When Rachel Lee, 29, a Marriott International accountant and food content creator from Vienna, got the call that she’d been selected as a contestant for the current season of Netflix’s Squid Game: The Challenge, she could hardly believe it.
The show’s second season premiered November 4. And Lee was one of 10 Virginians competing for the eye-popping $4.56 million cash prize — the largest in reality TV history.
“I got the final call the day before Thanksgiving last year saying I was officially cast,” she says, after a nearly year-long casting cycle with a quarter-million applicants. “It was the best feeling ever.”
Filming the Show
The nine-episode reality competition is based on the hit South Korean drama Squid Game. It trades the fictional show’s deadly stakes for high-intensity physical, mental, and social challenges. Contestants navigate alliances, mind games, and grueling tests of endurance.
“People were scheming from before we even entered into the dorm,” says Lee. “A lot of people were definitely plotting.” (She admits she created an alliance with someone she didn’t particularly like in case she needed to “throw someone under the bus.”)
Season 2 of The Challenge was filmed in London. It features 456 players from around the world, ages 21 to 77. Lee, who appears as Player 447, was eliminated after the six-legged race in an early episode. She says in the short time she was there for filming, the cast endured three days of isolation, barely edible porridge to eat, and community sleep quarters.
Testing her Limits
“I’m just really proud of myself for going out of my comfort zone and doing what I did,” she says. “It was truly an incredible, once-in-a-lifetime experience — it was all unexpected.”
The Netflix hit’s second season has included returning favorites and brand-new games. They included marbles, a six-legged pentathlon, and a special game of catch. The first four episodes are streaming now. Episodes five through eight dropped November 11, and the finale airs November 18.
For Lee, the experience wasn’t just about the prize money. It was about testing her limits and meeting people from around the world. To that end, someday, when she moves into a house, she wants to hang mementos from her life in her basement, which she calls “basement pieces.”
“I kinda want a trophy wall of all these crazy things that I’ve done,” she says. “From the moment I signed up, I wanted that green jacket (that she wore competing) in a shadow box with a picture of myself for my basement pieces.”
Northern Virginia has already seen Squid Game success once before. Falls Church’s Mai Whelan took home the top prize in Season 1 last year. Lee can’t say who will win this season, so fans will have to wait until November 18 to find out.
Feature image courtesy Studio Lambert/Netflix
