A whole month after the celebrated premiere of the second season of Netflix‘s blockbuster K-Drama Squid Game, former BIGBANG member-turned-actor T.O.P (going by Choi Seung Hyun for his acting career) walked the viewers through his character Thanos’s most memorable scenes.
While T.O.P has reacted to the global attention that the show and his character have received, this is the first time that he sat down for a one-on-one deep dive into all the work that went into creating Thanos.
T.O.P Addresses The Scathing Criticism For His Acting In “Squid Game 2”
T.O.P detailed the amount of time that he and director Hwang Dong Hyuk spent on character development to make sure that Thanos made “viewers feel uncomfortable and unsure,” which, given the amount of heated reactions that he received, was a success.
After many discussions with the director, I wanted to design and create a unique, never-before-seen character. I used gestures that were outdated and exaggerated to make viewers feel uncomfortable and unsure about whether they find him annoying or cringey. I wanted viewers to sense an odd vibe from him.
— T.O.P
Then, as T.O.P watched one of Thanos’s most “cringey” scenes, he revealed that until that moment, he had “never rapped for a woman to get her attention.” Given, it was difficult for him to rap for his co-star Song Ji Woo for the role of Player 196, Kang Mi Na.
Here’s how T.O.P. developed his very specific rapping style for Thanos in Squid Game. pic.twitter.com/fei9j9Tzpi
— Netflix (@netflix) January 27, 2025
I’ve rapped for more than 20 years of my life, but I’ve never rapped for a woman to get her attention. So, I was nearly losing my mind while filming this scene.
The rap in the original script was longer and had more words, but the director told me to freely imagine what kind of rap Thanos would perform, and then we discussed it together. I thought it would be better to keep the word count low. I filmed a video on my phone and sent it to him, and we discussed doing over-the-top gestures…
…I wanted to make the rapping very intuitive and easy for others to follow. If he was good, it wouldn’t match the image of a filed rapper who joined the game.
— T.O.P
A lot was revealed—including the fact that Thanos’s hair was purple because the Marvel Thanos’s skin was purple. Watch the full clip here:
