The Hardest Squid Game Scene to Dub in English Was Not One You'd Expect

The protagonist of the Netflix megahit Squid Game is Seong Gi-hun, an indebted gambler and absentee father who screams, sweats, and strains his way through the very intense experience of watching hundreds of people get straight-up killed--while trying to avoid being killed, and retain some sense of ethics and loyalty, to boot. But we wondered: what was it like to voice Gi-hun in English for the many people who watched Squid Game with the dubbing option turned on? So we asked the voice actor Greg Chun, a veteran of video games and anime who spoke to Slate from his studio in Los Angeles. Our conversation--on the hardest Squid Game scene to dub, the controversy around the Korean-to-English translation, and his time working on Call of Duty--has been edited and condensed for clarity. Rebecca Onion: What was your reaction when you first saw the Squid Game script?