No matter how unsettled you felt watching people die for not licking a cookie swift enough or pausing long enough on Netflix’s first season, Squid game it’s nothing compared to what series creator Hwang Dong-hyuk felt while making it. According to the renowned South Korean director, the stress of making the series caused his body to break down in the strangest way.
In a roomy one interview for the BBC from the set Squid gamein the second season, Dong-hyuk reveals that he was so stressed while working on the first season that he lost “eight or nine teeth”. Worse yet, this was only the beginning. He later stated that he felt even more stressed while filming the second season. Some of this stress comes from the real-life issues plaguing society that the series is based on.
Centering on the destitute but determined Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae) as he takes part in a mysterious competition to change his fate. Squid game examines the harmful effects of economic disparity in Korean societies. In the first season, the game comes to a halt when most players ask to leave the game after the dreaded “Red Light, Green Light” game that was their introduction to the life-or-death competition. After players return to the financial ruins of their reality, the expansive majority choose to return to the game, emphasizing how the hopelessness of their current lives can inspire them to risk their lives for a chance at something better. Translating this fear into a TV show would definitely drive me crazy.
But now he’s filming the second season and, most importantly, he finds it even more stressful. Although he himself admits that he lacks adequate remuneration for the first season, which is apparently the case it earned Netflix $900 millionwas a major catalyst in creating Season 2, but he points out that it was all a gift and a curse. “I have about two nightmares a week, usually about something going wrong during filming or people saying it’s not good” – Dong-hyuk says Hollywood reporter. “Will the games be as addictive as in the first season? Are the characters equally charming?”
I hope after the up-to-date season Squid game Premieres on Netflix on December 26. Dong-hyuk sleeps soundly and has plenty of money, and he keeps the rest of his teeth intact.