Life isn’t a box of chocolates — it’s more like a gamble. And sometimes, risks are absolutely worth taking. Scoring a royal flush with Netflix series Bet (2025), Canadian actor Hunter Cardinal manifested this mantra into Hollywood North. Taking a chance on TV despite his extensive theater career, his role as Michael in Bet has become one of his most iconic performances — Shakespeare aside, of course. Loosely inspired by popular manga and anime Kakegurui, Bet has entered the Kakegurui multiverse alongside Japan’s live-action versions. Reimagining the fan-favorite stories of Hyakkaou Private Academy, familiar characters are back in a new, thrilling form — although with gambling tendencies still intact.
With a thrill reminiscent of the original Kakegurui series, Bet is drama itself, with hysterical flair and unhinged fancies. Bets are made, gambles are taken, and studies are the least of the students’ problems. Dropping us inside the hive mind of student gamblers, Hunter Cardinal chatted with EnVi over Zoom to show his cards on taking risks on-screen and off-screen in true Bet-like fashion.
Before Bet
Long before his acting career was even an inkling on his mind, Cardinal’s love for stories was unquestionable. With a starry-eyed look and an unbidden sense of curiosity only a kid could muster, his younger self had an unparalleled intensity in listening to all types of stories and conversations. He recalled spending time with his grandmother back then, laughing about how he’d stay up way past his bedtime and sneak into her room. She’d turn on their favorite show, and they would giggle late into the night, when jokes seem a little funnier and laughs are a little lighter.
It was a defining moment for his love of performance, with the sweet, intimate bond with his grandmother fueling the importance of connection ever since his childhood. “I remember feeling so alive, watching it with my grandma and just hearing her laugh in that beautiful Long Island sort of accent,“ he reminisced. “I just remember loving that moment so much. I feel like that’s some of the deepest roots of why I particularly love performance and that sense of connection that I’m pursuing.”
Loving performance is entirely different than professionally pursuing it, but Cardinal persisted. He dug deep into his grandmother’s love and his middle school theater days and reached for his dream. He pursued theater and the Off-Broadway world, learning that his dream wasn’t actually far-fetched. But his dream felt stunted, with his goal of acting in front of a camera never truly fulfilled. So, he decided to take a gamble, “feeling ready to potentially fail but pursue something worthwhile.”
Cardinal put his all into the vastly different worlds of film and television, auditioning and gaining momentum as an actor and not just a thespian. “It was a lot of being lifted by a community of folks from across the country towards a goal, a dream that I had. I’m just so grateful, and that’s also why I’m stoked about Bet being a reality, because it’s the fruit of a lot of community efforts.”
Behind the Story: Bet
Transferring to a new school comes with its fair share of worries, from fitting in to adjusting to a new environment. But when the status quo is becoming the highest-earning gambler in school, things are a little off-kilter. The students are students only in name, with their school lives predominantly revolving around gambling against each other. While gambling is frowned upon in generally every school ever, gambling is smiled and even smirked upon at St. Dominic’s Prep.
Largely dictating your general wellbeing at school, gambling at St. Dominic’s Prep takes lives at stake to another level — cashing out with money and social status. Students in debt fall down the social ladder to house pet status, demoted to subhuman treatment and subject to the commands of higher-ranking students. Losing a gamble is not only frustrating but also humiliating, and climbing the ranks isn’t easy. With the student council members dominating the top ranks of the leaderboard as the highest earners, they’re an established entity that’s hard to shake up. After all, they’re the ones enforcing the house pet system in the first place.
Yumeko Kawamoto (Miku Martineau) is the new transfer student, who adjusts surprisingly well to the gambling rings. Quickly climbing the ranks with an unforeseen gambling prowess, she shakes up the leaderboard, and the student council has no choice but to start betting in retaliation. By calculating bets with a hint of silliness that’s all the more alarming, Yumeko is ruthless and a lot more bloodthirsty than the Kakegurui version of her character.
