In ‘Next Sohee’ Bae Doona Seeks Answers To One Woman’s Fate

Bae Doona’s character in the film Next Sohee is looking for answers. She’s investigating the reasons a young call center worker chose to end her life. It’s not enough to rule the death as a suicide. Her character Yoo-jin wants to know why a company treats its workers so cruelly that death seems like a better option.

Next Sohee is the second time that Bae (Kingdom, Stranger, Cloud Atlas, Rebel Moon and Air Doll) has worked with South Korean director and screenwriter July Jung, having appeared in Jung’s award-winning 2014 film A Girl At My Door. When she reads Jung’s scripts Bae immediately falls in love with them.

“I’m very, very passionate about and interested in the stories that she has to tell,” said Bae. “The personal stories and what’s almost like another world that she wants to bring into our world. Those are the parts that I really respect and why I enjoy working with the director. When I see the scenarios that Director Jung produces and directs, I immediately notice that there’s no bluff or there’s no beating around the bush or sugarcoating it. This is all very real stuff. It’s real societal issues that are happening right now in our world, and I really especially enjoy the part about how she leaves the message or the meaning up to the audience. That’s the part I enjoy the most.”

In both of Jung’s films Bae plays a police officer. In A Girl At My Door, she plays Lee Young-nam, an officer transferred from Seoul to a small seaside town after a personal scandal. Young-nam tries to helps Sun Do-hee, a withdrawn 14-year-old girl who is bullied by classmates and beaten by family members. In Next Sohee, Bae plays Detective Oh Yoo-jin. Yoo-jin investigates the death of Sohee, a high school student, played by Kim Si-eun (Squid Game 2, Mental Coach Jegal). Bae was at first surprised that both characters were police officers, but quickly realized the characters existed within totally different stories.

Once the police establish that Sohee’s death was a suicide, some of Yoo-jin’s fellow officers see no reasons to investigate any further, but Yoo-jin wants to hold someone accountable for Sohee’s terrible treatment at work, for the actions that led her to feel so hopeless.

“I think that any normal person can’t ignore what happened,” said Bae. “Maybe it’s because I myself am Yoo-Jin and I think it’s just impossible to imagine how anyone that’s in their right mind would see such a thing happen and ignore it.”

However, she does understand why police officers might become numb to the steady onslaught of tragedy they face in their line of work.

“They could become a little bit numb as time passes and, I feel, a little bit less righteous,” said Bae. “For the character of Yoo-jin, she’s still a new officer and she still has a bit of ambition left in her. Another big factor is that Yoo-jin is just as lonely, I would assume, and she is societally neglected, which kind of explains how she reacts, so sensitively and understandingly empathetically with Sohee.”

The movie is not just about the impossible situation that trainees encounter at the call center, but illustrates how a highly competitive society might devalue individual human lives.

“No matter your age or your socioeconomic status being treated with just basic respect and having basic human rights, that is a big issue,” said Bae. “When I read the script, I understood it very simply. Basically it’s not just about call centers or about a particular company or something like that, but how at the very least we should be treating people with basic human rights.”

In a recent interview with the Korea Times Bae talked about the kind of societal expectations that might drive a young person to despair. It was part of her motivation for telling the story of Next Sohee.

“The big message is that for young people and young adults in general, I hope that they live a better life and have a better society than us,” said Bae. “As an actor, I’m always focusing on trying to be empathetic and positive and therapeutic in the ways I can. These days, in modern day society, with pressures that range from social media to parents’ expectations or societal pressure and constant comparison, it’s a very hard society to live in. I’m just doing my role as an actor to try to spread that positive message and be a little bit of help.”

Bae’s next project plays with a happier premise. She laughs just thinking about the rom-com film titled Virus, which took more than five years to be released because the COVID pandemic made the subject matter and title less than desirable. The film also stars Kim Yun-seok, Jang Ki-ha and Son Suk-ku.

“The movie Virus is about a virus,” said Bae. “If you get it, you fall in love. It’s a big rom-com movie. In the story an antidepressant pharmaceutical company accidentally creates a love virus. My role in the movie is that I have a super cell in my body that keeps me safe from love. My past roles have been darker. I picked it particularly because I wanted a more happy and more loving type of movie.”

Bae notes that she never “officially learned how to act,” so in her 20s and 30s her criteria for choosing projects was based on whether she thought she could play the character.

“These days, to be honest, I don’t really look at the character when I pick my role,” said Bae. “Instead, I focus more on the story and the message and the world that the director is trying to portray through the movie. So whether the role is bigger or small, I think in the last 10 years I’ve been focused more on the bigger story and the meaning.”

She sees acting as therapeutic.

“I think being an actor or an actress is such a cool job,” said Bae. “I love how you get to live the lives of the characters that you are playing in the movie or film. When I do this, I can forget about myself and reality. My personality is quite sensitive and I think my life would be a lot more difficult if I didn’t have acting to take place as healing within me. Besides the fact that becoming an actor, you’re recognized everywhere and you become a public figure, I think it really is a healing part to my life.”

Next Sohee won multiple awards and nominations after its Korean release in 2023, including a Best Screenplay Award at the Baeksang Arts Awards and a nomination for Best Director, as well as a Best New Actress Award for Kim Si-eun and a Best Actress nomination for Bae.

Next Sohee hits U.S. and Canadian theaters on May 16 and will soon also be available on streaming platforms. The film is distributed by Echelon Studios.