KATSEYE On Bringing K-pop Culture to New Communities
“Any girl can look at us and see herself in us. I feel like we all wanted to have that growing up.”
For the international girl group, KATSEYE, their differences are what make them special. After years of auditioning and training, its six members were brought together by music powerhouses HYBE and Geffen, marking the first time that a US record label and K-pop entertainment leader joined forces. Through utilizing a proven K-pop formula and applying it to an international group, KATSEYE was born, bringing together a range of different cultures, backgrounds and ways of life.
The six members include Daniela, of Cuban and Venezuelan descent, Indian-American vocalist Lara, Manon, who is Swiss, Italian and Ghanaian, Sophia who is Filipina, Megan who has Chinese and Singaporean heritage and Yoonchae, who is from Korea.
Speaking about their different backgrounds and their importance, Manon tells us: “We take great pride in it. We’re just really grateful. I always say this, but one of the most beautiful things about the casting side for me is that we all look so different and diverse, and like any girl can look at us and see herself in us. I feel like we all wanted to have that growing up, so being able to live it and be that role model is amazing.” “I feel like one of our biggest strengths, truly, is how diverse we are in where we come from,” adds Lara.
As the group celebrates the release of their brand-new Netflix documentary series, Pop Star Academy: KATSEYE, plus their new EP, SIS (Soft Is Strong) we speak to the six members behind the band to find out more about their journey so far and hopes for the future.
Read on for the full interview.
Daniela
Tell us a bit about how KATSEYE was formed.
Daniela: We started as trainees a couple of years ago. HYBE and Geffen came together to create this global girl group, and some of us were scouted, some of us auditioned, and then we trained for a couple of years. We all trained across different timelines, but then it all came down to the survival show called The Dream Academy, where fans voted and the judges voted, and then girls were eliminated and narrowed down to six.
That must have been a crazy process! For HYBE, K-pop is kind of their thing. But with this group, things are a little bit different because this is the first time that the K-pop formula, in a sense, has been applied to an international group with different backgrounds. How does it feel for you guys to know that you’re representing so many different types of people?
Manon: We take great pride in it. We’re just really grateful. I always say this, but one of the most beautiful things about the casting side for me is that we all look so different and diverse, and like any girl can look at us and see herself in us. I feel like we all wanted to have that growing up, so being able to live it and be that role model is amazing. We’re really excited.
Manon
Lara: I fully agree with Manon. I feel like one of our biggest strengths, truly, is how diverse we are in where we come from. With our backgrounds and our different talents, we’re all able to come together as KATSEYE and create such a wonderful thing.
It’s amazing to see! Another big question but, what has the journey been like for you all so far? What have been some of the highs and lows?
Megan: The journey so far has just been amazing. This journey has taught us so much about each other and just like, about ourselves, and it pushed us to grow in a way that we’ve never grown before. Obviously, it’s sad and can be hard when you train for a while and then you lose some of your best friends on the way. We all go through our personal challenges, but with the challenges come victories, like personal growth and finding confidence and learning new skills. This journey so far has been a roller coaster but it’s just been such an amazing experience, and I couldn’t ask for anything different.
Megan
It definitely seems like it. One of the more recent highs must be the new Netflix documentary. What can you tell us about that and the filming process?
Daniela: The documentary was filmed over almost four years, and watching it for the first time was a lot. It was very exciting, and very intense because the training that we went through was very rigorous. But it feels amazing to let people know what we’ve been working on for the past couple of years, how the training went, how our relationships are and our sisterhood and it’s very exciting to finally have the documentary out and for people to be able to watch it. The filming was kind of inconsistent. they would just show up out of nowhere. Sometimes it would be a couple of days in a row. Sometimes they wouldn’t come for weeks.
Sophia: But they did capture a lot of key points. It’s eight episodes but only eight hours of our whole journey, trying to fit four years into eight hours. So there’s so much more. I feel like there’s so much more that happened and so many things that are so personal to us.
Sophia
We can imagine. A documentary like that, of that size, is something that typically wouldn’t happen so early on in a group’s career. So what was it like to reach that milestone from the beginning, and what are some of the other goals that you kind of have now that that’s already been done?
Daniela: First of all, yeah, that is amazing that we got to be on a docu-series. I never thought that would happen. And we are so, so grateful for that opportunity to show the world our process of how we got into KATSEYE. And hopefully, soon, we can go on tour and win awards and just be more in touch with our fans.
Lara
What would you say was your biggest learning from the filming process?
Lara: We all had such unique and different journeys around this, which is so special, because it’s like we all come from so many different places, and so it was a big culture shock to all of us. And I feel like we all learned how to truly open up our hearts and learn about so many new things. For example, I came in as a vocalist, but I needed more dance training, and so a lot of the journey was kind of like opening my mind up to all of these things that I couldn’t understand about my body and like moving in it. And for some people, they focus a lot on their vocals. And we also opened our hearts to each other’s cultures, which is so awesome. We had literally every single flavor of the world in this whole program. So it was really cool to see that, but it really opened our eyes, and we just learned so much.
Yoonchae
