Stephen Lambert (‘Squid Game: The Challenge’ producer) on the ‘pretty difficult’ task of overseeing 456 players [Exclusive Video Interview]
When “Squid Game: The Challenge” premiered on Netflix in November 2023, it immediately became the biggest reality TV show to date both in terms of the number of players (456) and the prize money at stake ($4.56 million). Executive producer Stephen Lambert recently spoke with Gold Derby about the “pretty difficult” task of overseeing the program, which of course was based on the “massive success” of the Emmy-winning drama series “Squid Game” from 2021. Watch the exclusive video interview above.
In “Squid Game: The Challenge,” hundreds of contestants compete in various high-stakes games (including “Red Light, Green Light,” “Dalgona” and “Marbles”) as they try to avoid being eliminated. Along the way, they are challenged by mini-tests as well as each other’s sometimes-combative personalities. In the end, the Final 2 players were Mai and Phil, and their ultimate test was “Rock, Paper, Scissors,” with Mai prevailing and claiming the grand prize of $4.56 million.
Lambert explains how the biggest difference between the original “Squid Game” and the reality version is the absence of “the huge benefit of a script.” He tells us, “They knew who their hero was and they knew who was going to win. We had no idea who was going to last the next five minutes. So the challenge all the time was to try to concentrate on a few people within our big group and to see what would happen to them and to tell their story.”
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He adds, “But of course, as soon as we started getting involved with our characters, very often they were then eliminated.” So the producers had to come up with a way of “passing the baton” in order to “get the viewers to engage” with new groups of participants after their faves were sent home. Lambert compares the brutal eliminations to such iconic TV shows as “Band of Brothers” and “Game of Thrones,” however “Squid Game: The Challenge” had a “much bigger scale.”
On the original “Squid Game,” viewers watched as hundreds of people were murdered on screen, often in bloody fashion. “We obviously weren’t going to kill our contestants,” Lambert details, “but we needed the stakes to feel really big. And so the opportunity of winning this extraordinary life-changing and generational-changing amount of money meant that when you were eliminated, you lost your dream, you lost that opportunity.”
Also in our exclusive video interview, Lambert talks about how he wanted to “follow largely the games of the scripted show,” why his favorite new game is the “Circle of Trust,” and how he reacted to the emotional breakdown in “The Man With the Umbrella” that went viral online. He also teases a bit about Season 2 of “Squid Game: The Challenge,” which is on the horizon at Netflix.
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