Everything to Know About Netflix K-Drama ‘Doona!’

Warning: This submit incorporates spoilers for Doona!

Doona!, out Oct. 20 on Netflix, adapts the favored South Korean webtoon The Woman Downstairs for a K-drama a few former K-pop idol who might or might not fall for her regular-guy roommate. Starring the South Korean actor Bae Suzy (who in actual life was a part of a Ok-pop woman group) because the titular Doona, the collection is helmed by Lee Jung-hyo—the director of 2019’s internationally acclaimed romance romp Crash Landing on You.

Doona! is a part of Netflix’s continued foray into webtoons—and one among at the least 4 webtoon-based Ok-dramas coming to the platform in 2023. These internet comics, primed to thrive on cell platforms, have amassed tens of tens of millions of readers in Korea since gaining recognition within the early 2000s and impressed many hit Ok-dramas, together with final 12 months’s zombie horror All of Us Are Useless and the 2018 rom-com What’s Improper With Secretary Kim.

Learn Extra: Why So Many Of Your Favorite K-Dramas Are Based on Webtoons

Doona! follows Lee Doona, the linchpin of Ok-pop woman group Dream Candy. On the peak of her profession, Doona makes the shocking transfer to drop out from the business and reside in a sharehouse in a university city, the place she meets Lee Wonjun, a 20-year-old freshman residing upstairs who barely is aware of who she is.

Their first assembly goes awry after Doona, a sweetheart within the public eye, acts out of character and accuses Wonjun of being a stalker. However Doona quickly begins pestering him to eat collectively and hang around extra typically. Wonjun learns that Doona has no idea of life exterior superstar, and is barely now studying about the true world. Over 9 episodes, the 2 characters navigate their mutual attraction and their respective private points: Doona has to determine if she needs to proceed a life as an entertainer, whereas Wonjun is attempting to safe a job and a steady life as his household’s breadwinner and cope with an previous love who resurfaces at his college.

Bringing Doona! to TV

Director Lee Jung-hyo needed Bae Suzy to play Doona, given her historical past as Ok-pop idol. From 2010 to 2017, Suzy carried out with the Chinese language-Korean group Miss A underneath JYP Entertainment. Taking part in Doona, Suzy tells TIME, she typically felt envious of the character when she mirrored on private experiences as an idol.

“There have been sure moments the place I wasn’t even capable of detect the truth that I used to be going by a tricky time,” she says. “Doona, she was capable of know that she was going by a tricky time as a result of she was so sincere.”

The Ok-pop business has been infamous for being cutthroat and tough for its younger trainees, and has been stricken by scandals and deaths associated to psychological well being points. Within the collection, Doona will get overwhelmed by the push-and-pull of continually assembly the general public’s expectations whereas concurrently failing to take action.

“Celebrities and folks within the leisure business, they’re nonetheless simply your on a regular basis folks,” Suzy says. “I used to be capable of categorical the very uncooked emotions and feelings that the character goes by. I used to be very joyful to have the ability to seize that.”

How Doona! differs from the webtoon The Woman Downstairs

The supply materials, The Woman Downstairs, is a weekly webtoon by Min Tune-a which ran for over three years starting in 2019 and gained a big following. With 41 million views on the WEBTOON platform, it has been revealed in eight totally different languages, and its 150-plus episodes have been compiled into three separate books.

The Woman Downstairs is replete with meet-cutes, confessions, third (and even fourth) occasion tensions, all blossoming into what it self-reflexively calls a “heart-throbbing” and “heart-aching” love story.

Given its lengthier format, a lot of the plot of The Woman Downstairs meanders: for some time, readers are left to guess with whom Wonjun will likely be romantically concerned. The tone of the webtoon can also be extra comical and outlandish, with foil characters behaving like caricatures.

Doona! isn’t fully spared from the comedy, nevertheless it provides extra display time to growing the dynamics between Wonjun and Doona, and takes on a extra slice-of-life tone peppered with quieter, lovey-dovey moments.

“The sheer quantity needed to be condensed into the stay motion collection so I used to be capable of concentrate on the 2 foremost leads,” director Lee Jung-hyo tells TIME. “Slightly than it being a romantic comedy, we focus extra on the romance side of it.”