Children’s games, death by ink and a multimillion jackpot: The world of the Squid Game reality TV show
Reality TV has undergone plenty of changes in the last decade – from the end of stalwart Noughties shows, the much-needed emphasis on duty of care towards participants, and the genre’s pipeline to social media influencing.
Now Squid Game: The Challenge has landed on our screens and turned trusted formats upside down again.
Some 456 contestants from across the globe compete in children’s games based on Netflix‘s smash-hit South Korean thriller for a $4.56m jackpot (£3.64m) – thought to be the largest single cash prize ever in a television show.
Netflix’s Squid Game: The Challenge Pic: Netflix
From the start, the show proved controversial after three contestants received medical treatment after the game Red Light, Green Light was filmed in Bedfordshire during a cold snap in January.
Executive producer Tim Harcourt, creative director at Studio Lambert, said the team had taken “all the appropriate measures” before filming.
“Some people anonymously were disgruntled and annoyed that they had spent a lot of time playing that game in the cold and then were eliminated. And that’s understandable.”
But he says the challenging conditions were to be expected with such a massive jackpot.
“It is $4.56 million and Netflix is never just going to give that away easily.”
And with such a massive prize comes massive responsibility for the producers.
John Hay, chief executive of The Garden production company, said the team was “absolutely scrupulous – doubly so, given the size of the prize, about judging who moved and who hadn’t [in the Red Light, Green Light game].
“We had a whole team of adjudicators behind the scenes,” he said.
The Red Light, Green Light game Pic: Netflix
“These were people independent of us from a different company, trained lawyers, who would check those movements and we had those people with us all the way through the entire series.”
Hay said the jackpot prize was one of the most significant decisions that Netflix made about the show because “it just flips the whole thing”.
“Instead of being driven by the fear of death, it’s driven by the sort of scale of this opportunity.
“It turns out that’s just as powerful a motor for stories as in the drama. The people who went into that set lived in these six soundstages. The ones who made it to the finals were there for 16 days.
“They were chasing this huge prize. It felt like the stakes felt suitably high. And I think that drove some of the reactions to it in the course of the game,” Hay said.
The contestants’ dorm Pic: Netflix
And those reactions were sometimes powerful. The show feels more extreme and more challenging than any recent reality show game. One contestant appeared to be close to vomiting from the pressure of making a decision that would ultimately lead to his elimination.
“We had to accept that that immersion [in the game] would put people under quite a lot of pressure and it could be stressful. And that’s something that we would talk about [with contestants],” Harcourt said.
“We really take care as they exit the game to chat to them and allow them to process everything that they felt and to realise that it’s all fine now and that was a game and they were playing under pressure.
“Those are conversations that continue with the contributors not just straight after the game, but six months after,” Harcourt said, adding that the show’s welfare team is in touch with the contestants now as the show is airing.
A scene from Squid Game: The Challenge Pic: Netflix
Squid Game remains the most popular Netflix series of all time and was streamed by 111 million users in the first 28 days after its release in September 2021.
Hay, whose company The Garden has created shows such as 24 Hours in A&E and Emergency, said Squid Game’s success was both a blessing and a burden.
“Starting from a drama as brilliant and as successful as Squid Game is a huge head start in that there’s already a huge number of people interested and it’s very unusual in being a drama that’s based around a game.
“It’s an ingeniously designed game. There’s a real singularity and originality of the vision in the drama. There’s a world [with] a very distinctive sort of tone and visual style.
“But in another sense, it sets the bar unbelievably high. We knew that we had to match the world. We had to play in the spirit of the game.”
The number of contestants was also a huge logistical challenge. More than 80,000 people applied to be on the show with Hay saying it was a “mammoth task” to whittle it down to just 456 contestants.
“Of course, without a script, we had to find ways of creating the conditions in which some of those dynamics [of the drama] could play out without being able to actually know who our heroes were from the start and then write their storylines,” Hay said.
Netflix’s Squid Game: The Challenge Pic: Netflix
Harcourt, who has produced other reality shows including The Traitors, The Circle and Naked Attraction, said filming the 456 contestants was “the biggest creative challenge” of the show.
Another challenge was how to eliminate people from the game. In the drama, contestants are immediately killed which led to some creative discussions as to how to adapt it for the reality TV show.
“Quite early on we came upon the idea of the dye pack, which is something that every contestant wore underneath their white t-shirt,” Harcourt said.
“We arrived at black ink. There was a taste issue with blood.”
“We went through a lot of testing to get the dye colour right, the type of dye right. Even the nozzle that sprays the ink out through their T-shirt had to have such a force that it would actually show on that T-shirt and also that they would actually feel it go off so that everybody knew that they were out of the game.”
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So is this new kind of supersized reality TV show with massive stakes the future? Maybe, Harcourt and Hay said.
“I definitely think there will be these big reality shows that broadcasters or streamers will undertake,” Harcourt said.
“Unscripted television is still cheaper to make than some dramas and it can call in just as big an audience when it’s done brilliantly and it’s successful and the audience love it.
