Lee points to his character’s line about how trusting in people isn’t out of need. But they also hope viewers take away the more positive message they understood from it. What was always clear to the actors was the show’s critique of the real world as a ruthless place.
“It was really interesting to see the pacing, the colors, how the characters flowed and developed. Park concurs that Hwang created an atmosphere that allowed him to focus on his character and that it also made watching it later like experiencing it anew. “It made my character seem more dramatically heightened, the acting became more crystallized.” When he eventually took in the totality of the completed series, he felt good about the decision. “In this case, I had a lot of trust for director Hwang that he was going to balance everything out, so I kept myself separate,” he says, to keep an element of surprise for himself during filming. Lee, who’s had a varied acting career in Korean film and television over 25 years, says on a typical project he would have hung around on set during his non-shooting days to watch other actors. Just like Sae-byeok!”Īll three actors spoke of how safe they felt in Hwang’s hands. Also, I’d barely slept, so I had these dark circles under my eyes, and I looked terrible. “But I think it helped,” she says, “because Sae-byeok doesn’t talk that much, she’s very much by herself, and because I didn’t speak much at the audition, I think the director could see me as Sae-byeok. Looking back now, she remembers how she could hardly get any words out when meeting Hwang, who asked few questions to begin with. But two days after I sent the audition tape, they said the director wanted to see me in person in Korea. I just wanted some judgment for my performance so I can improve. I wanted to do it right, but it didn’t mean I had to be cast. “I prepared a lot,” she says of the tape she made. Though Jung had been looking to make the transition to acting, she was expecting her new management team to place her at an acting academy, not put her up for a big part. A top-tier model who’d gone from placing second in South Korea’s version of “Next Top Model” to walking runways internationally for Louis Vuitton and Chanel, Jung was firmly ensconced in New York and preparing for Fashion Week when the enigmatic audition scenes arrived. It’s why it’s hard to imagine a richer first acting job than Jung’s as guarded North Korean defector Sae-byeok, but she had no idea what she was in for when the audition for “Squid Game” came her way. It was amplified because of the ensemble. It’s not something that can be shown when a character stands alone. “In working with, we worked on that modulation. Park, whose character Sang-woo is Gi-hun’s childhood friend but also an antagonist in a game of survival, says every role had that duality. The dark and the light, the ugliness and the fun.” But there’s a part of him you cannot dislike too much, and I wanted to highlight that. “Gi-hun enjoys gambling, he’s jobless, in debt, not a good family member, kind of a loser. “I’ve always been interested in characters that have good and bad, that duality,” says Lee.