What It’s Actually Like Inside ‘Squid Game: The Challenge,’ According to a Contestant Who Lived It

You’ve binged the show. You’ve debated who you’d align with. You’ve confidently declared to your group chat that you’d definitely make it past Red Light, Green Light. But what is it actually like to step inside that massive dorm, put on that tracksuit, and compete for $4.56 million against 455 strangers?

CeCe—aka Caroline Lauria, Player 78 on Squid Game: The Challenge Season 2—knows firsthand. The grandmother, reality TV first-timer, and mother of influencer and host Kristin Johns went on the Netflix competition alongside her son-in-law, content creator Marcus Johns (Player 76). And while the cameras captured the games, there’s so much the show conveniently left out about what really goes down behind the scenes.

In a recent episode of That’s The Point, co-hosted by Jon Volk, CeCe pulled back the curtain on the chaos, the food situation (spoiler: it’s bad), and why she’d absolutely do it all over again.

Below are highlights, adapted from That’s The Point podcast.

What It’s Actually Like Inside ‘Squid Game: The Challenge’

First things first, how would you even describe the experience of entering the Squid Game set?

“The whole experience was—say you’re just standing out there petting a sheep, and then you get picked up by something and just carried over and put into a whole new world that you didn’t even know existed. It’s just like being put on another planet. It’s nothing like you can ever explain to anybody.”

Wait, back up. How did you even end up on the show in the first place?

“Marcus is outside and I’m outside with the kids and he’s filming something. And so I said, ‘What?’ He said, ‘I just need to film this quick thing for Squid Games.’ I’m like, ‘Oh, ok.’ So I watch him do it and it’s incredible. Can’t even believe it. He throws a chicken in the air. I said, ‘You are so going on Squid Games‘…

…Fast forward to a couple days later, everybody’s over at our house. We had just got back from swimming with the whole family…And Marcus comes in and he said, ‘I really want you to go on Squid Games with me.’ I said, ‘Marcus, I’m not doing Squid Games. I’m not going to go on Squid Games with you.’ I didn’t know at this time that he was filming me the whole time and he sends it into Squid Games. And we went through the whole process of all the interviews and everything, and I went from not wanting to do something—there couldn’t have been something I didn’t want to do any less—to going to something I wanted to do so bad that’s all I thought about.”

How would you describe what the show actually is?

“It’s an immersive psychological experience with 455 people that you do not know.”

What was it like inside the dorm? Did you actually sleep with 400+ people in there?

“I did sleep. The beds were really comfortable to tell you the truth. They were hard to get into because they were kind of wonky, but once you got in there, they were very comfortable.”

Did people snore at night?

“Yes, they did…It was a lot of snoring. But you’re so tired because you’ve been through—I can’t explain everything, you don’t understand…You don’t know what time it is. There’s no clock. You don’t go out…It’s a studio. It’s incredible. I mean, it’s so well done. The people were nice. Most of them, you know, the producers and they were nice. I mean, they really they wanted us to have an experience.”

Let’s talk about the first challenge. Walk us through your strategy.

“If you’ve watched the first game, you could pick X or O. I was dead set picking X. Marcus wanted O. I said, ‘Okay, you go O. I’m not changing. I’m going X.’ And so at the very last minute, like 30 seconds before, he jumps over to X and said, ‘Let’s just stay together. It doesn’t even matter. Let’s just go home together. We came together. Let’s just stay together.’ And we did, and we stayed together. And X won…

…We had many friends…we were yelling at them, ‘Come over here, come over here!’ But they didn’t hear us. And they all went home on O the very first [night]. They didn’t get to spend the night in the dorm. But I saw all the money fall in. It was really an amazing experience.”

Okay, we have to talk about the food. What was that situation like?

“The breakfast was like gunky oatmeal and everything was warm and hot and good. But it was not good. I’m sorry. It was horrible. It was awful. My friend Julia, my sweet sweet friend, she’s like, ‘CeCe, you got to eat this. You’ve got to make yourself eat it because you got to stay in the game. You got to stay in the game.’ I’m like, ‘I’m not eating this, Julia. I just can’t do it.’ Then lunch and dinner wasn’t that horrible. It all just tasted the same…

…What they do is they give it to you in these metal things with this metal spoon and they just—you get in line and they just give you your stuff. And then you go sit back on the bleachers and eat your slop.”

Did anything affect your performance while you were there?

“I got really, really bad bronchitis while I was there. So I couldn’t be myself and just talk to people and go plan and do this and do that because I was doing my inhaler probably 25 times a day. I came back with horrible bronchitis. So I couldn’t be my normal [self]…

…I usually really like to talk to people, and Marcus says, ‘She’s from Louisiana. You should go talk to her.’ And [I] just walked right by her. I just didn’t have the energy to even socialize except for my core group that I stayed with.”

Do you think that affected how far you could’ve gone?

“If I wouldn’t have been sick, 100 percent I could have done so much better. 100 percent. But I came back and my doctor said, ‘You’ve got the worst case of bronchitis I’ve ever seen in my life.’ I got on antibiotics and a steroid. And I’m still alive. Hello.”

How long were you there total?

“I think we were gone [for] eight days, eight days total.”

Marcus said he was mentally unwell when he got back. How did you feel?

“I did not feel that way. I felt so empowered that I had endured that. I just felt like I could do anything. If I did that, oh my gosh, watch out world! But I get the way Marcus feels. But I got to tell you, yes—it was very difficult. It was not easy for sure. But once I got back, I was so full of myself for so long. I was so hard to live with. I was like, ‘I can do anything.’

What about that moment when X won the first challenge? What was that energy like?

“At the very first challenge—the character challenge—whenever we won and everybody was standing up, I was in the middle of probably the tallest people and one of them was, I think, an NFL football player. They started jumping up and down and hugging everybody and hugging me. I was like, ‘I might have won, but I think I’m gonna die. I’ve got to get out of this group of people’ because it was like they were just so excited.”

If Netflix called and asked you to come back for Season 3, would you do it?

“Actually, I would say yes. I would 100 percent say yes. No doubt about it…

…I would do it because it was not like Stockholm syndrome. It was an amazing experience. That was very hard. That’s all.”

Did you go on the show for the money?

“Tell you the truth, I did not go on there [for the money]. I went there for the experience. Total experience. I’m not one to say anything other than that because—seriously…I would have loved the money, don’t get me wrong…but it’s not what drove me. The experience drove me. It was amazing.”

Want to catch the full conversation? Listen to CeCe’s entire Squid Game breakdown on That’s The Point.

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