The popular fantasy romance series The Villainess Is a Marionette has found its Duke Raffaello Kidrey.
According to the Facebook post by Daebak Oppa, K-pop boy band ASTRO's Cha Eunwoo will play the duke in the upcoming dramatized teasers for the webcomic. Cha will be joining Han Sohee, who will be playing Princess Kayena Hill and Lee Soohyuk, who will be playing Prince Regef Hill. The official trailer won’t release until Oct. 7, but Kakao Page’s YouTube channel unveiled a short behind-the-scenes video of the main cast to sate fans’ curiosity until then.
The Villainess Is a Marionette is a transmigration story of a woman in an office job who finds an unlikely connection with the villainess of the novel that she is reading. After a disgruntled colleague stabs the woman, she wakes up in the novel as Kayena, the beautiful princess of the empire who has spent her life being controlled by her brother Regef like a marionette. Determined to be the one pulling the strings and rewrite the novel's original ending, Kayena engages in a power struggle with her brother but to do so, she needs to partner up with Duke Raffaello, a man who appears cold on the outside but is secretly kind on the inside.
The Villainess Is a Marionette was originally a web novel written by Han Yi Rim before receiving a Kakao webtoon adaptation with manggle credited as the artist. The webcomic is still ongoing, with 59 chapters currently out. It is available to read in English on Tapas and updates every Monday. The English version currently has over 3.5 million views.
The Villainess Is a Marionette Features All-star Leads
Han Sohee made her acting debut in the 2017 series Reunited Worlds before getting her first main role in Money Flower and 100 Days My Prince. Her popularity rose when she starred in the 2020 critically-acclaimed series The World of the Married, where she played Yeo Da-kyung who has an affair with the main character Lee Tae Oh. The drama became the highest-rated drama in Korean cable television history. Han also starred in the webtoon-based drama Nevertheless in 2021.
Cha started off as an actor before he debuted as part of the 6-member boy band ASTRO. He had a supporting role in the 2017 youth drama Hit the Top, but it wasn't until he was cast in his first webtoon-based drama My ID is Gangnam Beauty, as the cold and indifferent Do Kyung-seok that he shot to fame as an actor. He later starred as the popular and handsome Lee Suho in True Beauty, a drama based on the webtoon of the same name. His work with webcomics continued when he released "Don't Cry, My Love" for the official soundtrack of the Manta webcomic Under the Oak Tree and "Focus on Me" for The Villainess is a Marionette.
Lee debuted as a model and has appeared in several K-pop groups' music videos, including 2NE1. His acting career started when he played a supporting role in the 2006 film My Boss, My Teacher. After joining YG Entertainment in 2017, the agency that is home to the world-famous K-pop group BLACKPINK, he starred in the melodrama Born Again. Like Han and Cha, Lee also starred in a webtoon-based drama called Tomorrow that premiered in April 2022.
The first live-action teaser for the webcomic The Villainess Is a Marionette will drop on Oct. 7.
Source: Facebook