did the idea for Dramaworld<\/em> come about?
\nMARTIN:<\/strong> I lived in Korea for a pretty long time. I\u2019ve been into Korean content, and I also love the idea of \u201980s movies like Back to the Future<\/em> and Who Framed Roger Rabbit<\/em>. Then [the idea] just suddenly came to me: What if an American girl suddenly fell into a K-drama, and what would that be like? We\u2019ve seen [some things] like that before, such as Pleasantville<\/em> or The Purple Rose of Cairo<\/em>, but I thought this would be a modern take on what would happen if this girl fell into her favorite TV show.<\/p>\n

TV DRAMA:<\/strong> Dramaworld<\/em> has accomplished several things: it\u2019s the first original series for Viki.com, it\u2019s a tribute to the millions of fans of Asian dramas around the world, it\u2019s written in English and Korean, and it was also filmed in Korea and L.A. How were you able to combine all these elements?
\nMARTIN:<\/strong> I speak Korean, so that helps. I lived in Korea for a long time and was able to work with Korean filmmakers, so I have a big network of friends who are filmmakers over there. It\u2019s kind of crazy that we were able to get all these people together. Our lead actress, Liv Hewson, is actually from Australia, and we flew in Justin Chon from L.A. We cast all of our main actors out of Korea and we had some staff from America. However, most of our crew was from Korea. It was a big crazy group, and everybody was excited about the idea that we were making this happen. There are so many places where it could have gone wrong, but the team was persistent and there was an excitement about what this could be, because no one had done this before.<\/p>\n

TV DRAMA:<\/strong> Tell us about the main characters.
\nMARTIN:<\/strong> Claire is played by Liv Hewson, and she\u2019s the main character. She\u2019s this American girl whose life isn\u2019t going exactly the way she wants it. She has these K-dramas that she\u2019s in love with, and she always feels like she\u2019s in the background of her own life. She feels like she\u2019s watching a story all the time. So one of the things we wanted to do is get her into this story and have her become more of a character as she lives this drama and adventure.<\/p>\n

As far as casting Claire, I was getting hundreds and thousands of pictures of actresses, videos of auditions, and I just fell in love with Liv\u2014I thought she was great. I think she\u2019s a really wonderful actress and she\u2019s going to be doing fantastic stuff.<\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s Joon Park, who\u2019s our leading man, and he\u2019s played by Sean Dulake. He\u2019s the star of the fictional show, and he has all these tropes and traits that he has to obey because he lives in Dramaworld. Everything comes easy to him; the girls all fall in love with him. And suddenly when he meets Claire, he wants to know who this girl is who doesn\u2019t follow any of the rules. It was really great because Sean is half Korean, but he speaks English and Korean, and that was one of the big things I wanted for this role.<\/p>\n

Justin Chon plays Seth, and he is a facilitator. Claire realizes that there are K-drama cupids going around and making sure that these people run into each other. Our whole idea was that behind the scenes, there are these facilitators who are making sure these things happen, like letting the leading lady go down the wrong street so she runs into the leading man, swapping briefcases, that kind of stuff. Claire lands in the drama and Seth becomes her guide so she can become a facilitator too.<\/p>\n

And then we have our leading lady, who is played by Bae Noo Ri, and her role is the same as Joon Park\u2019s, meaning that they live in this world where there are very high emotional stakes and love is the most important thing.<\/p>\n

We also have the bad girl, played by Kim Sa Hee. When Claire falls into the drama, Joon Park is about to kiss the bad girl, and Claire says, \u201cWhy is this happening? The story can\u2019t go this way! It\u2019s not how it\u2019s supposed to work!\u201d And that\u2019s where she gets sucked into the story.<\/p>\n

TV DRAMA: <\/strong>You also had the opportunity to direct the ten episodes. What was that experience like, and had you directed before Dramaworld<\/em>?
\nMARTIN:<\/strong> It was really cool. I had directed a lot of shorts, and I did commercials. I went to NYU for film school. We\u2019ve been working on a lot of stuff, but this was the first TV show that we got off the ground. Directing is my passion; it\u2019s my main thing. My writing partner [Josh Billig] and I also wrote the show, and we were executive producers on it. It\u2019s fun.<\/p>\n

TV DRAMA:<\/strong> K-dramas have a big following around the world. What are the expectations for the international market?
\nMARTIN:<\/strong> I always joke that I don\u2019t care if everybody hates it\u2014as long as it\u2019s one person\u2019s favorite show, I\u2019ll be super happy. For me, because I\u2019m the director and storyteller, I think everyone will find something to like. No matter where you are in the world, there\u2019s something about the stories that gets across borders. I really believe in global content. That\u2019s what we\u2019re hoping with this, that people all over the world can connect to one of the characters, and fall in love with the story.<\/p>\n

TV DRAMA:<\/strong> Will Dramaworld <\/em>have new seasons? Do you envision the possibility of involving actors from other regions?
\nMARTIN:<\/strong> We\u2019re definitely going to try to do a season two. It\u2019s one of those things where K-dramas are huge everywhere. They\u2019re big in Latin America, they\u2019re big in China, and for us, this is about global storytelling. I think there\u2019s definitely the possibility of an international cast.<\/p>\n

TV DRAMA:<\/strong> Are you thinking of going back to Korea?
\nMARTIN:<\/strong> Part of my heart is still in Korea because I lived there for so long, and that\u2019s where I started my film career. So I\u2019d go back to work there, for sure.<\/p>\n

TV DRAMA:<\/strong> What\u2019s interesting is that your time living in Korea is reflected in the show\u2019s production.
\nMARTIN:<\/strong> The best compliment I\u2019ve gotten when people watch the show is that they see it and go, \u201cOh man, I want to go to Korea!\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The co-creator, who also directed and co-wrote the scripted series, speaks about the K-drama\u2019s milestones, the relationship between the characters and plans for the coming seasons.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6376,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[68,70],"tags":[1096,1095,355],"class_list":["post-6375","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-interviews","category-top-stories","tag-chris-martin","tag-dramaworld","tag-viki","pmpro-has-access"],"yoast_head":"\nDramaworld\u2019s Chris Martin - TVDRAMA<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/qa-with-dramaworlds-chris-martin\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Dramaworld\u2019s Chris Martin - 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