‘I wanted to play an everyday character’: Squid Game’s Lee Jung-jae on his sudden rise to global fame in the Netflix series and what drew him to the show
- After 28 years as an actor and fearing being typecast as a villain, Lee Jung-jae relished playing an ordinary person in Gi-hun – and the work that goes into it
- He says he was drawn by Squid Game’s ‘grotesque and chilling’ premise, and the way it carefully develops characters so that when they face off it is cathartic
By Lee Gyu-lee
This article contains spoilers.
Actor Lee Jung-jae has already established himself as one of the top actors in Korea, building an extensive portfolio over the 28 years of his career, from playing a charismatic villain in The Face Reader (2013) to a ruthless Yakuza gangster in Deliver Us From Evil (2020).
But it only took one series for the 48-year-old actor to rise to international stardom with the role of a broke, yet good-hearted gambling addict in Netflix’s new hit original, Squid Game.
“I was in a phase where I was contemplating what my next project should be. Because as I got older, the roles I was offered were mostly villains or other such fierce characters,” the actor told The Korea Times.
The nine-part thriller series is based on high-stakes rounds of children’s games, in which participants risk their lives to become the sole survivor who wins 45.6 billion won (US$39.4 million).
Lee says he was drawn to the idea of the survival-themed series. “The idea of taking the games we used to play when we were young and making them into survival games was grotesque and chilling,” he said.
“Also, unlike other survival game genre works, the series takes a closer look into the sorrows and sufferings of the people who take part in the game, and carefully develops them. So when the characters face off in the ending, it comes out as truly cathartic.”