SPOILER ALERT: This story contains spoilers for the Season 3 finale of “Squid Game,” now streaming on Netflix.
Think of Netflix’s Korean dystopian thriller series “Squid Game,” and images of the pink-uniformed guards, Front Man’s black mask, the over-sized motion-sensing doll and now-famous actors like Lee Jung-jae first come to mind. But another vital and familiar element viewers may not even be aware of are the actors who voice the characters we’ve grown to love, root for, and, at times, despise over the last three seasons.
Meet Greg Chun and Tom Choi, who may not be household names or faces, but they are the actors responsible for bringing to life “Squid Game’s” two primary characters. Chun has provided the English dub for antagonist Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae), who won Season 1’s game only to return in Season 2 with the hope of destroying it, while Choi is the English-voiced actor for Gi-hun’s primary antagonist and “Squid Game” head, the villainous Front Man, aka Hwang In-ho (Lee Byung-hun).
Chun and Choi also carry the distinction of having successfully lived through three seasons of the drama that showed life inside a secluded, secret location where brutally violent child’s games were played out in a quest to be the game’s sole survivor and walk away with billions of cash (in the Korean currency won). And while In-ho survives the series and is last seen being driven off in San Francisco after the surprise cameo of Cate Blanchett in a random alley playing Korean game ddakji (suggesting that maybe “Squid Game” could live on), Gi-hun takes his own life in a valiant end in the series finale.
Below (and in the exclusive video above), Chun and Choi discuss their experience voicing the characters, if they’ve ever met their on-camera counterparts and why they think people connected so much with “Squid Game.”
How much did you know early on about the fate of your characters, or even how they might end up making it to the series finale?
Tom Choi: I found out pretty early what the whole storyline was going to be for Season 2 and it was going to be a head-to-head match against Gi-hun and In-ho. Then Season 3, I had no idea what was gonna happen.
Greg Chun: When I found out that there was going to be a Season 2, I didn’t know which way they were gonna take the story. The last thing we saw from Season 1 is that Gi-hun is going to try and get revenge. But there have been other trilogies out there where the main character survives, and at the very beginning of Season 2, they’re just offed, and it goes in a different direction.
As we got through most of Season 2, in my head, I was like, “It would be odd to then kill him and then have Season 3 be something kind of different.” I made the assumption that I was going to be there to the bitter end and, thankfully, that ended up being the case.
In Season 3, Episode 4, In-ho offers Gi-hun a way out with the baby and gives him the knife to kill everyone else, which he ends up not being able to do. Tom, did you play that as In-ho having some empathy for Gi-hun or was it more self-serving?
Choi: My inside knowledge and seeing some of the behind-the-scenes interviews, essentially it’s In-ho trying to recreate the earlier choice he had because I think he did the same thing. In those flashback scenes for him, I do firmly believe you’ll see that he does have some compassion in heart and so that obviously has to carry through. I mean, as much compassion and heart as you can by saying, “Hey, kill everybody!” That’s how demented Korean cinema can be sometimes.
And even for a 1:1 scene like that, you guys didn’t actually act together. But have you met outside of the booth?
Choi: We’ve crossed paths a few times and we’re fans of each other. We’ve also probably done other dubs where our voices have crossed paths.
Chun: I am curious as to what type of work would surface if we were allowed to do scenes with partners. It could be a disaster or it could be a great thing. I think it depends on the two different actors and how they complement each other’s style and what kind of chemistry they share. I don’t know, but it’d be very interesting to see.
Watching the show dubbed, it’s impossible not to get emotionally connected to these characters, which is a testament to the importance of voice artists.
Chun: There were a lot of seasons where I was just brooding and looking and grunting and just breathing so vocally it was certainly not a very stressful day. A lot of Season 3 was like that. And this may sound a little silly, but when you get into the minutiae of dubbing, you really try and treat every moment as a little puzzle that you want to solve to the best of your ability.
Choi: Originally I was like, “Guys, it’s not me. I’m not acting in it.” But then the statistics came out that said that over 50% of people watch it dubbed, and you’re like, “Yeah, I’m hopefully contributing something.” I’ve gotten some good feedback. I also got lucky because basically, my character wears a mask in the first season so even though it’s my voice you hear, it’s very heavily modulated until he takes off his mask in the limousine scene in the Season 1 finale. I’ve done probably 80 different shows before “Squid Game” Season 2, when I got the chance to really delve into my performance.
Greg, how did you feel about the fate of Gi-hun in the finale?
