Lee Hwi-hyang [MBN 'Kim Joo-ha's Day and Night']
Lee Hwi-hyang [MBN 'Kim Joo-ha's Day and Night']

Actor Lee Hwi-hyang, 65, has expressed lingering regret over slapping fellow actor Park Shin-hye roughly 30 times on the set of the drama series "Stairway to Heaven" — when Park was just 14 years old.

Lee appeared Saturday on MBN's "Kim Joo-ha's Day and Night," where she spoke about her acting career.

She said she had agonized over how to make her villainous roles feel convincing, adding that the effort sometimes led her to go beyond what the script called for.

As one moment that has stayed with her, Lee recalled a scene she shared with Park Shin-hye, who played the younger version of Choi Ji-woo's character in the SBS drama series "Stairway to Heaven," which aired from 2003 to 2004. Park was a 14-year-old middle school student at the time, and the show marked her debut.

The script simply said "hits," but Lee said she thought to herself, "This woman is not the type to hit just once."

"Because the camera had to shoot from multiple angles, she probably got hit about 30 times," Lee said. "Afterward I kept saying sorry and hugging her like a baby. She was a baby. A middle schooler."

She added that Park told her it was fine, but Lee was unconvinced. "How could it be fine? It must have hurt so much. Her cheek was red," she said. "I have always felt sorry toward Shin-hye."

Lee said she later ran into Park by chance at an airport after Park had grown up. "Shin-hye came up and spoke to me first, and I was so happy to see her. But even then, the guilt came rushing back," she said, making clear the memory still weighs on her.

Park herself had spoken about the incident earlier. On JTBC's "Knowing Bros" in 2020, she said, "I got hit about 30-something times back then. The script said four times, but they had to shoot wide shots and tight shots, so I kept getting hit. My sunbae said in an interview that it was what she felt most sorry about. At the time I didn't even feel sad about it — I thought it was fun." She also brought it up on tvN's "You Quiz on the Block" in January, saying, "Every time that clip resurfaces, I worry about whether it makes my teacher uncomfortable. But I really did get hit a lot" — and noting that her mother still cannot bring herself to watch the scene.


paq@heraldcorp.com