Why The Squid Game Season 3 VIPs Performances Are Actually So Bad

Season 3 of "Squid Game" revived one of its oldest fan complaints: viewers really don't like those VIP characters, and not just because they're supposed to be evil. The problem with the VIPs, as English speakers everywhere have complained for years, is that they don't sound like real English speakers, or even like human beings. Their voices have an uncanny valley quality, like we're watching a bunch of aliens do their best human impressions. Viewers keep asking why such a well-written show has seemingly dropped the ball in this one field. In a response to a recent TikTok video (shown below) making fun of the VIPs' acting, one of the VIP actors, Bryan Bucco, shed some light on what exactly went wrong.

@jbstarmax

Maybe it was on purpose? 😂 Let me know your take #squidgame #season3 #vip #acting #netflix @Squid Game Netflix

♬ original sound – JB STAR 💫

"Those are the English dubs. I was the actual actor. What's being played here isn't my voice," Bucco explained, adding, "Some of the actors' voices are more noticeably changed. It seems they did use voice actors to try and sound like us. I don't even want to s*** 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."

He noted that Netflix is releasing different versions of the show depending on which dub you're watching. The first one featured Bucco's actual voice, and the second one featured the replacement voice dubbed over him. The first one sounds better, but neither performance can manage to make the clunky dialogue sound natural. "I think whoever is contracted to do the dubbing, does ALL of the dubbing," Bucco speculated. "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." 

For the English dubbed version of "Squid Game," the English-speaking characters were also dubbed over, even though you'd think the show wouldn't need to do that. The purpose of this seems to be to provide consistency between the voices for the regular dubbed Korean characters — whose voices viewers can instinctively tell are coming from a recording studio, not from the people on screen — and the actual English-speaking characters, whose delivery wouldn't have a dubbed quality at all. In the versions of the show with the original Korean dialogue and English subtitles, most of the VIP voices aren't dubbed. 

The complaints about the VIPs' bad acting feel like a red herring, because the real problem with them is the lines the writers make them say. Not only does the cheesiness ramp up a notch whenever they're speaking, but they'll say things that don't even sound like natural English phrases. 

In a 2021 interview, a season 1 VIP actor, Geoffrey Giuliano, offered an example of the sort of unnatural dialogue he was forced to say: "My first line in 'Squid Game,' you see me say: 'Listen, I'll give anybody some slack.' That's not what people say. They say, 'I'll cut anybody some slack.'" 

Another season 1 VIP actor, John D. Michaels, confirmed Giuliano's experience: "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." He sympathized with the show's writers and editors, however, noting that it's difficult to distinguish good acting from bad when you don't speak the language being performed:

"If I was editing a Russian actor speaking Russian, I wouldn't have any idea if he was saying his lines correctly, or if his intonation was natural. There might be two takes. One of them could be perfect, the other wooden. If I'm editing it, the wooden one might move faster or cut more smoothly or the continuity might be better, so I'd just go with that."

The obvious counter to this point, however, is that shouldn't the show hire an English speaker to offer their take on the English versions of the script? Shouldn't an English speaker be overseeing the cuts, letting the non-English speakers of the team know which delivery was better? It's a reasonable point, but keep in mind...

For the non-Anglosphere fans of "Squid Games," it's hard to sympathize when hearing English-speakers complain about the inauthentic English dialogue, because English-language shows have committed similarly egregious crimes in their non-English representation. I'm thinking of moments like in "The IT Crowd" where Jen is faking being Italian in a meeting with an actual Italian person: the Italian character who's confused by her is clearly played by a non-Italian actor, a choice that really muddles the joke of the scene to any Italian viewers watching. (Or to anyone who's met an Italian, for that matter). It's hard not to wonder, watching this scene: would it really have been that hard to hire an actual Italian for the role? 

As lazy as some English shows can be with their depiction of Italian speakers, they can get even lazier with their depictions of Korean characters. Korean "Lost" fans had to make peace with Daniel Dae Kim's stilted Korean as he played a supposedly-native Korean character for six seasons, and Korean "Black Panther" viewers had to accept that one scene where the Wakandan Nakia was speaking circles around a supposedly-native Korean minor character. The laziness of "Squid Game" with its American characters is just American cinema's own laziness with Korean characters reflected back at us.

"Unless otherwise asked, we are not playing Westerners as we know them," said VIP actor Geoffrey Giuliano. "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."

The English acting in "Squid Game" may not be up to snuff, and the lines they're reading might seem to be clearly taken directly from Google Translate, but at least "Squid Game" got native English actors to play the roles. A lot of English-language shows can't even say the reverse.