Han Ye-ri, Park Eun-bin, Han Seung-yeon
All of a sudden we have a lot of movement on the sequel season to JTBC’s campus drama Age of Youth, which has confirmed all of its cast members (most of them familiar faces, with a couple new ones in the mix) as it readies for its initial script read, with August fixed for its premiere.
Most of the cast members and character descriptions will be familiar to you, but one did really surprise me: Park Hye-soo, who played the shy freshman through whose eyes we initially saw this drama unfold, will not be returning as originally planned, and her character has been recast. This was a breakout role for Park so I’m really surprised she won’t be coming back, but her reps have cited schedule conflicts with a movie; she is slated to begin filming Swing Kids this summer with Exo’s D.O.
Her character, Eun-jae, will instead go to Ji-woo, who’s appeared in several movies and dramas but is still a new name; she played child roles in Age of Feeling and You’re All Surrounded, and was recently the lead in MBC’s mini-drama Three Color Fantasy: Universe’s Star. She also shares a management agency with series lead Han Ye-ri, who will be reprising her role as Jin-myung, the eldest of the roommates of the Belle Epoque share house who worked every hour of the day and hardly ever betrayed the burden she felt from her poverty.
Park Eun-bin and Han Seung-yeon are the other two also returning to the show, Park as friendly and adorable pervy liar Ji-won (how she made those traits work together, I don’t know, but she did and rocked it) and Han playing Ye-eun, the hapless-in-love girl with terrible taste in boyfriends. Ryu Hwa-young had played the fifth roommate in the first season, but will only be returning in a guest appearance; she’ll be busy filming her weekend drama Father Is Strange for a few more months yet.
Ji-woo, Choi Ara
The new fifth roommate will be played by rookie actress Choi Ara, described as simply “the tall girl,” which Choi suits given her background as a fashion model.
The story kicks off one year after Season 1, with Jin-myung having gone off to China after the end of the first season to find herself. She has now successfully found full-time employment, which is a relief because her miserable life with all her miserable jobs was at times painful to watch.
Ye-eun has taken a year off from school, following her kidnapping and abuse at the hands of her slimy boyfriend. Ji-won is single as ever and still cares more about dating than finding a job, and maknae Eun-jae, who had that adorable campus romance with her sunbae, is now hurting after being dumped. (What? Nooooo, you can’t break up that couple, even if one of them got recast with a new face! They were the bright light of that show!)
That’s when the new roommate, Jo-eun (Choi Ara), arrives to move into Kang Unni’s (Ryu Hwa-young) old room. She insists she’s not quite 180 cm tall (feeling self-conscious of her height), and is shrouded in some mystery; all that we’re told is that her arrival is due to one letter, but we don’t know why.
As for the men: Onew (Descended From the Sun) has signed on to romance Han Seung-yeon, hopefully giving her a much better loveline this time around. Kim Min-seok (Doctors, Defendant) will play the proxy for the chic grandma landlady of Belle Epoque. I’m guessing he’ll be someone’s love interest, perhaps?
Age of Youth 2 will take up the Friday-Saturday timeslot in late August, following Kim Hee-sun and Kim Sun-ah’s Woman of Dignity, which starts next weekend after the end of Man to Man.
Kim Min-seok, Onew