Squid Game: The Challenge player sets record straight on controversy

❘ Published: 2023-12-05T13:05:33

Players in the Red Light, Green Light game in Squid Game: The Challenge

Netflix

Squid Game: The Challenge has run into controversy since premiering last month, but one player has set the record straight about the backlash to the Red Light, Green Light game.

For the uninitiated, Squid Game: The Challenge is a new reality TV show based on Netflix’s hit South Korean series. Many of the iconic games – from Dalgona to Glass Bridge – have been recreated for the competition, which started off with 456 players battling it out in the hopes of taking home a whopping $4.56 million prize.

But after the first batch of episodes dropped a couple of weeks back, producers were accused of neglecting players’ safety, with some contestants claiming troubling conditions on the set of Red Light, Green Light and threatening a lawsuit against Studio Lambert, co-producer of the series.

Although there’s been no news on the status of the lawsuit, other contestants have stepped forward to share similar sentiments, with one describing the set conditions as “torture.” However, Dexerto spoke to Player 277, Sabrina Sabir, who set the record straight on what really went down.

Squid Game: The Challenge player says conditions weren’t “inhumane”

Sabrina, who decided to dip out of the competition after she felt her time on Squid Game: The Challenge was up, told us that while the conditions on Red Light, Green Light were challenging, they weren’t “inhumane” as some contestants have alleged.

“It wasn’t easy. It was really difficult,” she explains. “I think the most difficult part of being on the show was Red Light, Green Light, because not only are we playing a very intense game, but we’re in 24-degree weather in a big, open space. It was January in the UK.

“We’re also having very long intervals of waiting. Once we paused, when the doll’s head turned around, I think it was 15 to 20 minute intervals – it took around eight hours of filming.

“But we had thermal clothes underneath our suits, and another thing that people perhaps aren’t realizing is that we could scream medic or say if we needed help. If someone was really not okay, they just had to yell and a staff member would come and see them.

“I was more towards the front of the crowd when I was playing Red Light, Green Light, so I would just hear ‘medic’ or ‘medic needs to come’ and they would take out anyone who needed to go because they were not doing well in the conditions.

“The producers did what they could. The only thing they could have improved on is maybe anticipating the weather a little better, but it’s hard to film something like that in a specific space.”

Player 277 said the conditions were challenging but not “inhumane”

In response to accusations that producers had been “inhumane” to cast members while filming the first challenge, Sabrina explains: “I would say it’s not inhumane. I think people were just not ready to admit that they needed to leave the premises and go get help.

“They waited so long that maybe it just ended up that they needed to get a medic, and maybe something happened. But for me, my 22 year old body, I was able to make it. I know other people were good.

“I would not say that these are easy conditions. But they weren’t inhumane.”

Squid Game: The Challenge Episodes 1-9 are available to stream on Netflix now. You can check out our other coverage below: