'An Insane Journey': New Trier Grad Takes On Squid Game Reality Show

KENILWORTH, IL — A North Shore native was among the contestants "Squid Game: The Challenge," Netflix's reality show adaptation of its South Korean series "Squid Game."

Allie Hartman, 26, grew up in Kenilworth, graduated New Trier High School and now works as an art director at an advertising agency in New York City. She told Patch she was contacted by a casting producer for the show who had spotted her on social media.

"My mom has had some health issues over the past, I guess, two years at this point," Hartman said. "And they just saw a TikTok I made referencing that and reached out to me, said I should apply."

Hartman learned she had made the cast of 456 contestants last December, and the show was shot in London over three weeks in January.

"It ended up being an amazing experience," she said. "It was probably one of the coolest things I've ever done in my life."

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In the scripted, South Korean original version of the show, financially desperate contestants compete in children's games for a prize of worth about $38.5 million. Each game, those that fail are killed by the game organizers, who hold the contestants captive.

In the unscripted British version of the game, produced by Studio Lambert and the Garden, the prize is only $4.56 million and eliminated participants were not killed. But they were forced to live together in dorms modeled on the living situation in the original drama.

"We all had to live there, and we were on camera 24/7, mic'd up 24/7," Hartman said. "Shared bunks, shared bathrooms, shared everything."

Hartman said the show's producers made it absolutely clear that no one was going to get hurt during production.

"We definitely signed a lot of waivers," she said.

Hartman said she was nervous heading into filming because of the blockbuster success of the original show.

"You obviously want to do it justice, but also just people are dying in the real one — and it's a lot of people," she said. "Obviously, I wasn't worried I was going to die or anything, but just the level of intensity and stakes were definitely in there."

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Though the new unscripted Netflix show goes beyond the original game to include competitions inside the dorms, "Squid Game: The Challenge" is not the first time the drama, written as an allegory of the extreme competition of modern capitalism society, has been adapted to the reality show format.

In 2021, YouTube producer Jimmy "MrBeast" Donaldson recreated the original shows set and arranged for 456 people and awarded a prize of $456,000 to the winner and $10,000 to the runner-up.

The final episode of the new reality show, which has become the No. 1 English-language show on the streaming service, goes live Wednesday.

Since the first episodes were released Nov. 22, Hartman said she has been watching along at home. She said is now free to talk about her experience on the show, but not necessarily everything that happened.

"It's been really interesting to see people I actually know going through this, or being able to fill in the gaps for my boyfriend and tell him stories about people, or things that didn't get shown," she said.

Hartman, who works in experiential advertising, was deeply impressed by the show's sets, logistics and production value.

"Just going through what that experience was, in and of itself, was really eye-opening and gave me a lot of inspiration just for my career and my line of work," she said.

Hartman described her time on the show as a fully immersive "insane journey, start to finish."

It was also positive, she said, to be able to meet people from all over the world who she would otherwise never have encountered, and she has remained in touch with some of them over the past year.

"I made friends that live in Chicago, that live in North Carolina, some that are in New York with me, but also had some friends from London, Spain, everywhere," she said. "So that was really, really interesting and cool."

Read more (spoiler alert): Chicago Players Live Through 'Eye-Opening' Squid Game Reality Show