It is a long way from Lincoln, Missouri, to London, England, but a LHS graduate recently traveled to London to compete in the Netflix Squid Games series. Brooklyn Johnson entered Squid Games one night while house sitting.
“I was bored so when I saw the application to enter Squid Games I decided to fill it out,” said Johnson. “I didn’t even finish the application until the next day when I received a reminder that I hadn’t finished my application.”
Johnson said she really didn’t think she had a chance but when she received a call from an official from Netflix, she realized she really was being considered as a contestant.
Netflix sent a limousine to Columbia to pick Johnson up and take her to St. Louis where she boarded a plane for London in January 2023.
“My flight was paid for by Netflix and they put me up in a dorm in London,” said Johnson. “All the contestants were quarantined for five days and anyone who tested positive for COVID was disqualified. There were 456 contestants, which is the largest reality show ever,” said Johnson.
The 456 contestants were chosen from over 90,000 applicants. One of the questions that helped Johnson win her spot was ‘What would you do with the prize money?” to which Johnson replied that she would buy new furniture since all the furniture she had was stuff she got from her father Russell Johnson, a local auctioneer.
“The Netflix crew treated us much like contestants on ‘Survivor’ as they wanted to see what we were capable of withstanding,” said Johnson. “They took our phones and we were kept in the dorm rooms during the time we were filming.”
Johnson said that she lost five pounds during the time she was filming because she was only fed rather bland food and not much of it.
The first game Johnson participated in was “Red Light, Green Light” and she managed to score well enough to continue on in the competition.
“When the game was on Netflix it was very quick, but it took eight hours in 24-degree weather to film,” said Johnson.
The next game was Dalgona which was a game in which the contestants had to remove a hardened sugar cookie from a baking pan with a needle without breaking it. This was the game that Johnson didn’t win which took her out of the competition.
“I didn’t win the big prize, but it was a great experience,” said Johnson. “It gave me the confidence to try other things and since then I have traveled to New York City.”
More than with any other reality competition series the odds of winning Squid Games: The Challenge are breathtakingly low. Four hundred and fifty-six contestants competed for $4.56 million in Netflix’s game show adaptation of the hit Korean drama Squid Game, giving each player a .22 percent chance of winning. Not only is the number of contestants utterly absurd, but as anyone familiar with the original series will tell, the challenges are so cruel they make Big Brother and The Circle look like child’s play.
Mai Whelan from Virginia won the $4.57 million prize. The 55-year-old immigration adjudicator stuck through the lengthy process.
Johnson traveled to Atlanta for the finale just last week. All the contestants were invited to the reunion of the cast.
Johnson currently lives in Columbia, Missouri, where she works as a graphic designer for Veterans United Home Loans. She is a graduate of Lincoln High School, State Fair Community College and the University of Missouri. The 26-year old is the daughter of Russell and Tammy Johnson of Warsaw.
