Lee Min Ho appears on the cover of the September issue of Korean Esquire but his contribution to the magazine's first fall issue was more than a few fan service photos. He also had a few words to say about his character in the upcoming "Gossip Girls" style drama, "The Heirs."

He was asked whether his "The Heirs" character Kim Tan was merely Gun Jun Pyo of "Boys Over Flowers" all over again. After all, both characters are heirs and both attend an upscale exclusive high school. His love interest will be Park Shin Hye's character, a girl from a less than luxurious background. And Gun Jun Pyo fell in love with Geum Jan Di, the daughter of a dry cleaner. Despite these similarities, Lee said there are significant differences.

For a start, he said, Gun Jun Pyo was a very simple character. Despite his sophisticated jet-set background, Gun Jun Pyo was innocent in a lot of ways. Kim Tan is much more complicated.

"He thinks a lot," said Lee Min Ho. "What he thinks about makes him unhappy and at the same time more mature."

However, the character has been described as arrogant and self-centered, so he can't be that mature when the drama starts. Maybe fighting for Park Shin Hye in a love triangle with Kim Woo Bin will help the character get his priorities straight.

Filming has already begun for the highly anticipated drama with the crew heading off to California to film a few weeks worth of footage in Los Angeles and on the beaches of Malibu.

The interviewer asked him what it was like to be playing a high school student at 26. In between "Boys Over Flowers" and "The Heirs," he has played a few adult roles, an architect in "Personal Taste, a man driven by revenge in "City Hunter" and a time-traveling warrior in "Faith: The Great Doctor." After all of that, what is it like to go back to high school?

Lee did find it a strange experience, but not because he was playing a student. What was strange was that he often found himself to be the oldest actor on set. Except for Choi Jin Hyuk, who plays his older brother and is 28, many of the actors in the drama are his juniors.

"I'm the oldest so that means there's a certain pressure on me," he said. "It's odd that at 26 other actors look up to me."

None of the other actors are really young enough to be in high school but they are younger than Lee Min Ho. Among his co-stars, Park Shin Hye is 23, Kim Woo Bin is 24, Kang Ha Neul is 23, Park Hyung Shik is 22 and Kim Ji Won is 20.

But since this is his second time acting the part of a high school student, Lee Min Ho can easily show them how it's done.