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From the very moment Squid Game: The Challenge was announced, there’s been a recurring criticism of the show’s very existence. The reality competition is based on Netflix‘s hit drama series and has 456 players competing in dystopian kids games for a record-breaking $4.56 million prize. The show is arguably the most cinematic reality series ever shot (trailer below), and hugely ambitious — it looks and plays just like the original drama series that captivated viewers around the globe in 2021. The competition’s 10 episodes drop on the streamer today.
As stated in The Hollywood Reporter’s recent review: “The original Squid Game, the competition stood as an extreme example of the dehumanization of capitalism … The Challenge builds on the most superficial aspects of Squid Game while ditching — or, really, undermining — the most profound.”
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But in a new interview with THR, Studio Lambert executive producers Stephen Lambert, Tim Harcourt and John Hay respond to that claim. The trio also tackle reports about contestants being put through brutal freezing conditions, explain why one key game from the original wasn’t played in the show, and give new details about how they were able to pull off the massively complex production.
What was the toughest part about pulling all this off?
Stephen Lambert: Coping with the fact that there were so many contestants, when, in the conventions of television, you need to concentrate the narrative on a few number of people. So how are you going to do that? It wasn’t as easy as saying, “OK, we’ll just concentrate on these 20 people,” because every time we do that, most of them will be eliminated in the next game. So it was about finding ways of passing the baton and revealing people’s characters very quickly and the quality of the interviews. It’s unusual for a reality show to have interviews where contestants are in their clothes from before the show and talk about their lives almost like it’s a therapy session. And I think that enables you to get a handle on players in a way that makes you care about them, even though you might even lose them quite quickly.
One criticism of the idea is the drama series has an anti-capitalism story, and then Netflix rolled out with, “Let’s do it for real!” and people were like, “Doesn’t that miss the point?” What’s your reply to that?
Tim Harcourt: I take issue over the notion that Squid Game has just one point. One of the important strands was the capitalist critique. But it’s also a critique of how we are ingrained from childhood to be ultra competitive via these childhood games. It’s also about how people behave under pressure — and that’s what makes reality shows interesting. Even if it’s an artificial or conceited situation, how do people behave? It was also about camaraderie. Also, the drama was about people fending off their desperate circumstances to win a huge prize. Our show isn’t about people in need. It’s about people being presented with an opportunity. So we flip that on its head. So, yes, there is one element [of the original show] that people have latched on to that they think is being not served by a reality show, but I would say it’s a very small part of the original Squid Game.
Reality shows can be tough and, in some cases, should be tough. But the early reports coming out about this one were pretty severe-sounding. Did you guys go too far in terms of what you were putting the contestants through physically? Or underestimate the toll some of these challenges would take?
John Hay: Welfare and safety are obviously paramount for us. And we’ve taken appropriate measures to look after people. The particular criticism you’re talking about was centered around the filming of Red Light, Green Light. That was a big, complicated shoot, and it was a cold day, and it took quite a long time. But everyone was prepared for that and looked after properly. We anticipated and actually strenuously tested everything in advance and made sure we took all the proper measures.
Stephen Lambert: We’re giving away the largest prize in TV competition history. It wasn’t going to be a walk in the park to win $4.56 million. But equally, although there were moments when it was quite tough, and I wouldn’t necessarily want to eat in that dormitory every night for the rest of my life, [being on the show] was a lot nicer and a lot easier than an awful lot of unscripted shows — compared to some of the survival shows that have been made, or compared to a whole bunch of successful shows in the States and in the rest of the world. This is no harder than those and in lots of shows you have people sometimes treated for mild complaints, which is what happened in that particular game.
During Red Light, Green Light, you try to make it look like the entire competition happened in just five minutes when obviously this takes hours to shoot. Combined with some shots such as showing the masked guys “controlling” the action in a control room … was there any concern that the game might seem staged to viewers if you fictionalized certain elements?
Stephen Lambert: We made that judgment. If somebody else was making it, they might have made a different judgment call. We think it works for us. People expect the show to be quite like the scripted show. I think the use of the guards was something we are very pleased with — they helped build that sense of it being an immersive experience for the contestants. They did a lot of the communicating of the information to the players, rather than having producers doing it, or having a host. And they looked good. I think one of the best decisions we made was hiring a choreographer who worked with them to ensure that they move in the right way to convey authority and a kind of presence. We worked very hard trying to get that balance right.
One big change was doing warships instead of tug-of-war — which turned out great and was very suspenseful. But it did made me wonder: Given you could have come up with a way to gender-balance the teams and obviously not have people fall to their doom, why did you ditch that one?
John Hay: One of the great challenges about this show is everyone’s watching it after the drama [series]. They want to see the greatest hits of the drama. But then one of the keynotes of the drama was surprise. So you’ve got to somehow deliver surprise as well, and getting the balance right between familiarity and surprise was key. By the time we got to the third game, doing a rug-pull of leading viewers and players to expect one game and then delivering them another game was an opportunity for us. It wouldn’t feel true to the spirit of Squid Game if we just trotted out all of the same games, one after another, in the same order. And we’re really pleased with the way warships played.
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