This was the first episode we filmed, starting in late May. Most of the time they chose my wardrobe, so don’t think I normally dress in lime sherbert cardigans. Here are some highlights, commentary, and trivia from the shoot:
- Got to experience my first temple stay, and I recommend this particular temple for anyone wanting to try
- CUT SCENE: I got to ring the big bell at the temple
- We really did wake up at three a.m. for the Buddhist temple stay
- We did 108 bows in that room, so that’s why it looks like I’m sweating during the meditation part. I am sweating.
- Intern Seong-eun also did the temple stay and the baru meal. She’s next to me in a lot of shots. She hated it. But I liked the food. We then went for a second breakfast after that.
- Lots of Pyeongchang’s local buckwheat dishes
- Man, I ate so much buckwheat there that I don’t think I can have anymore for a long time.
- Novelist Lee Hyo-suk’s birthplace
- The museum scene took a long time to film because tourists kept wandering into shots
- ATV stunt riding
- During a shot the cameraman jumped on the back of an ATV and barely held on as we went down a bumpy dirt path, shooting my ATV behind him.
- Right before my speech on the ATV, I crashed into a ditch and banged myself up pretty badly. Can’t tell, huh? Bruises took a month to heal.
- Mountain coaster = FUN!
- I think we rode the mountain coaster six times for all the shots. Those other people are the crew.
- Paragliding
- I was actually scared, and my tandem coach was a bit nervous that I was too heavy.
- The scene where the paraglider takes off and I talk to the camera had to be done in one take, obviously. And I improvised that.
- The harness is quite snug in certain gonadial regions.
- Dig that animal print lining in my helmet!
- Notice that we drop off pretty quickly after leaving the ground. I swear we missed the trees by only a few feet.
- A scene about Korea’s traditional heating system, kudeul
- The guy I’m talking to was a hoot. He was also the village chief.
- The food we had was in my top five best meals of the series. Very simple local organic vegetables. Lively flavors.
- I had to sleep in a specially made model one-room cabin. It was already heated for my stay, but they wanted to do a scene where the chief stoked the fire for the room. So I had double the heat that summer evening. I was swimming in my own sweat.
- After the dinner scene, it was late, and I had assumed we were finished. We had been filming since four that morning. So I was very tired and had just brushed my teeth and was heading to bed when they wanted me to come out and do the fire stoking and looking at my laptop scenes. I was not happy.