For more than a decade, Seohyun built a reputation on control, grace and precision — the quintessential model idol. But in Holy Night: Demon Hunters, Seohyun’s new image flips that script entirely. As Sharon, a demon hunter with uncanny powers, she steps into something far more volatile. Her gaze hardens, her voice lowers, and even co-star Ma Dong-seok admits she looked “scary.” That word — intended as praise — became a turning point in how she sees herself on screen.
Over a quiet coffee in Seoul’s Samcheong-dong, Seohyun opens up about this shift with surprising ease. She talks about the script’s pull, saying she’s drawn to stories that disturb her sense of comfort. Seohyun’s new image didn’t arrive out of nowhere — it emerged from a desire to unsettle expectations. In the film, her character Sharon forms part of “Holy Night,” a covert trio that hunts demonic forces inside a city spiralling into chaos. Sharon doesn’t shout; she calculates, and that calm is what makes her dangerous.
Seohyun constructed Sharon as a solitary figure — an only child, an INTJ, both imaginative and ruthlessly analytical. These details, she explains, helped her inhabit a personality far from her own public image. “She’s rational but creative,” Seohyun says, “and that combination made her feel real to me.” She didn’t try to force a transformation but instead expanded on parts of herself that already existed. “Natural acting,” she adds, “comes from taking something true and turning up the volume.”
While she spent weeks in Sharon’s quiet intensity, it was her scenes with co-star Jung Ji-so that brought lightness. Seohyun calls her “adorable and oddly full of dad jokes,” and compares their bond to that of siblings. On set, they would laugh between takes and immediately snap back into character when cameras rolled. The contrast, Seohyun says, was refreshing — “I wanted to protect her, and that made our scenes more powerful.” Her offscreen affection only deepened the tension they brought to their roles.
Though the film delves into the occult, Seohyun admits ghosts don’t scare her. “They’re already dead,” she says with a shrug, “so why be afraid?” She sees sleep paralysis, a common subject among her Girls’ Generation bandmates, as the brain’s trick — not a haunting. “Your body’s awake, your mind isn’t — just try to move a finger.” It’s this blend of reason and imagination that grounds her performance, even in the film’s most chaotic moments.
Seohyun’s new image left even her oldest friends stunned. Fellow member Hyo-yeon showed up to the afterparty and didn’t recognise her at first. “She said, ‘You didn’t feel like Seohyun,’ and that made me proud,” she says. Other Girls’ Generation members texted promises to watch the film and send their reactions. Their support, though quiet, gave her the courage to lean into the unfamiliar. “That’s what real friendship is,” she says, “quiet but unwavering.”
Looking ahead, Seohyun seems unfazed by the risks of reinvention. She speaks like someone who has already grieved the need for perfection. “I don’t want to avoid anything just because it’s hard,” she says. She hopes audiences remember her not for consistency, but for colour — for contradiction. With Holy Night: Demon Hunters, Seohyun’s new image signals something braver than transformation: it signals freedom.
