Squid Game Season 2 caused a lot of controversy behind the scenes as Thanos actor Choi Seung-hyun had reportedly been blackballed by the Korean entertainment world before joining the Netflix series, and the actor has broken his silence over taken on the role under such cirumstances. Squid Game Season 2 has since become one of the most successful seasons of TV in Netflix’s history after it launched last December, and a lot of that is due to the new characters starring in the new wave of games. The most outlandish of them was undoubtedly the one foe inspired by a famous Marvel villain, the rapper Thanos.
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Choi Seung-hyun, who was most famously known as the rapper T.O.P within BIGBANG, joined Squid Game Season 2 as Thanos, and was a controversial choice among fans given the star has not worked since being arrested for marijuana use (which is illegal in South Korea) in 2017. In speaking with The Korea Times, the star has since broken his silence about the role and noted how it seemed to be destiny, “The offer to play Thanos was a daunting proposition. The character mirrored my past, reflecting aspects I’d rather keep hidden. The fear of being pigeonholed into one role made me hesitate. But destiny seemed to be pulling me in this direction.”
Thanos Star Talks Being Cast as a Drug User in Squid Game
But while the role of Thanos was a tough proposition because it brought up his own past, Choi was ready to take on the role because of series creator’s Hwang Dong-hyuk’s trust, “For almost 10 years, I felt no one looked at me, but director Hwang Dong-hyuk reached out to me first. The trust (and) the belief he had in me gave me the courage to take this on. As an actor, it is my duty to repay the trust. Excelling in my performance is another assignment in my life.”
Choi even steered into that aspect of the character, and did research on how Thanos would react differently to things depending on when he used or didn’t use a drug, “The drug that Thanos uses in the series is extremely potent, so I researched the effects of such substances while developing the character…I tried to act differently in scenes where Thanos had not yet used the drug versus those where he had.” This even went into his rap style, “There’s a type of rap style in southern U.S. hip-hop called ‘mumble rap,’ often associated with rappers who use powerful stimulants. I tried to channel that in the way Thanos delivers his lines.”
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What’s Next for T.O.P.?
Choi announced his retirement from the Korean entertainment industry in 2020, so many were wondering if his starring in Squid Game Season 2 was the start of a greater comeback. But from the way the star puts it, he’s just been making music and doing the best to heal himself from his past, “For the past seven years, I have lived almost isolated from society, spending most of my time at home and in my music studio. So I just kept working on music in the dark and the reason I did that was not for any other reason, but because music was the only place where I could breathe, when I was composing music and standing in front of the microphone. I think I made music to survive,” Choi stated.
“So I wrote a countless number of songs, just by listening to my own dark heart and inner turmoil,” Choi continued. I wanted to heal myself through music and I want to share that music with my fans in some way.” But for his future overall, the star just wants, “My primary goal is to establish a stable and less dramatic life…I want to reach a point where I can wake up without being bombarded by negative news and feel more at peace.”
You can now stream the first two seasons of Squid Game with Netflix, and the third and final season will end the series some time later this year.
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