Casting offers are now out to all four of our leads in the new SBS romantic comedy Temperature of Love, the new drama from writer Ha Myung-hee of Doctors, High Society, and Warm Words. Seo Hyun-jin (Romantic Doctor Teacher Kim) and Yang Se-jong (Duel) are currently in talks to headline, and if they both sign on, it’ll be a reunion for the Romantic Doctor co-stars. Kim Jae-wook (Voice) has been confirmed as the second lead, and now Jo Boa (The Man Living in Our House) is considering an offer to complete the love square.
The rom-com is an adaptation of the writer’s own novel Nice Soup Does Not Answer the Phone, about a relationship that begins online between a chef and a writer. Seo Hyun-jin is being courted to play the heroine, a frank and sometimes reckless aspiring drama writer whose curiosity always gets the better of her. Yang Se-jong is up to play a chef-owner of a Michelin-star restaurant called Good Soup, a competitive character who keeps other people at arm’s length.
Kim Jae-wook will play an entertainment agency CEO who’s smart and athletic, and extremely quick on the uptake when it comes to knowing when to go for something and when to pull back. He went abroad to get his MBA and then made his own fortune, and he’s very proud of having discovered a diamond in the rough—his hoobae Yang Se-jong—with whom he opens up Good Soup. They have a good relationship, but then Kim Jae-wook will fall for the heroine.
Jo Boa is up for the role of Seo Hyun-jin’s frenemy who is also an aspiring drama writer. Her father runs a subsidiary of a large conglomerate, so she’s always been wealthy and never needed to make much of an effort in life. She’s used to always getting the attention when she and Seo Hyun-jin’s character are together… except from the one person she likes, chef Yang Se-jong.
That sounds pretty similar to the frenemy rivalry that was in Doctors, so I’m crossing my fingers that Jo Boa’s character will be more likable than Lee Sung-kyung, who pretty much lived to hate Park Shin-hye in that drama. I have hope though, because Jo Boa is actually great in these second lead roles; she even made me like her pathetic cheater character in The Man Living in Our House by making her flawed and endearingly hopeless. I would love to see her and Seo Hyun-jin begrudgingly become best friends. I know the writer is capable of it too, since High Society had a fantastic female friendship at the center of it.
Temperature of Love will follow Falsify on Mondays and Tuesdays in September.