Park Bo-young offers ‘daily dose of sunshine’ in new uplifting Netflix series

Everyone, not to mention those with mental health issues, often feels down and needs a ray of sunshine that could warm their hearts through support from people around them.

Park Bo-young wanted to convey this simple aspect of life through her nuanced performance in the Netflix drama series “Daily Dose of Sunshine.”

“Everyone has struggles. I tried to show this simple fact as best as I could,” the actress said during an interview with a group of reporters in Seoul on Friday.

Based on a Naver webtoon of the same name by Lee Ha-ra, the drama revolves around compassionate nurse Jung Da-eun (Park Bo-young) and her patients at a psychiatric ward who deal with various issues, ranging from paranoia to obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Before being transferred to the psychiatric ward, Da-eun worked at the internal medicine department, where she unknowingly created more work for — and thus complaints from — her fellow nurses by focusing too much on individual patients.

In her new job, she becomes the favorite of the patients in no time with her selfless, empathetic attitude toward them. Due to an unexpected, shocking event, however, she falls into a deep depression.

“To be honest, I had prejudice against mental illnesses. But as the head nurse says in the drama, they can come to anyone, anytime,” Park said.

“Those who are treated in a psychiatric ward should return to society one day as a member of our community. So we should treat them compassionately.”

The dense, event-filled story sheds much-needed spotlight on the prevalent mental health issues in the highly competitive and fast-paced Korean society.

“There is not a single scene that I did not put my utmost effort in,” she said while talking about the challenges on set.

While filming a scene where head nurse Song Hyo-jin (Lee Jung-eun of “Parasite”) comes to support her in front of complaining patients, “tears just fell in big drops,” which Park said was “totally unexpected.”

“Before filming the scene, I had asked the director if it were OK not to cry. I did not want to appear weak.”

“But tears just fell as soon as the filming started. I knew right at that moment how powerful it is to get support from people around you,” Park said.

The 33-year-old actress debuted in the 2006 high school television series “Secret Campus.” Nicknamed, Bbovely (Bo-young and lovely), she won the best actor award for her performance in “Concrete Utopia,” South Korea’s entry for the 96th Academy Awards, at the London East Asia Film Festival 2023 early this month.

“The series is about hope. But rather than painting an overly hopeful future, it tells people to hang in there just a little longer as the morning comes in the end,” she said.