Becoming Michael
Michael is an original character that wasn’t previously seen in the Kakegurui series, adding an additional layer of complexity to Cardinal’s role as Michael. Strangely enough, Michael’s an anomaly to his fellow gambling peers, insisting on not participating in the gambling rituals that the school holds so dear. He hates the system — for good reason — and decidedly lives his school life the best he can around it. But can he truly escape something that’s eating away at his friends and family, who are active participants? It’s a questionable attempt at best and a doomed outcome at worst, but he gambles with the prospect anyways.
As the only Michael in all of the Kakegurui multiverse, Cardinal’s Michael was a vital catalyst to the plot, even without source material to base him off of. To embody this original character, Cardinal became one with Michael — wearing his clothes, thinking like him, and detailing him in physical ways that defined his character, like managing his posture to the degree and flicking his eyes in response to environmental stimuli. Although he claims Michael to be “way smarter or braver than he’ll ever be,” Cardinal’s similarities to his character did not go unnoticed by his co-stars.
“We were all just kind of sitting around in the green room trying to know why each of us were cast because we were all fairly new to the industry as well. So we’re just like, ‘I can’t believe how great of an opportunity this is. Why me?’ I was confused as to why, you know, what people saw of Michael in me,” he questioned. “But I feel like Clara (Kira) pointed out that our characters directly map to our star charts and our astrology signs. Michael’s a Scorpio 100% and I happen to also be a Scorpio stellium, so it all makes sense when you look at it,” he lightheartedly claimed.
Behind the Scenes: Bet
Bet’s story is highly dramatized with mind games and murders, but the lessons that are hidden behind the gambling are incredibly relevant to audiences of all types, not just students. “It might seem like it’s just for young audiences, but really, it’s for the young audiences in ourselves, the young adults in ourselves,” Cardinal explained. “Maybe the ones who were promised one thing growing up, like equity, equality, and things being fair and safe, and those really hard moments where we realize that’s not actually true.”
Is Bet a coming-of-age story? No, and it likely won’t be. However, it’s a story that yearns to claw out of a system that is purposefully rigged for annihilation, trampling others to reach higher ranks, better social status, and more money. It captures what it looks like to fight back against it or in the worst cases, the severe consequences of compliance. It questions the morality of those in the system, whether they’re an unwilling participant or active perpetrator. Bet’s moral and social storytelling were considerably embedded in Cardinal’s thought process, as he hoped to see audiences resonate with the characters and see themes that may not feel that distant.
Understanding the essence of what makes these characters abide by or fight the system was a key part in understanding the story for Cardinal. Questioning what parts of the story defined the characters and their stories, he navigated the emotional depths of bringing a character to life, knowing that “the hatred, the malice, the lust for revenge is actually a mask, and there’s a real hurt, scared, and multi-dimensional person underneath it.”
Braving Backlash: Bet
Bet has faced some backlash for their reimagining, with some fans of Kakegurui dismissing the need for another adaptation given its extensive live-action content. Cardinal accepted this and even embraced it, understanding the fans’ perspectives of protecting their beloved series. He insisted that Bet was never supposed to dismiss or smother Kakegurui. Instead, it was made to take its own authentic form of story.
“I feel like what we really wanted to do was honor its spirit but not flatten [Kakegurui] by trying to copy it,” he explained. “The gamble and the risk we’re willing to take is always about trust, always about hoping and waiting for those audiences who align with what we’re trying to do and continue that larger pursuit.”
Beyond Bet
With his first Netflix series complete, Cardinal’s dreams of acting in front of a camera have finally been reached, deepening his appreciation for the work that goes behind the scenes and completely transforming how he sees shows. It’s a little anxiety-inducing but fun all the same, he admits after Bet’s premiere. Currently, he’s just enjoying the reception with immense gratitude, connecting with viewers and delighting in their reactions and responses to the series.
“It’s been such a beautiful process of creating it, and now that we’re sharing it, we want to nurture that sense of community,” he explained. “That was the goal in the whole outset of trying to create something that people feel shared a sense of either belonging or resonance with.” To Cardinal, it was a gamble absolutely worth taking.
BET is available to watch on Netflix. To see more of Hunter Cardinal, check out his official Instagram.
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