‘Taxi Driver 2’ Actor Shin Jae-ha On Why He Takes on Villain Roles: ‘I Think That’s a Huge Compliment as an Actor’
Actor Shin Jae-ha is known among K-drama fans for his boyish charm and handsome features. But his on-screen roles are very different, as he has played a few bad apples. Shin Jae-ha was teased to be the villain in Taxi Driver 2 and was proven true. But what pushes the actor to play dark roles compared to his bright demeanor?
[WARNING: This article contains spoilers for Crash Course in Romance and Taxi Driver 2.]
Shin Jae-ha played back-to-back villains in ‘Taxi Driver 2’ and ‘Crash Course in Romance’
The actor has had a good year as he starred in back-to-back K-dramas within a few months. For Netflix and tvN, Shin Jae-ha played the role of Ji Dong-hui in the romance K-drama Crash Course in Romance. The character is the sweet and loyal assistant of the male lead, a math tutor. But the K-drama shocked fans when a murder mystery began to unfold.
The main characters soon realize someone is targeting victims that were once a threat to Chi-yeol (Jung Kyung-ho). Fans soon started to speculate that Shin’s character was involved but did not want to believe that the kind Dong-hee would be evil. Crash Course in Romance gave fans all the evidence to suggest who the Slingshot killer was. To everyone’s dismay, Dong-hui was the killer, and his reasons were connected to his and his sister’s past.
After the K-drama finale in early March, actor Shin premiered as a new character for the real-life crime K-drama Taxi Driver 2. Like Crash Course in Romance, Shin’s character, Oh Ha-joon, was also too good to be true. He arrives as a new driver for the Rainbow Taxi Company and is exuberant, outgoing, and friendly.
But the intro to Taxi Driver 2 teased Ha-joon’s kindness is front to his real persona and motives. The K-drama soon revealed that Ha-joon is a villain and the leader of a criminal organization. He infiltrated the taxi company because they were interfering with his business. It is hard to believe actor Shin gravitates toward villain roles in K-dramas, but he, too, could not find an answer.
Shin Jae-ha explains playing a villain is gratifying as an actor
The best way to describe Shin Jae-ha’s villain roles in Taxi Driver 2 and his other works is like a “wolf in sheep’s clothing.” On the outside, Shin is a sweetheart with a heart of gold. But when playing a villain, he has a striking evil glint in his eye and malicious features. According to Soompi, Shin could not come up with his own reason for taking on such roles like Dong-hee.
“I started thinking about that when I was doing ‘Crash Course in Romance.’ I couldn’t find the answer on my own, but the director and other senior actors told me things like, ‘The [characters’] appearances aren’t overly obvious,’ and, ‘I like it because it feels like good and bad coexist,’ and I’m just so grateful for that,” said the actor.
Shin continued to explain that “I think that’s a huge compliment as an actor” and is basking in the love he has received playing darker roles. In response to his Taxi Driver 2 character, he teased fans with the reality of the villain’s story.
“Depending on how you look at it, he appears a bit more like an actual villain. If you focus on the character’s duality and the pain that’s hidden within it, this drama will be a lot more interesting,” he said. For now, fans have seen plenty of evidence that Shin can portray a ruthless and cold villain well.
The actor played villains in two other K-drama before’Welcome 2 Life’ and ‘Page Turner’
Regarding his darker roles, the actor explained he tries not to get too immersed due to prior experience. But due to filming Crash Course in Romance and Taxi Driver 2, Shin Jae-ha stayed in a villain mindset for much longer than anticipated. But he admitted it “yielded a better result.”
The two K-dramas were not the only villain roles he has played on the small-screen. In the romantic-comedy and fantasy K-drama Welcome 2 Life, he starred as the son of a CEO named Yoon Pil-woo. The character also becomes a villain who betrays the people around him for his own greed.
In Page Turner, Shin played the role of Seon Jin-mok in the three-episode K-drama. The character is not a horrible villain but a slightly twisted character. A female piano prodigy goes blind after an accident and rebuilds her life with the help of the male lead and Jin-mok. But Jin-mok was her former rival who wanted to be the best and sees the female lead’s tragedy as a win. By the end of the K-drama, he has a redemption arc.
