It’s been more than three years since audiences saw Lee Jung-jae’s gambling addict Seong Gi-hun jump into his Player 456 uniform to take part in the deadly, childish games at the center of Netflix’s Korean drama ‘Squid Game’ . With the Emmy-winning hit series returning for season 2 on December 26, viewers may not recognize Lee when he reprises the role of Gi-hun – but that’s not because of the long wait between episodes.
This season, Gi-hun is no longer his cheerful, optimistic self, which is understandable for someone who was the sole survivor of a Battle Royale. He walked away with 45.6 billion won – but it was all blood money.
Considering that “Squid Game” creator and director Hwang Dong-hyuk didn’t end Season 1 with plans for a second (which led to a third and final) season, it wasn’t a role Lee initially had to worry about to make. .
Then the viewership rose, the Emmys rolled in, and Netflix begged Hwang for more. So he got to work figuring out how best to bring “Squid Game” back. In Season 2, Gi-hun is once again present in the games, this time secretly trying to take down the people behind the twisted event.
“We had a lot of conversations about why he became who he is today. To some extent, JJ [Lee Jung-jae] already knew what kind of character Gi-hun would be in season 2,” says Hwang. “From the end of season 1, after the games and after winning the huge cash prize, he left the game but could not help his mother because the mother had passed away. So JJ already knew at the beginning of season 2 where we wanted to meet Gi-hun because of all those experiences.
For Hwang, it was less about preparing Lee for where Gi-hun was at mentally and more about working with Lee to find pieces of the old Gi-hun that they could organically integrate into Seasons 2 and 3 to please the ‘Squid Game’. ” audience.
“What we focused on a lot more and invested conversations and time in was that a lot of what people liked about Gi-hun in Season 1 was that he was so naive, sometimes childish and playful and sometimes immature. kind of character,” says Hwang. “And he had maintained this warmth and goodness of heart, and that was what a lot of people loved about this character. But now you meet him at a point where he is much more focused and almost completely dominated or consumed by his drive to achieve what he sets out to do.
In seasons 2 and 3, it was harder to find “that side of Gi-hun that people loved before,” Hwang says. “So how we could get a glimpse of his old self that people loved so much every chance we had – that was something he and I discussed a lot, and also something I kept in mind when I was writing the script. writing was. Well, because even though he has a much more serious and focused character, I still wanted to give a glimpse into his old self, that familiar, almost childlike self that people love so much.”
Hwang wrote seasons 2 and 3 back-to-back, and the episodes were filmed in Korea starting in 2023, with Hwang ensuring that the second season was completed before moving on to season 3 so that Lee could best preserve the state Gi-hun would be in . mentally throughout the end of the series. “It was very interesting for me as an actor to live as Gi-hun for almost a year,” says Lee.
That time was difficult for Lee, who had to rebuild his character into an unrecognizable man, one whose goals and instincts were forever changed by the time he spent in the early games and the lives he lost around him at the time.
“I felt a bit of pressure, but not just in a stressful way. I just had a lot of introspections and what to focus on going into Season 2,” says Lee. “For example, how can I make the games more fun? Or how should I portray his developed feelings and transformation, because Gi-hun has experienced so many changes? Because I had more introspections and deeper introspections about my character in this story, that really helps me as an actor in portraying my character, so I was really able to pull it off.
In Season 2, Gi-hun re-enters the games in hopes of eliminating them, but when he meets a new group of players who are deeply in debt, he finds it difficult to explain to them all why the promised prize money is not achieved. worth risking their lives for.
“It’s true that it was more fun to play the Gi-hun from season 1 because he has a nicer character and expresses his emotions very expressively,” Lee explains. “But in season 2 I had to look at all the circumstances the characters were in. I did my best to save lives, and I also had to convince people who were not on my side. I was a character who had to embrace the backstories and traumas of all the different players in the game. While it was fun for me to try out this new character because he is a more serious and hardened character, it was a challenge for me.