Squid Game winner claims theyre still waiting to see $4.5million prize money
Squid Game The Challenge winner Mai Whelan claims she has yet to receive the $4.56 million first prize – 10 months after filming the Netflix show.
The 55 year old won over viewers of the game show with her dramatic story of how she escaped the communist regime in her homeland of Vietnam after the fall of Saigon – as well as her cunning streak that saw her beat 455 other players to scoop the jackpot. In the final of the programme, which was inspired by Netflix’s smash-hit dystopian Korean series Squid Game, she beat 27 year old scuba instructor Phill Cain after multiple rounds of rock, paper, scissors.
The final shot of the series showed Mai approaching a cash machine to check her balance to see if the $4.56 million was waiting for her. But in an interview with The Times after the finale aired, she said she still had not received a penny of the cash prize.
She said: “I feel like Tom Cruise in Jerry Maguire. Show me the money!”
She added that, when Netflix did pay up, she planned on giving some of the money to charities for the underprivileged, wildlife and climate change. Mai said she was also looking into getting a retirement home away from where she lives in Fairfax, Virginia.
She added she had splashed out on a fancy hairdo, Ralph Lauren dress and Jimmy Choo shoes for a recent Netflix event.
“I still have buyer’s remorse from that, but I think it’s well deserved,” she said.
OK! has approached Netflix for a comment.
During the show, Mai broke down as she recalled fleeing Vietnam in 1975 – nearly being shot at eight years old by an American soldier on an airfield. After moving to the US and settling in Pennsylvania, Mai joined the US Navy at 19 and became pregnant.
The immigration adjudicator has two daughters, 36 and 34, as well as a nine-year-old granddaughter. Her husband Jay is a former IBM executive who now runs a consultancy business.
Squid Game The Challenge has proved to be a huge success, being ranked at the top of Netflix’s Top 10 English TV list for two weeks in November.
It also hit the Top 10 in 93 countries around the world – so bosses at the streaming platform have already decided to commission it for a second season.
Just like in the fictional series, Squid Game The Challenge saw a total of 456 contestants battle it out for the mind-blowing grand prize of $4.56 million – the biggest cash prize in reality TV history, according to Netflix. And like the scripted show, the competitors took on the same nail-biting challenges, albeit without the deadly consequences for failure.
Created by Studio Lambert, the same people who made The Traitors and Race Across the World, the games in the series included Red Light, Green Light, Honeycombs, Marbles and Hopscotch. Sets were built to mimic those from the original show down to the tiniest details and contestants lived together in a replica of Squid Game's bunk bed-filled living quarters.
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