
While Squid Game's uneven third season has faced several criticisms, only one can be traced back to the series' excellent first run — its bizarre, English-speaking "VIP" characters played by actors widely judged to be not of the same calibre as the show's Korean stars.
These masked characters are meant to be unlikable — they're depicted as wealthy, inhumane benefactors who view the games' tragedies as sport — but come across as unwatchable for all the wrong reasons, with cringeworthy dialogue and performances that distract from the rest of the show's quality and the main characters that viewers care about.
But why do they sound so bad? Well, an actor who played one of Squid Game Season 3's VIPs has now taken to TikTok to address the matter — and even they don't know why Netflix decided to dub over them in the series' main version, where the voice of different English-language actor is used instead.
In response to a TikTok video titled "How BAD the Squid Game VIP Acting Was", actor Bryan Bucco confirmed that the voice heard in Netflix's main version of the show (Korean language with English subtitles) was not his own.
"Those are the English dubs," Bucco wrote. "I was the actual actor. What's being played here isn't my voice."
"Some of the actors voices are more noticeably changed," Bucco continued. "It seems they did use voice actors to try and sound like us. I don't even want to s**t on my voice actor either because I think he did fine, I'm sure it wasn't easy for him to say his lines either haha."
But why dub over English-speaking actors with English-speaking replacements? Bucco has suggested that the process is not unusual for non-English productions to ensure clarity, with all of that actor's lines presumably then needing to be replaced for consistency.
"I think whoever is contracted to do the dubbing, does ALL of the dubbing," Bucco said. "The Korean version shouldn't have English dubs. If there are some in the Korean version, it would have to be due to specific lines having to be re-recorded for clarity."
@jbstarmax Maybe it was on purpose? ? Let me know your take #squidgame #season3 #vip #acting #netflix @Squid Game Netflix ♬ original sound - JB STAR ?
Still, Bucco has highlighted an odd situation where different versions of the VIP's dialogue are available in different Netflix regions — where some still feature the VIP actors' original English voices.
"Could be Netflix messing s**t up? I watched a bit on a pirated streaming site and didn't hear these voices," Bucco said.
"I've seen different clips floating around where some have my voice, and others that are clearly not me... It doesn't really matter at the end of the day," he continued. "Just... if it sounds dubbed, that's because it probably is. And the ones used in this video above ARE the dubbed voices."
Bucco then provided an example he'd found himself on TikTok, where two English-language versions of the unnamed female VIP's voice can be heard, one with the actor's original voice, and one with a replacement English voice dubbed on top. (To our ears, the original actor's line reading sounds more natural.)
Back in 2021, when Squid Game originally launched, The Guardian tracked down some of the actors behind the first season's VIPs and questioned them as to why their performances felt so jarring with the rest of the show.
"I think the first thing to dispel is this myth that they just pick us up off the street," said John D Michaels, who portrayed the bearded "VIP #1" in Squid Game's first season. "It's different for every show, but non-Korean performers often act with dialogue that is translated by a non-native – sometimes even by Google Translate – so it can sound unnatural. And often we don't have the scripts for the rest of the show. We are only given our scenes, so we have no idea of the tone."
Michaels said his backstory for the VIPs amounted to little more than them being "total idiots" and "dirtbag millionaires", and claimed their delivery had been hobbled by their "very heavy plaster masks" and the fact they were all sat on couches far away from each other. "We all had to yell our lines vaguely into the air, which added to the weird tonality of the delivery," he noted.
Separately, there's the fact that, despite the worldwide attention and Netflix-funded promotion afforded to the show for its second and third seasons, Squid Games remains a Korean drama at heart.
"Unless otherwise asked, we are not playing westerners as we know them," said Geoffrey Giuliano, who played VIP #4 — the one who takes off all his clothes — in Squid Game's original season. "We are generally providing an interpretation of what a westerner is from the point of view of a different culture. For western viewers, there can be this kind of uncanny valley feeling that comes from that. But as an actor, unless I feel that it's pointlessly abusive, it's not my place to challenge a director's view of my culture. And as a human being, I can learn from it."
For Season 3, Bucco's experiences sound similar. The series' latest crop of VIPs filmed their scenes in just three days, in isolation from the wider production. Despite the show's context now being widely-known, the actors were still unsure what exactly they were responding to.
"Our scenes were the very very last scenes to be filmed," Bucco wrote, "meaning there were no other major actors around except the Front Man... Every night we sat together reading through lines questioning how any of it should really be said lol."
"It was mostly just us sitting in a room," he continued, "reacting to something that wasn't there."
How does Bucco feel about the VIPs now, having watched the season back with his scenes inserted? Responding to a fan who said the characters had been "useless", Bucco wrote: "I agree :( They didn't further the story or compliment it well."
Regardless of the reception to Squid Game season 3, the series remains a hit for Netflix. The latest episodes have broken fresh records for the streaming service — and now a U.S.-based spin-off looks to be on the way.
Image credit: Netflix
Tom Phillips is IGN's News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social