Broadway star Lea Salonga shared how South Korean boy group BTS helped her navigate the COVID-19 pandemic. In a recent podcast interview, the actress recalled how she got to know the K-Pop group back in 2020 when they released their hit song, "Dynamite."
Lea has been a proud member of ARMY as she continues to share BTS content on her social media accounts.
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“2020. COVID, and everybody’s stuck at home. I don’t know, I was just going through quite a bit in my life. The isolation and even though my friends and I were making an effort to stay in touch with each other and watching my kid navigate that kind of isolation from friends. That’s a big ask of somebody that young and impressionable and vulnerable,” she recalled.
She shared how there was just “a lot” going on in her life at the point of the pandemic and in August of 2020, "Dynamite" just appeared out of nowhere for her–– marking the start of her being a fan of the seven-member Korean boy group.
“I’m watching YouTube, as most everybody does to try and get through the day, and I’m like what is this? What is this on my social media? I watched the video and the minute I saw V in that bottle green Gucci waistcoat and flared trousers, like pushing his hair back, I’m like–– and I’m done, this is it,” she expressed.
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Lea recalled how she would go down the “rabbit hole” of videos, concerts, and all other BTS-related content during the pandemic. She credited BTS for helping her “pull out” from the things that she was going through at the time.
“It just pulled me out of this sad, not quite hopeless, but this sad state of affairs that my brain found itself in. I’m like, I’m gonna live here in a minute because I don’t know when this pandemic is gonna end, but I’m gonna open YouTube or open the internet every day, and I’m gonna watch what these guys are doing,” she added.
As an artist herself, the singer-actress expressed how much respect she has for BTS as she could see the sincerity in all of them.
“I have such great respect for them as songwriters, as performers, as musicians, just as artists, and discovering who writes so much of their material. Just how they relate to one another and how they are with their fans,” she said.
“I’m like there is something very genuine. K-Pop has this reputation of being so manufactured, but there is something sincere and real and it seems that these guys have such integrity,” she ended.
Lea admitted that she only follows BTS in K-Pop.
“They had me in a chokehold and I’m still here,” she ended.