‘Squid Game 2’ Stars Park Gyu-Young & Lee Seo-Hwan Talk Auditions & How One Scene Reminded Them Of Korea’s 2002 World Cup
This article contains spoilers for Squid Game Season 2.
Park plays Kang No-eul, a North Korean defector who is desperately trying to find out more information about her young daughter left behind in the North. No-eul ends up entering the games — not as a participant, but as a masked soldier, cladded in a bright pink uniform and given the license to kill participants who fail each round of the winner-takes-all games.
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This twist in her identity was not something that Park was aware of during the two rounds of auditions she went through for the second season of the trailblazing show.
“I went through two rounds of auditions, not knowing what role I would be playing,” Park tells Deadline. “I was just given a lot of lines to read. The first audition round, I sent in an audition tape. The second round was in person with the director and the creator. It was only after that I was given the script and notified that I would actually be playing the role of the soldier.”
Park previously appeared in hit dramas like It’s Okay to Not Be Okay and Sweet Home.
Actor Lee Seo-hwan plays the role of Jung-bae, who is lead character Gi-hun’s long-time friend, also appearing in the first two episodes of Squid Game Season 1. In the first season, Jung-bae appears alongside Gi-hun betting on horse races together. Lee shares that he was surprised and happy when he learned that he would have an expanded involvement in the follow-up season.
“Director Hwang gave me the script and just said that I had to be in Season 2” says Lee. “I was quite proud, because he was not even asking but instead almost forcing me to be in the second season. I couldn’t be happier and I was over the moon holding on to that script. I actually had to try and stay away from everyone because I didn’t want to spoil anything and I wanted to immerse myself in my character.”
In just under three weeks, Squid Game Season 2 has already become the third most-watched season of television ever on Netflix, notching 152.5M total views since its December 26 premiere, sitting behind only Squid Game Season 1 and Wednesday in terms of all-time viewership.
On the opportunity to develop his character of Jung-bae further in the second season, Lee said that he thought a lot about what it means to express a “middle-aged” male friendship onscreen with Lee Jung-jae’s character.
“I remember in Season 1, there’s a scene with the ATM machine, and we’re saying things back and forth at each other, and I wanted to bring that same vibe back in Season 2,” says Lee. “I think it’s with all Korean middle-aged men, and I don’t know if it’s with middle-aged men all over the world, but they always like to grill and curse at each other. That’s our way of showing affection to friends. It’s kind of weird, but that’s what we do.
“In Season 1, I try to curse him with the worst possible curse that can be aired, and I wanted to bring that same chemistry in Season 2. However, Gi-hun is a different man in Season 2, but my character Jung-bae is still the same silly old guy,” adds Lee.
Lee reunited with Lee Jung-jae in Squid Game, after previously appearing together on 2020 action film Deliver Us From Evil. He fondly picks the shoot for the pentathlon game in Squid Game Season 2 as one of his best memories on set.
“I remember the scene in the Pentathlon when everybody was cheering together,” says Lee. “It required a lot of takes, but there was this one take where I felt that we were really all in this frenzy together. We were very excited and cheering for everyone and it almost felt like we were back in 2002 during the World Cup [held across Japan and Korea] and South Korea went to the semi finals. It was 23 years ago, and the whole country was in a frenzy. I felt that same thing during that take. But the funny thing was that after the director shouted ‘cut,’ everybody became shy individuals again.”
Despite her character’s steely, cold-blooded exterior, Park emphasizes that No-eul is someone who is desperately seeking dignity and human connection.
“Rather than focusing on the mercilessness or violent part of the character, while killing someone cannot ever be justified, I think that what No-eul is asking is: what does it mean to preserve a minimum level of human dignity? What does that mean to her, and how is that expressed? I think if viewers looked at it from that perspective, they are going to be a lot more intrigued by the character, especially into the third season,” says Park.
She added that she had a few conversations about her character with the director and the key question revolved around how the character should live, having possibly lost someone who is the most important person to her.
“I remember the director telling me that the character’s name literally means sunset in Korean, so it refers to a time when darkness starts to seep in and you feel heavier,” says Park. “Going beyond just the facial expressions and having a lower voice, the director talked about how it means more than that, how I had to carry a sense of this very heavy, weighted emotion, especially when entering the games as the soldier.”
On her next project, Park says that she would like to be part of a “slice-of-life human drama.”
“I would like to portray a role in something like a slice-of-life human drama, whether it’s about falling in love or just about people’s daily lives,” says Park. “Although recently I’ve been lucky to be able to participate in projects where I portrayed characters who were put in extreme situations, if an opportunity allows me to do so, I would love to just portray everyday life as a human being. In Korea, we call that genre ‘human drama.'”
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