[X’s Interview ②] Producer of “New Journey to the West 4” show says “Please pretend you don’t know about WINNER’s Youth than Flowers show”
[엑스포츠뉴스=이아영 기자] The producing staff of “New Journey to the West 4” show talked about the legendary episode of “Song Finger”, saying, “We were excited, too”.
Among many famous TV shows of CJ E&M’s producer Na Young-seok, including “Three Meals a Day”, “Newlywed Diary”, and “Yoon’s Kitchen”, “New Journey to the West” pursues the style of B-rated culture. The fourth season of the show has recently ended in a great success. The “monsters” which refer to the cast members of the show went to Vietnam for the season, not to China, and fully committed themselves to giving the most instinctive laughter to the viewers of the show. The result was 5.119% of viewer ratings (Nielson Korea, statistics on household that subscribe pay TV), and the show enjoyed greater than ever popularity, going beyond the record set by the previous season.
The chemistry between the cast members including Kang Ho-dong, Lee Soo-geun, Eun Ji-won, An Jae-hyun, Kyuhyun, and SONG MINHO was much upgraded than in the last season. Further improved contents such as cone cone game, zombie game, music quiz, and various wakeup missions drew keen attention. The newly-introduced mission of pinpointing specific places on a game board after making 15 turns and the reasoning mission also created sensation.
There was not only laughter, but also heart-warming stories in the new season. Kyuhyun who joined the army for his mandatory military service after the end of the shooting for “New Journey to the West 4” showed his sincere wish to come back to the show after the end of his two-year military service. The producing staff of the show who never forgot Kyuhyun’s wish gave a contract for it as a gift. In addition, the staff promised the production of the WINNER version of ‘Youth than Flowers’ show for SONG MINHO who said his biggest wish is to go on a trip with WINNER members. “Kang’s Kitchen”, the Kang Ho-dong version of “Yoon’s Kitchen” will be produced as well.
XportsNews recently met producer Shin Hyo-jung of “New Journey to the West 4”, to listen to what the source of all those ideas are and the behind stories about legendary scenes. Shin also talked about the progress of WINNER’s “Youth than Flowers” show and “Kang’s Kitchen” show and plans for the next season of “New Journey to the West”. Shin also said, “I hope to hear people say ‘Every season of New Journey to the West is fun’ and ‘Watch New Journey to the West’ to a question ‘what is the hottest and funniest TV show these days”.
Before, it was always the cast members who lost. But seeing the “Song Finger” episode, I thought such relationship has been turned around. The cast members of “New Journey to the West” show always come to the shooting with a commitment to beat the staff. They start doubting us as soon as taking seats and ask if it is shot or not even when we have dinner together. They never trust us. The better their teamwork gets, the more are they resolved to “win”. I think such ambition comes from their wish to win each other, rather than the competition with the staff.
The “Song Finger” episode is something that will go down in the history of “New Journey to the West”. Yes. We were kind of complacent at that time. The staff members simulated the game for many times but nobody succeeded. We even tried it with every camera director passing by and all of them also failed. We wrote down foreign luxury cars just for fun and nobody thought anyone would ever point “reset”. And just that happened. Sincerity is important for TV shows of these days, so we thought we had to give the cast members anything similar. But the prices of even replica of those cars were beyond imagination. So we quickly decided that we had to make an apology.
I think you have got a lesson not to make promise just for fun from the incident. I don’t think Nah Young-seok has (laughter). However, we’re excited by such unexpected situations, too. Just doing one after another game as planned is all predictable. When the situation gets serious, bets are laid, and people say the shooting will be cancelled or not, it made me excited rather than worried. The “Song Finger” episode also made me both worried and excited at the same time. Even for the producing staff, the unpredictable events are exciting. It is producer Nah who always makes the situation more serious.
Are you preparing for WINNER’s “Youth than Flowers” and Kang Ho-dong’s “Kang’s Kitchen” show? They are making progress little by little. Originally, the content of such items should never be revealed in advance, but now everyone knows about them. That makes me a little bit worried, as everyone now has to pretend as if they don’t know anything about them. I hope many people will do so. That kind of shows are fun only when guests of the shows are surprised. I believe that fans will help WINNER so that they can naturally enjoy the trip, pretending not to know anything about it.
2017. 9. 1.
