Squid Game's Lee Jung-Jae Made History at the 2022 Emmys

The actor shared a brief thank you message to Korean viewers in his native language, and the new Emmys extra chyron also included a pre-written thank you message from the winner. The crossover success of the South Korean series hopefully marks a turning point for American awards shows, which have rarely shone a spotlight on non-English series. In addition to Lee, his “Squid Game” castmates Park Hae-soo, Oh Young-soo, and Jung Ho-yeon were all nominated in major acting categories this year, while Lee You-mi won for his guest seat.

"Squid Game" also topped the Creative Arts Emmys last week, winning trophies for special effects, stunt work and production design. Filmmaker Hwang took the stage earlier tonight to accept the Outstanding Directing Award for a Drama Series for “Red Light, Green Light.” The title of this episode refers to the deadly game characters played on the show, which Lee and his co-star Jung jokingly played earlier in the evening while presenting an award to the "Saturday Night Live" team.< /p>

An international phenomenon with a second season on the way, “Squid Game” is now officially the most popular Netflix show of all time. In its first month on the streamer alone, people reportedly watched 1.65 billion hours of the series. And while award shows often seem to unconsciously suffer from recency bias, rewarding titles released in recent memory, "Squid Game" has stuck in the minds of voters since last September. In fact, next week will mark one year since the release of the hit series. What better way to celebrate than with a well deserved trophy?