“So I don’t think we’re about to see a spate of 100 of these shows being made. But I think that some of these shows that feel bigger in execution and maybe bigger in concept will become a trend.”
Squid Game: The Challenge is on Netflix from today
Angelina Jolie says although she appreciates being an artist, she would prefer for her legacy to be “a good mother” and to be known for her “belief in equality and human rights”.
The Oscar-winning actress stars as Maria Callas in the new Pablo Larrain film about the opera singer’s life.
Pic: StudioCanal
She has called Maria “the hardest” and “most challenging” role she has had in her career and put months of preparation into immersing herself into the world of opera.
Jolie, who recently reached a divorce settlement with actor Brad Pitt, told Sky News: “To be very candid, it was the therapy I didn’t realise I needed. I had no idea how much I was holding in and not letting out.
“So, the challenge wasn’t the technical [side of opera], it was an emotional experience to find my voice, to be in my body, to express. You have to give every single part of yourself.”
The biopic combines the voice of the Maleficent actress with recordings of Maria Callas.
Jolie believes it “would be a crime to not have [Callas’] voice through this because, in many ways, she is very present in this film”.
Who was Maria Callas?
Born in New York in 1923, Maria Callas was the daughter of Greek immigrants who moved back to Athens at the age of 13 with her mother and sister.
After enrolling at the Athens Conservatory, she made her professional debut at 17 and went on to become one of the most famous faces of opera, travelling around the world and performing at Covent Garden in London, The Met in New York and La Scala in Milan.
Callas’s final operatic performance took place at Covent Garden in 1965 when she was 41 but she continued to work conducting master classes at Juilliard School, doing concert tours and starring in the 1969 film Medea.
Written by Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight, Maria focuses on the artist’s final years in the 1970s when she moved to Paris and disappeared from public view.
She died on 16 September 1977 at the age of 53.
Pic: StudioCanal
Jolie on changing motivations as an actor
Maria follows the life of an artist fully consumed by the art she creates and even remarks that “happiness never developed a beautiful melody”.
Reflecting on her own life in the spotlight, Jolie said she noticed her own career motivations change over the years.
“There’s this kind of study of being human that we do when we create, and we communicate with an audience because our work is not in isolation – it’s a connection.
“I think when I was younger, I had different questions about being human and different feelings and now as I’ve gotten older, I understand some things and now I have different questions.
“It’s a matter of life, right? And so maybe that’s interesting that this now is a character really contemplating death and really contemplating the toll of certain things in life that I, of course, couldn’t have understood in my 20s”.
Jolie at the New York Film Festival in September with three of her children (L-R) Pax, Zahara and Maddox. Pic: AP
A family affair
Two of Jolie’s children, Maddox and Pax, took on production assistant roles during the filming of Maria and witnessed their mother perform opera for the first time in public.
She says the film allowed them to create new experiences together and for her children to see her approach to playing a difficult role.
“Everyone in my home, we all give each other space to be who we are and we’re all different.
“I’m the mom, but I’m also an artist and a person and so my family has been very kind and gives me their understanding. They make fun of me, and they support me and just as you’d hope it would be.”
She adds: “When you play somebody who is dealing with so much pain, it’s very important to come home to some kindness.”
Maria is in cinemas now.
Tom Holland’s dad has confirmed his son’s engagement to Zendaya – revealing how the 28-year-old meticulously planned the proposal.
Zendaya, also 28, sparked engagement rumours when she attended last Sunday’s Golden Globes wearing a sparkling diamond on her ring finger.
Neither star has publicly addressed the rumours but Tom’s comedian father, Dominic Holland, has now confirmed the pair are set to wed.
He wrote in a post on his Patreon account: “Tom, as you know by now was very incredibly well prepared. He had purchased a ring.
“He had spoken with her father and gained permission to propose to his daughter.”
“Tom had everything planned out… When, where, how, what to say, what to wear,” he added.
Zendaya arrived at the Golden Globes with a noticeable piece of new jewellery. Pic: Invision/AP
Dominic also noted that while most men worry about being able to afford an engagement ring, he suspects his actor son was “more concerned with the stone, its size and clarity, its housing, which jeweller”.
Tom and Zendaya met on the set of Spider-Man: Homecoming in 2016, when they played the titular hero and his love interest MJ, respectively. Their romance was confirmed in 2021.
In his post, Tom’s father admitted fears over whether being in the spotlight could put a strain on the couple’s relationship.
He wrote: “I do fret that their combined stardom will amplify their spotlight and the commensurate demands on them and yet they continually confound me by handling everything with aplomb.”
“And even though show business is a messy place for relationships and particularly so for famous couples as they crash and burn in public and are too numerous to mention […] yet somehow right at the same time, I am completely confident they will make a successful union.”
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Zendaya rose to fame after landing a role in Disney sitcom Shake It Up, and became a household name after starring in Euphoria.
Holland – who has starred in three Spider-Man films opposite his now-fiancée – made his stage debut in Billy Elliot the Musical in 2008.
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