SPOILER ALERT: This story gives away details of the second season of Netflix’s Squid Game.
Paul Potts used to sell cellphones at a British store called Carphone Warehouse before he won the first season of Britain’s Got Talent.
He is not someone you expect to be soundtracking a bloody game of Russian roulette in the second season of Netflix’s Squid Game.
But it is his version of Nessun Dorma, an aria from the final act of Giacomo Puccini’s Turandot – a song popularized by Luciano Pavarotti during the 1990 FIFA World Cup – that plays over the violent subplot in the first episode of the Korean drama series.
In the opening episode of the sophomore season, Lee Jung-Jae’s Gi-Hun is searching for The Salesman, played by Train to Busan star Gong Yoo, who works as a recruiter for the Squid Games, playing Ddakji with them to get them to sign up for the annual event.
Before he finds him, The Salesman manages to capture two men who are helping Gi-Hun track him down and forces them into a deadly game of rock, paper scissors mixed with Russian roulette.
This is when Potts’ song takes over.
Hwang Dong-Hyuk, creator of Squid Game, told Deadline that the idea just came to him. “I thought that if the recruiter plays these games, I kind of wanted this character to have a regular playlist that he would always be listening to. As for Nessun Dorma, that was sung by Paul Potts when he won Britain’s Got Talent and after that it became immensely popular in Korea. The last word [of the song] is ‘Vittoria’, which means ‘Victory’. I thought that was very fitting for the game that was being played.”
To say Potts is popular in Korea is an understatement; after the video went viral – it has now had nearly 200M views on YouTube – he has appeared on a raft of Korean entertainment shows including Star King, Qualifying Man, Immortal Songs: Singing The Legend and King of the Mask Singer, better known as The Masked Singer in the U.S.
Potts is not the only opera star singing in this season of Squid Game. Moments after that deadly game, Gi-Hun finds The Salesman and his own game of Russian roulette with the facilitator is soundtracked by Andrea Bocelli and Sarah Brightman’s version of Time To Say Goodbye.