Squid Game star Lee Jung-jae is now one of the most recognisable people on the planet.
Before the dystopian Netflix series launched in 2021, he’d starred in An Affair in a breakthrough role, the 90s South Korean TV drama Sandglass, and films including Deliver Us From Evil and The Face Reader.
Then, when he was cast as Seong Gi-hun, aka Player 456, in Squid Game, his career reached stratospheric new heights. The actor knew – he told Metro – that the character had the potential to be a ‘career-defining role’ for him. And he was right.
The third and final season of the survival drama is now out on the streaming platform, bringing Gi-hun’s story to a close in six gripping episodes that have left fans in floods of tears.
When Gi-hun’s journey began, he was a man facing financial ruin, separated from the mother of his child and trying to earn a buck by gambling. At a desperate moment, he’s approached by the Recruiter (Gong Yoo) and invited to join the game… the deadly game that he’ll eventually win, with a cash prize of 45.6 billion South Korean won (£24.4million).
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Even though creator Hwang Dong-hyuk had originally conceived of Squid Game as a one-season show, the final episode was left on a cliffhanger, with Gi-hun vowing for revenge against the person in charge of the game, the Front Man (Lee Byung-hun), a mission that fuelled his purpose in seasons two and three.
‘Player 456, Gi-hun was put on an emotional rollercoaster in season one,’ Jung-jae told us while we were sitting opposite him in a hotel in London, a day after the red carpet premiere.
‘When I was reading the scripts for seasons two and three, I knew that he would be put on another rollercoaster, and even more so. So I thought, wow, if I just play this character very well, it’s going to be a very amazing, career-defining role for me.’
One can only imagine what it was like when the actor finally discovered what would happen to Gi-hun by the end of the show. And if you haven’t watched it already, trust us… the ending is truly mind-blowing.
‘When I read the very last page of the script for season three, it just exceeded all the expectations that I had,’ the 52-year-old said.
‘It really took me by surprise, and I remember having a lot of conversations with director Hwang about the finale.’
The day before our sit-down interview, Metro also attended the premiere at London’s Barbican Centre, where we asked Jung-jae how he hopes fans of Squid Game would feel by the time they reach the final episode of the series.
‘I hope that after viewers watched the last episode, they will have been left with a sense of hope,’ he said.
‘It is not violence that we want to talk about, but it is really throwing the question, “How do we as human beings want to live among ourselves and in harmony?” So I hope we can all try to find our own answers to that question.’
Yes, Squid Game is an extremely violent show, one of the most graphically violent on TV without question. But it’s true what the actor said – the main theme of the series isn’t about physical acts of brutality, but questions of morality.
Even if it spawned copycat shows that focus on the competition element of the programme, one would hope that people would reach the end of Squid Game feeling a greater sense of empathy for others and that key word – hope.
Squid Game is available to stream on Netflix.
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