Here’s the good news for Netflix’s upcoming reality game show based on the hit Korean thriller Squid Game: unlike the original series, no one involved appears to have been brutally murdered. The bad news, however, is that on top of reports that its contestants claimed to have suffered intensely during filming, now claims are being made the game wasn’t even fair.
In a lengthy report over at Rolling Stone, several anonymous players have said they witnessed several contestants being given special treatment, as well as others getting disqualified despite having successfully completed their given game:
The former players claim that some contestants — several of whom were TikTok and Instagram influencers — appeared to be pre-selected to advance to the next round no matter the outcome of the first game, and were fully mic’d up while a majority of the eliminated contestants had dummy microphones around their necks. One former player claims rules were bent to heighten a contestant’s storyline, and another says they witnessed an eliminated player being put back into the game.
“It really wasn’t a game show. It was a TV show, and we were basically extras in a TV show,” one explains.
Another two contestants say when the show purchased round-trip flights from London to attend filming, the return flights just happened to be scheduled for the day after they were eliminated from the series. Two more say some contestants moved during the infamous “Red Light, Green Light” game, but weren’t eliminated, and yet another says they saw an eliminated player return to the game.
It all sounds horrible, and that’s before more details about the gruelling, nine-hour experience of playing “Red Light, Green Light” in a freezing cold aeroplane hangar get revealed. Of course, the original Squid Games were supposed to be horrible and dangerous, so the reality show is, in an awful way, accurately recreating them… ? For more, definitely go check out the Rolling Stone report.