Chun: The thing that I love about the ending, honestly, is that this person — who obviously is a shitty father and he’s been a gambling addict and a screw-up in a lot of ways — he has this moment of ultimate redemption in my eyes, where basically he sacrifices himself so the baby can live. I’m always going to be a fan of one last act of nobility from a protagonist where there’s redemption. It’s poetic and it’s done beautifully and is a wonderful way to end the story.
And the cool thing is, is at the very end Gi-hun has a line: “We are not horses.” Like, we are not these animals for sport. And then the very last line is “Humans are…” and it’s left open-ended and he falls off the platform to his death. I feel like a true storyteller is one who asks some really big questions, forces you to ponder them, and then doesn’t really give you the answer.
Tom, how about you with In-ho’s ending?
Choi: So, when the Front Man, In Ho, visits Gi-hun’s daughter in America, I believe it’s his only definitive act of true kindness without any ulterior motive. Unless, of course, it’s to have his daughter avenge her father maybe in a sequel? Even then, the fact that the package contained a bloody tracksuit is still disturbing and likely to create psychological trauma for the daughter. However, I appreciated the closure of his character as a final gesture to the series. It illustrates that characters are complex and not simply villains or heroes, not to mention it sets up the prequel story of his original time winning and taking over the Squid Game.
Tom, talk more about your approach to the role once In-ho’s mask does come off. How did it change?
Choi: I loved the fact that when he has the mask on, I don’t have to match the lip flaps, but then I was able to hone my craft for Season 2 and I was able to do those emotions. Obviously, he’s got so many deep levels and there’s a subtlety to it, especially in these quiet moments. I would have totally not been able to adjust myself properly in those moments because it really is you fighting instinct. You’re in this booth going, “I just want to jump out of my body and be this character!” But you actually have to do exactly what he’s doing with his body control, which most of the time in these intimate moments is just moving very slightly.
Take us with you into the booth when you’re recording and your process. Do you get used to doing it all solo?
Choi: I can talk you through my mind process first, which is warm-ups because a lot of it is wording that can get you tongue-tied and you have to manipulate and modulate. But then you watch it through once to get the original performance and the nuances in the language and you’re watching their mouths.
Chun: For the more challenging scenes, acting-wise, it actually is easier for me to be there alone just because you can just be in your own world and in your own head and you’re just completely free from distractions, whether that be somebody else’s emotions or somebody else’s take on it. You’re really left to kind of immerse yourself in any way that you see fit to approach every acting moment.
What are the differences for you between the emotional and more action-centric scenes?
Chun: For the more emotional scenes, that’s always the challenge for any actor, isn’t it? At the end of Season 2, In-ho so graciously betrays everybody and eventually sneaks away from the pack, fakes his own death of the walkie talkie, and then puts his mask back on and punishes Gi-hun for causing this whole revolt and shoots and kills his best friend right in front of him. For that scene, there was a lot of just wailing and gnashing of teeth that had to happen at that point so the challenge for scenes like that is just those are the finer points of acting that can always be elusive.
When it comes to the action scenes, the challenge is just having to keep screaming over and over and over. You saw at the beginning of Season 2, when I’m there trying to advise everybody on the “Red Light, Green Light” game and doing my best to make sure as few people get shot as possible. That scene was nothing but screaming from beginning to end so we recorded it over maybe three or four separate sessions. So we would record and scream for a half hour and then be like, “OK, we’ll pick it up next time.”
Have you ever met or had a conversation with your acting counterpart who we see in the show?
Chun: Oh, no, I haven’t. Obviously, he’s a fascinating guy and it’d be pretty cool to be able to meet him, but no, there’s been no opportunity.
Choi: No, I have never met Lee Byung-hun. It’d be weird, to be honest with you. Like, “Hey, when more than half the people in the world watch this, they don’t listen to your voice, they hear mine.” I don’t even know if somebody would want to hear that.
What’s something that would surprise people about your job as a voice actor?
Choi: I think it’s more difficult than people think. It’s more contained and controlled. If you haven’t trained your body, you’d have a really difficult time with voiceover work because there’s a tendency to overact. But now that I’m thinking about it, the biggest surprise is if you play the emotion of it, then it’s actually more convincing than something that you’ve said that matches the lips. Like, you would suspend your belief more even if the lips didn’t match, if you just did a convincing emotional performance.
What do you think it was that people connected to so much with “Squid Game?”
Chun: I think it raises some very fundamental questions that everyone can relate to, especially in this day and age where you’ve got like a huge wealth gap, which is nothing new in Asia. But the spotlight on the wealth gap in other countries has become more ever present in recent years. Whether you’re part of this class or that class, everyone can relate to something in the show. And of course, there’s always the overarching question that is fascinating inherently, which is how far would you go for money?
This interview has been edited and condensed.
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