Here in Hollywood: The 'Squid Game' players you need to know

PART 1: The triumph and grief of ‘Squid Game’ director Hwang Dong-hyuk

When "Squid Game" first captivated the world in 2021, its creator Hwang Dong-hyuk watched with a sense of bittersweet vindication. The series, conceived over a decade earlier and originally dismissed as “too unrealistic,” had suddenly become a visceral mirror to our present-day reality. In the corridors of global media power, it was a roaring success: history-making Emmy wins, record-breaking viewership, cultural ubiquity. But for Hwang, the triumph was tempered with something far more sobering.

“I was, of course, extremely grateful to see the success,” he shared quietly in our recent interview in New York, four years after the “Squid Game” began on-screen. “But it did make me a bit sad.”

Back in 2009 when he wrote it, the idea of people driven to deadly games by the crushing weight of poverty and inequality seemed like dystopian exaggeration. But by 2021, the lines between fiction and reality had blurred to the point of disappearance. Season after season, Hwang has returned to his creation as a hit-maker, but with the deepened burden of a truth-teller.

The world had a lot of problems in 2021. And now? “The world had gotten even worse,” he said of writing Seasons 2 and 3. “Life had become even more difficult. Things had become even more brutal.”

There’s an ache to Hwang’s voice when he talks about his work. Not because he doubts its relevance, but because he never imagined it would become this relevant. The series’ rising stakes mirrored a world spiraling into crisis: debt, exploitation, societal fracture, and the relentless games people are forced to play just to survive.

Yet there is something deeply human behind all this. There’s a reason Squid Game didn’t just provoke, but moved audiences. At the Season 3 premiere, when I asked how the show affected him personally, Hwang answered simply: “This show made me want to become a better man, as a human being.”

That quiet sentiment echoes the undercurrent of the series itself: beneath the grotesque spectacle is a cry for empathy, a plea to confront the systems that drive us to compete rather than connect. 

Hwang traces the story back not to awards or headlines, but to a generation.

He speaks with reverence about the cultural shift in Korea after the democratic movements of the 1980s, in how the students of that era became the artists of the next. 

“In the ’90s,” he says, “we saw truly the culture flourish.” 

That legacy of resistance, reinvention, and reflection pulses through the work of the peers that he mentions: Bong Joon-ho, Han Kang, and now the global wave of Korean creators across literature, music, film and television.

Perhaps "Squid Game’s"
 success is not just in what it says, but in who gets to say it. For Hwang Dong-hyuk, the show is not a warning for the future but also a record of the present. And that, more than any trophy, may be its most haunting legacy.

PART 2: In their own words — the interpreters of 'Squid Game'

There’s something almost invisible yet extraordinary that happens at every international press event: someone listens, intently, in one language — and gives voice to another.

At the glittering New York premiere of "Squid Game" Season 3 as well as its press junket days earlier, as the cast stepped onto the red carpet, all eyes were on the stars. But just a step behind them, another group worked with laser precision and emotional intuition: the interpreters. 

Haley Jung, Minji Son, and Estelle Lee, Squid Game talent interpreters, move fluidly between Korean and English, carrying the nuance, energy, and humor of their speakers across language barriers. Armed with pens, notebooks, and an encyclopedic knowledge of both the show and the personalities behind it, they ensure that what’s said is truly understood. 

Interpretation is not just translation of one language to another. It’s knowing when to soften a phrase, when to preserve intensity, when to let silence stretch, all done in real-time. At a fast-paced junket, where interviews are lined back to back and questions fly from all angles, interpreters like Jung, Son, and Lee are the connective tissue between artist and audience, between story and platform. 

In my 2024 interview with veteran actor Lee Byung-hun, who returns this season as The Front Man, he reflected on how vital this kind of support has become. 

He said through an interpreter: “At the time, because there was no precedent, it was almost as if I was just thrown out into the open ocean and had to swim myself out of there and navigate my own path. Because everything was a first for me. So I remember just being always very, very nervous with everything I had to do. But now, so many artists and actors work outside of Korea. We now have a built-in system that's become more stabilized outside of Korea as well. So it makes things so much easier for us, for example, like in doing promos like this. Back in the day, I remember having to just work through them, push through it, having to use English, speak in English when it was so tough for me. But now I can speak in Korean and we have translation as well. So I think everything has gotten a lot easier for us.”

Easier, and meaningful. For Lee and many of his co-stars, being able to speak in their native language is about more than comfort. It’s about authenticity and nuance. Control over one’s own narrative. And for global audiences, it means hearing the voice of an actor not just translated, but truly interpreted: with tone, intention, and personality intact. 

This was evident as the Hwang and the cast including Park Sung-hoon, Kang Ae-sim, Jo Yu-ri, and Yim Si-wan engaged with the press. Some opted for English; others, Korean — but all of them leaned on the quiet brilliance of their interpreters to bridge the space between languages.

So while Season 3 will undoubtedly bring new twists and emotional turns on screen, off-screen, it’s worth celebrating the less-visible players who make global storytelling possible in real-time. They make not play the Game, but they ensure that everyone, everywhere, can understand it.

PART 3: A quick Q&A with the voice of 'Squid Game’s' most chilling icon 

Yong Chavez: Are you based in LA?

Reagan To: I am based in LA, yes!

When you got this role in the first season, what was it like? Did you have any expectation of how it would go?

Honestly, I had no idea it would blow up the way it did. I'm so grateful to be a part of it. I think it's insane. We've got to the third season, and the doll's face is right there, and it's literally insane to me. But I'm so grateful for everything, and I'm so proud of the cast and everyone who's had a part in 'Squid Game.'

Can you do the voice for me? 

Of course! Green light, red light! (Laughs)

The phenomenon of 'Squid Game,' to you, what was the most special part of it, or something that really made an impact on you, story-wise?

So one of my favorite stories is when I first did 'Squid Game,' I had no idea it was so deadly, and I thought it was just a nice game of red light, green light in the park, but it was definitely not that. And the director had me cover my eyes during, like, the bloody scene, so I didn't actually know what's going on until after it came out. And then I was like, Oh, this is a very deadly show!