PUBLISHED ONApril 03, 2026 3:29 AMBYSyarifah NadhirahLocal actress Gladys Bay stars in the upcoming K-drama Absolute Value of Romance, and she told AsiaOne about her experience in a recent interview.
Absolute Value of Romance is a high school romance series that follows Yeo Eui-ju (played by Kim Hyang-gi), an unassuming student by day and a web novelist by night.
When four handsome male teachers join the school, Eui-ji finds inspiration and her novel goes big.
Gladys, 29, plays Jenny, a Singaporean exchange student who becomes friends with Eui-ju.
"She's a year two student and she loves K-pop and Korean culture, but beyond that, she's very fun and carefree... And when she notices that her friends are in trouble, she goes the extra mile to help them out," said Gladys, who shared that she had auditioned for the role.
Besides Hyang-gi, she also had scenes with Vixx's Cha Hak-yeon, who plays math teacher Ga Woo-su, but didn't reveal further.
Similar to Jenny, Gladys was once an exchange student in South Korea, so she's not unfamiliar with the language.
"In the four months I was there, I picked up the language a bit faster because I was dancing with the locals, so I had a lot more interaction with Korean people," said the Star Search 2024 runner-up who is signed with Mediacorp's talent management arm The Celebrity Agency. She has acted in local dramas such as Under the Net and Highway to Somewhere.
But despite having basic proficiency, she still feels she's a beginner: "My grammar is not the best and I could use better vocabulary. But of course, after shooting the K-drama, I sound much better."
When asked about a funny moment that happened behind-the-scenes while working on the drama, Gladys talked about a rehearsal before the actual filming.
While responding with a sound of agreement during conversations is the norm in the English and Chinese languages, it's not so simple in South Korea. There are two ways of speaking: formal and informal speech. In a classroom context, a student would have to use the former when talking to the teacher.
She recalled: "In English or Mandarin, when people tell me, 'You can sit here,' I'll go, 'Oh, mm.'
"It's a sound that we make to reply to people... There was a scene where the teacher introduces me as a new student and he says, 'Okay, you can sit here,' and I said, 'Oh, mm."
"I think from a South Korean perspective, [seeing this] student character replying to her teacher in informal Korean was wild to everyone there," she laughed.
After the rehearsal, Gladys suggested including the blunder in the actual scene and the director agreed: "In South Korea, all these sounds are considered informal Korean. Replying to someone with a sound... you shouldn't do that to be respectful, but I thought it was very relevant as an exchange student."
She also tried including Singlish in the show, but her Korean teacher felt it "sounded too informal".
The drama is jointly produced by Coupang Play, Mediacorp, Good Wave Inc and Borderless Film with no scenes in Singapore.
Gladys stayed in Seoul for two to three months, with her scenes wrapping up in January this year.
The journey to the film sets often consisted of long periods on the road: "We filmed in Seoul, Jeonju and Buan. I lived in Seoul so every week we would drive around four to five hours down to Jeonju. Sometimes from Jeonju we'd drive an hour down to Buan and then another four to five hours back to Seoul. If there was a peak-hour jam, it would take around five to six hours."
A memorable moment for her was filming in a hanok village on a cold winter day.
"As a born and bred Singaporean, I've never filmed in winter, but we had this scene where Jenny hosts a pyjama party in a very pretty hanok village," she recalled.
In true K-drama fashion, Jenny and her friends had a picnic with Korean food under the night sky.
"It was so good, but it was so cold," she said before laughing: "I love that I was dying from the cold."
Absolute Value of Romance will be premiering on April 17, and with the release date coming soon, Gladys said she's "super excited".
"Being able to learn from another country and another culture really helped me a lot in acting better and growing my skill sets," she added.
She also spent most of her time alone, with her manager and a staff member coming down only in the first and last week of filming.
"I went through the experience of being in a foreign country alone, and I am proud of myself for doing that while thoroughly enjoying my time there and learning a lot," she said.
Her biggest takeaway from the experience?
"The experience in itself really helped me as an actress. I think that's my biggest takeaway, like, my growth as an actress," she said.
"The way they express the language, I feel like there's a little difference in the nuances and in the acting. They are so good at their jobs and it inspired me to pick up the pace and do better."
Absolute Value of Romance, which also stars Kim Jae-hyun, Son Jeong-hyuk, Kim Dong-gyu, Kim So-hee, premieres April 17 on Prime Video.
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