Oswego native talks about experience on Netflix show ‘Squid Game: The Challenge’

Oswego native Mark Gilloffo was intrigued by the fictional Netflix show “Squid Game” after it premiered on Netflix.

So when the 2011 Oswego High School grad heard that Netflix was looking for contestants for a reality competition show inspired by “Squid Game,” he jumped at the opportunity to be one of the 456 players vying for a $4.56 million prize.

“I watched the original series right when it came out,” Gilloffo said. “I loved the show, I loved the games and when I heard they were going to do a reality show, I was like, I think I could do pretty well at those games and I liked the idea that it was fully immersive. You were living in the dorms just like on ‘Squid Game.’ And it just seemed like a once-in-a-lifetime experience. I wanted to challenge myself outside of the normal bounds of reality, where anything could happen at any moment.”

He made a one-minute long video saying why he thought he would be a good fit for the show and filled out an application.

Gilloffo was successful in his efforts to get on “Squid Game: The Challenge,” which now is streaming on Netflix. He described the experience as a “mental, physical, strategic challenge that you can’t get anywhere else.”

“I really don’t know why I was selected,” he said. “I didn’t think I was ever going to get selected. They were looking for a diverse cast of people from all over the world. And I fit one of the molds that they were looking for just being myself. So that’s good enough for me.”

Just like in “Squid Game,” as contestants are eliminated from the show, more money is added to the jackpot. At the same time, contestants need to work with each other.

“You were going to have to work with your pals and stuff, but at a certain point, everyone knew they were going to have to turn on each other,” Gilloffo said. “With so many people in the game, it was the largest reality show cast ever and the largest reality show prize money ever.”

The contestants are presented with a variety of challenges. That includes the dalgona cookie challenge, where players have to lick and carve a specific shape out of a cookie.

“It’s essentially Korean honeycomb toffee,” he said. “It basically tasted like straight up sugar. It was really good. At that point in time, we had gone like five days maybe without eating any sugar, so it was a real treat. My mom tried to remake them over Thanksgiving, but they’re very hard to make by hand.”

While he now lives in Chicago, his parents still live in Oswego. Gilloffo gets back to Oswego on a regular basis.

Under Gilloffo’s leadership, his team advances during the competition. That made him happy.

“So many of my teammates were able to make it through that round because of my negotiating skills and sticking true to my guns of wanting to help out my team,” he said. “I call it my Super Bowl moment. I was able to be the guy for my team and help all of them advance to the next round.”

Gilloffo is an account director for the Chicago-based advertising agency Schafer Condon Carter. He said the skills that he use daily at his job helped him to navigate that situation.

“It’s what I do on a daily basis,” he said.

Gilloffo keeps in touch with his fellow contestants. His experience on the show was even better than he imagined.

“Other than knowing that it was a fully immersive experience, I had no idea what to expect,” he said. “The scale of everything was just way more in depth, way bigger and way more realistic than I ever could have imagined. And staying in the dorms with 200-plus people was like a really cool experience. It far surpassed my expectations.”