Squid Game Makes History Again Thanks To The 2022 Emmys
The Korean dystopian drama "Squid Game" was a genuine pop culture phenomenon, brought to us by Netflix. With a reported 111 million views in its first month (via Deadline), it had the biggest launch of any Netflix show — even bigger than favorites like "Bridgerton" or "Stranger Things." And it continues to be a popular series, ranked among the best on Netflix, with a Season 2 on the way.
All this is even more impressive when you consider how rare it is for a show in a language other than English to really take off in the US the way that "Squid Game" has ... albeit with a controversial English language audio track available, which viewers either loved or hated (Yahoo). Popularity like that doesn't come around very often, and now the 2022 Emmy nominations are handing the show a new crop of accolades.
The Emmys are also giving the series a chance to make history all over again — because even if the series doesn't actually take home a single Emmy award, the nominations alone mean that "Squid Game" already has achieved a groundbreaking accomplishment.
No other non-English-language show has ever been nominated for best drama
Deadline reports that "Squid Game" is the first ever TV show produced in a language other than English to be nominated for an Emmy in the main best drama category. The show also nabbed a nomination for outstanding actor in a drama series for star Lee Jung-jae, who plays protagonist Seong Gi-hun (aka Player 456). His performance was certainly a true star-making turn, one that even gave him the opportunity to exercise his improvisational skills.
To be clear, shows produced outside the United States have gotten Emmy nominations in the past, but they've all been written and performed in English — think "Downton Abbey" or "Schitt's Creek." But "Squid Game" is the first show to break this language barrier, and hopefully its popularity with viewers, and its new swath of Emmy nominations — as well as its critical success, as represented by its Fresh Rotten Tomatoes scores among both critics (95%) and audiences (83%) – will lead to more successful TV imports in the future.
You can see how "Squid Game" and any of your other favorites do when the awards are presented live on September 12th on NBC.