Popular Actor Lets Out His Intense Routine To Master Lines In Arabic

Actor Kim Woo Bin is making headlines for his sincerity and hard work for his ongoing K-Drama, Genie, Make A Wish.

The K-Drama features Kim in a rather challenging role as Iblis, a Genie who is awoken from his slumber after a thousand years. To keep the character faithful to its mythological origin and embody the essence of the fabled Genie character, Kim Woo Bin reportedly prepared for months on end to master his Arabic pronunciation.

In a recent interview, he revealed that he practiced each of his Arabic lines 1,000 times to prepare for the role!

Since it’s not a familiar language, I would forget it as soon as I turned around. I was worried. I realized I had to memorize everything word for word. But on top of memorizing, I also had to act. I felt both pressure and a desire to overcome it…I found that if I listened to one line about 1,000 times, I could memorize it. There were 52 lines of Arabic dialogue in the script. Some were unfairly edited out, but in the end, I listened to them 52,000 times and pulled it off.

— Kim Woo Bin

According to staff members, he repeated each recorded line over a thousand times, listening to them in a loop on set, during breaks, and even in between photoshoots.

Apart from the pronunciation, the actor also zeroed in on capturing Genie’s gravitas and deep emotions through vocal nuance and pitch variation. On set, he continuously refined his delivery with the help of an Arabic language coach.

Thanks to his rigorous preparation, Kim Woo Bin’s delivery of the Arabic lines has received high praise from viewers, even though the K-Drama itself has drawn backlash over alleged religious insensitivity.

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