Whatever anxiety you felt watching people get killed for not licking a cookie fast enough or standing still for long enough in the first season of Netflix’s Squid Game is nothing compared to what series creator Hwang Dong-hyuk felt while making it. According to the acclaimed South Korean director, the stress of making the show made his body break down in the strangest ways.
In an extensive interview with the BBC from the set of Squid Game’s second season, Dong-hyuk reveals he was so stressed making the first season that he lost “eight or nine teeth.” What makes matters worse is that was just the start. He later stated that he’s felt even more stress while making the second season. Part of that stress stems from real-life problems plaguing society, which the show is based around.
Centered on the destitute yet determined Seong Gi-Hun (Lee Jung-jae) entering a mysterious competition to change his fortune, Squid Game examines the deleterious effects of economic disparities is Korean societies. In the first season, the game is paused after most of the players ask to leave following the horrific “Red Light, Green Light” game that was their introduction to the life-or-death stakes of the competition. After the players return to the financial ruins of their reality, the vast majority decide to return to the game, underscoring how hopelessness in one’s current life that could inspire them to put their life on the line for a chance at something better. Channeling that dread into a television show would definitely be enough to drive me mad.
Now, however, he’s making the second season and, if anything, he’s finding it even more stressful. Even though he admits that his lack of adequate compensation for the first season, which reportedly made Netflix $900 million, was the central catalyst for him making the second season, he does point to how it all was a gift and a curse. “I have about two nightmares a week, usually about something going wrong during shooting or people saying that it’s not good,” Dong-hyuk tells The Hollywood Reporter. “Will the games be as entertaining as in season one? Are the characters as charming?”
Hopefully, after the new season of Squid Game releases on Netflix on December 26, Dong-hyuk gets some peaceful sleep and a lot of money, along with keeping the rest of his teeth intact.