Despite the global success of “Squid Game,” it’s sort of surprising that its creator, Hwang Dong-hyuk, has not become more recognized among the show’s fanbase or the general Hollywood industry at large. Frankly, despite it’s episodic format, Dong-hyuk has demonstrated auteur talent by crafting one of the few Netflix series to truly seep into the public consciousness. Oh, and did we mention he wrote, directed and produced all of it?
Speaking through a translator, Dong-hyuk admitted he didn’t know taking on so many roles would be “this hard.”
“I feel like I just literally did not have a sense of how difficult this was going to be. It was honestly very painful writing every episode, I came across many, many dead ends and writer’s blocks along the way, where I had to be literally pulling out my hair,” Dong-hyuk says. “And throughout the pre-production process, we actually shot the whole thing for about eight months, so it was quite a long journey. And I mean, as for how did I maintain my calm and how did I manage to do it, I think that while it was a very lonely and difficult endeavor to carry on the entire burden on my own, I thought to myself if this were to do good, and if this were to succeed, all the glory would also be solely mine as well. Obviously, it means that if it doesn’t do well, that is also all going to be on my shoulders. But I continue to sort of think to myself that if it does well, if it succeeds, all the glory will be mine as well, just as much as how lonely the whole process was. So at times, I tried to approach it in a way where I wasn’t thinking about it being a series, but I thought to myself, let’s approach it thinking it’s an eight-hour film. Just like Gi-hun, I’m a gambler. I mean, I like to go all in.”
Over the course of our conversation, condensed and edited for clarity, Dong-hyuk discusses how he kept the project on the shelf for almost a decade, the moment he knew his vision might really work, whether he’s has any “red light, green light” moments in the back of his head for season two and much more.
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The Playlist: You first had this idea back in 2008, 2009. What made you persevere and never give up on it?
Hwang Dong-hyuk: Well, I don’t know if it was perseverance, what I can say is I think I always had faith in the potential of my idea. However, at the time, I knew that it wasn’t fit to become a commercial film for the cinema or a TV series on linear channels, because there were a lot of limitations, whether it was the violence that is depicted or the viewer rating. And so, I felt like, considering the media environment back then, it just wasn’t the right time. It would be pushing it a bit too much if I wanted to create it into a linear TV series or a film for the cinema. I think I felt like the story was ahead of our time at that time, and I always had this thought that maybe someday when the time comes, when time goes by and times change, maybe this story, this item will be responded to in a different way. And in fact, for the next 10 years, I never once looked back at it, but I always had it with me. And when the time comes, I felt like times were going to be different from 2008 and 2009, and I almost feel like I had this blind faith in this particular story, this story, and idea of adults coming together, putting their lives literally in these children’s games for a huge cash prize. I think I believed in the ironic charm of this story.
Was there any specific moment that made you take it off your shelf and pitch it?
It could be in 2018, but what I was actually thinking at the time was looking into creating “Squid Game” into a Webtoon series, and I thought maybe we’ll do a webtoon first, and if the people like it, we can then move it into a live-action. So around 2018, I read it for the first time in 10 years again, because I was thinking about doing a webtoon with it. At the time, Netflix was just beginning its business in Korea, and it was a time when global OTT services were really becoming very popular. And I thought if we were to look at just the Korean market, there would be a lot of limitations, but maybe with the global OTT and to showcase this story to a global audience, that could be a good bet, and I thought it could also lead to greater opportunities. So maybe, just maybe Netflix could be a good home for “Squid Game.”
When “Parasite” had its own global success and it crossed over from the art house and the Korean market, did that give you faith that “Squid Game” could become something bigger than just a local territory hit?
Of course, seeing how well “Parasite” did, I definitely did have those ideas, but of course, it’s different, it being a feature film and this being a series on a global OTT service. However, as director Bong said about overcoming the two-inch barrier and opening doors to a lot of great content all around the world, I feel that “Parasite” achieved that to some extent because as we all know, it was really loved by many audiences, and critics alike. But it’s not just “Parasite,” there are many Korean TV series that have been long popular in many different Asian countries, and I also was aware that that popularity, that heat for Korean content was spreading to South America, as well as European countries as well. There was a lot of demand for Korean content, as well as a slowly, yet surely growing fan base around the world. And so working with a global OTT service, I knew that that could lead to global success, and I was aware of that fact, and I also, in a way, aimed to achieve that as well.
You directed, wrote and produced every episode. and only one is less than an hour correct?
Yeah. Number eight, episode eight is shorter, it’s 30 minutes, but other episodes are from 50 minutes to one hour.
That is so much to take on. It might seem silly to ask, but how did you do it?
I have to do it again for season two.
I know!
No, honestly speaking, I did not know that it would be this hard. I’ve only done films before, so I feel like I just literally did not have a sense of how difficult this was going to be. It was honestly very painful writing every episode, I came across many, many dead ends and writer’s blocks along the way, where I had to be literally pulling out my hair. And throughout the pre-production process, we actually shot the whole thing for about eight months, so it was quite a long journey. And I mean, as for how did I maintain my calm and how did I manage to do it, I think that while it was a very lonely and difficult endeavor to carry on the entire burden on my own, I thought to myself if this were to do good, and if this were to succeed, all the glory would also be solely mine as well. Obviously, it means that if it doesn’t do well, that is also all going to be on my shoulders. But I continue to sort of think to myself that if it does well, if it succeeds, all the glory will be mine as well, just as much as how lonely the whole process was. So at times, I tried to approach it in a way where I wasn’t thinking about it being a series, but I thought to myself, let’s approach it thinking it’s an eight-hour film. Just like Gi-hun, I’m a gambler. I mean, I like to go all in.
