Netflix’s Squid Game is the kind of life-or-death-stakes drama that immerses viewers. Its well-crafted characters’ emotional states allow viewers to traverse the psychological and physical ups and downs of the macabre game at the show’s center, often leading to characters sustaining major injuries or even being killed.
The show centers around financially destitute people recruited by a shadowy organization into a violent contest where participants play children’s games. The winner gets a life-changing sum, while those on the losing side forfeit their lives.
Now the show’s creator Hwang Dong-hyuk is opening up about the kind of physical trials his own body endured while running the show.
As ScreenRant reports, Dong-hyuk recently opened up about the huge amount of stress that resulted from serving as both writer and director for the series for all nine episodes. The first season took such a toll on his body that he lost six teeth in the process.
“This was a nine-episode series and I was the only one who was writing the scripts and directing the whole thing, so it was a really physically, mentally, emotionally challenging task. And the story doesn’t exactly have the simplest concept, so as we were going along, new ideas were coming to me, or I would see flaws that I felt needed to be corrected, so I was, in fact, revising the script as I was filming the whole series. So that’s partly why I had a huge amount of stress, which led to me losing six teeth during production, which I’ve mentioned in some other interviews.”
Dong-hyuk has previously said that Squid Game was incredibly difficult to produce, and he’s hesitant toward officially announcing if he would be back behind the wheel for season two. If he does return, he may draw inspiration from fan’s suggestions, he says.
Many fans are no doubt clamoring for the show’s continuation as the global mega-hit known as Squid Game did leave off on a bit of a cliffhanger. Whether Dong-hyuk will return, that remains to be seen.
