Jiang Ling remembered the first time she came to Hengdian to film two years ago, playing the role of Tianshan Tonglao. After a scene, she felt a little thirsty and bought a cup of iced soy milk to drink.
Who would have thought that this sip would bring back the taste of her childhood.
It was cool and refreshing, without any strange artificial flavors, just the rich and pure taste of soy milk.
In her surprise, Jiang Ling asked the old woman selling soy milk how it was made, what ingredients were added, and why it tasted so good.
The old woman smiled and said, it was a small business, what ingredients could be added? Just water, white sugar, and soybeans. They were ground with a large stone mill at home, cooked, bottled, sealed, and then sold chilled.
After hearing this, a complex melancholy appeared on Jiang Ling's face.
It was made with the most ordinary ingredients, yet the taste completely outshone many high-end milk teas costing twenty to thirty yuan.
Was this progress in productivity, or a regression of the times?
Jiang Ling then thought about the current entertainment industry. Filming techniques improved year by year, yet the movies produced became worse year after year.
Especially idol dramas, where hot money poured in and capital loved to invest, were as rotten as dog excrement.
The male lead was bad, and the female lead was even worse.
The role of Ye Tianyu, in today's entertainment industry, was like the soy milk made by the old woman's own hands. It seemed plain and unremarkable, yet it could let the audience taste the purest flavor of the past, bringing them back to childhood.
Jiang Ling had a vague premonition that if she played Ye Tianyu well, this role might become the most popular and beloved character she had played since her transmigration.
Analyzing the script carefully, the role of Ye Tianyu, at first glance, was not as complex as the male lead Dan Junhao, making it even harder to play.
Because the simpler the character, the more difficult it was to portray well.
It was like cooking. While expensive delicacies were easy to make flavorful, it was extremely difficult to bring out the superior taste of common vegetables and tofu.
Even if it were the same role and the same scenes, the difference in actors' abilities and their understanding of the character could lead to vastly different results.
The most classic example was Qingwen in Dream of the Red Chamber. The 87 version portrayed her as charming and agile, while the 10 version made her detestable.
Treating every role seriously was the key to an actor's success.
While diligently studying her scenes, Jiang Ling asked Sister Sa to conduct a survey in the fan group, asking fans to name their most disliked aspect of idol drama female leads, and then present these findings in a table.
During the performance, she would try to avoid the points that the audience disliked.
With this two-pronged approach, it was hard for the role of Ye Tianyu not to become a classic.
At this moment, the fans were unaware that Jiang Ling was about to act in an idol drama. Seeing Sister Sa conducting a survey in the group, and recalling years of being poisoned by bad movies, they all unleashed their criticisms like machine guns, spewing non-stop.
Sister Sa summarized them one by one, compiled them into a table, and printed it out for Jiang Ling.
When Jiang Ling saw it, she exclaimed, the disliked points numbered over a hundred.
If these were converted into ancient crimes, the sins of idol drama female leads could truly be described as 'endless'.
However, what surprised Jiang Ling the most was that the most frequently criticized point about female leads by the audience was neither being a "green tea bitch" nor being overly dramatic, but rather "poor people not acting like poor people."
In the past idol dramas, the Cinderella-like female leads were truly poor, their attire so impoverished that even the tips of their hair showed it.