O.K. was there a moment during production where you thought, “O.K. we’re going to make it. I’m going to win this bet”?
It was the red light, green light scene, I would say. It was towards the very beginning of our shooting, and this particular scene was something that lived inside my head for over a decade. This scene of grown adults, hundreds of them playing red light, green light, and then someone being shot down to death, people being in a panic, slow motion, the music, “Fly Me to the Moon,” playing in the back. This scene was all living in my head until that moment that we shot it. And so I was very anxious, I didn’t know if it would work, I wasn’t sure if it would land with the audiences [or] if the scene was going to be entertaining. If it was going to be a good scene worth doing. And obviously, we didn’t have any reference either, so I was very nervous too, because it was towards the very beginning of the whole shooting process, and because it was such a large-scale scene as well. But when I was doing the onset editing, when we added the slow-motion and “Fly Me to the Moon” to the background and watching the edited version on set, I felt then and there, what I had thought of, was not wrong. And it was a very strange feeling, and I felt like it was very close to what was inside my head for all that time, and it was something that was not showcased to the world ever before. And so I think I had this feeling in me, where I thought, this is going to be something that’s going to catch people’s attention, as well as stir something up in their hearts.
Is there a scene in your head that you have, that you visualized, that you think about for season two?
Yes, there are some, however, I don’t want to give any spoilers, so all I’ll say is there are going to be new games, even better games than the first season, that await.
Back to season one, was there one episode, in particular, you found the hardest to write? From my perspective, my guess would’ve been the episode where the participants go back home and you have to convince the audience why they would go back and play the game, because many of the people viewing would think, “Oh, they’re free. They’re escaped. They’ll be O.K.”
While the episode you mentioned, episode two, is the episode that differentiates “Squid Game” from other survival or gambling pieces, because all of the participants vote to leave and then return by their own will. As a writer, it wasn’t a particularly difficult episode to write because I already had all of those backstories of each character in my mind when I first set out to write it. I knew why they were all going to have to come back for each character, so it wasn’t too difficult from a writer’s perspective. I would say personally, writing the games was the most difficult challenge as a writer, and the biggest challenge among the games was definitely the glass bridge. It was because it was not a game that really existed, I had to create the whole thing, and I had to create each element of the game in terms of who goes when, the order of the way people cross the bridge, why Gi-hun ends up being number 16, and how each character, from number one to 13, how they all die. I had to come up with all of those different stories on my own, and it required a lot of ideas.
I’ve also read that you’ve based many of the characters on people from throughout your life. Are any of those people still in your life, have they noticed that you have maybe done an homage to them in this show, and have they talked to you about it?
Well, the person I refer to the most is actually myself, in the characters Gi-hun, Sang-woo, and even Il-nam, I would say a lot of me is put into those characters. I also drew inspiration from the troublemakers of my family as well, and that being said, it’s not easy to go up to them and say, “This character is based on you.” So I didn’t tell them, but I did use a lot of their names, Gi-hun, Sang-woo, they’re both names of my childhood friends as well as Il-nam too, so I did use a lot of names from people in my life. And my grandmother on my father’s side, I drew a lot of inspiration from her in the characters of Gi-hun’s mom and Sang-woo’s mom as well. And I really wanted to tell her that, unfortunately, she passed away during the production process and she wasn’t able to see the final results. So, I only wish that it could have been different.
You knew these characters’ backstories before you cast each actor for their roles. Did any of the actors bring anything to the roles that surprised you during the production?
I mean, almost everyone, like [Lee Jung-jae] for Gi-hun, I mean, his interpretation of the character Gi-hun, was a little different from what I thought. Why am I speaking English all of a sudden?
Either works!
So almost everyone, especially for the character Gi-hun, and from the very first episode, he brought to the character a lot more ups and downs to his emotions. So the character he portrayed, in terms of the emotional expression, had higher highs and lower lows than what I had in mind, and I really liked that, it brought a sense of purity, as well as a liveliness to the character Gi-hun. It was the same for pretty much everyone as well. I mean, Hoyeon, Sae-byeok, was also different from what I had expected, she brought a much colder and edgier expression to all of her facial expressions, as well as her eyes. And Yeong-su, who played Il-nam, had this character figured out in a way where this character spoke very slowly, much slower than what I had ever expected, and he would have these short pauses in between his lines. And it was just a pleasant surprise, it was so refreshing. In Korea, there was even a trend of people on social media imitating the way Il-nam spoke, that was how impactful it was.
Your cast and your crew have already won so many awards and honors for this show. is there one so far that has meant the most to you?
Among the work?
About the awards.
Yeah, I mean, the first one was the most memorable one for me, the Gotham Award last year in New York.
I was there, it was fun.
Yeah. I mean, it was my first ever award won in the States, and it was in New York, I love the city. So, it was the first award for “Squid Game” so it meant a lot. I mean, I was surprised because I didn’t expect to win, I was happy even just get the nomination for those awards, but I didn’t expect to win in the first event. But we won, it’s like, “Wow, what’s happening?”
My last quick question for you is your star of “Squid Game,” Lee Jung-jae has directed “Hunt,” a film that’s going to be at Cannes. Has he shown it to you by any chance?
No, not yet. I haven’t seen it, but I visited his set while he was shooting the film, it looked great. I mean, [it’s a] blockbuster, big action film.
“Squid Game” season one is available on Netflix.