“Idol School” Former Contestants Reveal The Physical And Psychological Damages The Trainees Suffered On The Show
PD Notes recently revealed their in-depth coverage of the current scandals surrounding CJ ENM and the Produce 101 series. The scandal first began with proof that Mnet manipulated the final votes on PRODUCE X 101 but have now spread to other similar shows that were produced by CJ and Mnet, like Idol School.
PD Notes was able to sit down with multiple former contestants from the show and get their side of the story. Popular contestant, Lee Hae In, sat down and revealed that the whole group was rigged from the beginning.
And she also revealed that the show had caused physical and psychological damages to the trainees during the filming itself. She claimed the rooms looked great on television but it was far from it.
She explained that the rooms reeked of paint from just finishing construction and that there was dust everywhere, causing trainees to get rashes all over their bodies.
The pink room that you see on the show was just recently built so it strongly smelled of paint. It wasn’t ventilated either so if anyone moved their blanket, dust was everywhere.
Trainees with sensitive skin had red rashes all over their bodies.
— Lee Hae In
Three other trainees sat down for an interview where they claimed that the staff didn’t feed the girls enough even though many of them were minors who were going through puberty and required a lot of food.
We were still growing so we needed to eat. There were even 12-year-olds. They even started crying because at that age, you cry if you’re not fed.
Everyone cried and it was just a huge mess.
— Idol School Former Contestants
They revealed that the girls were “trapped” on set so they were subjected to filming all day and all night long, even though there were minors in the group.
But the show was edited to make it seem like the filming was done only during appropriate hours.
It was filmed indoors so viewers can’t tell if it was at night or day. If the producers told Group 1 to come out at 4am, we would walk out like zombies and get our mics put on.
We ate when they told us to eat, we slept when they told us to sleep, we woke up when they told us to woke up. We didn’t know what we were doing.
We just did what they told us to do.
— Idol School Former Contestants
The situation escalated to the point that some trainees even ran away by escaping through a window.
I wondered if this was what happened on other sets. People cried because they were hungry and sleepy. There was an instance where they broke the window and escaped.
They kept us in the dorm, so they broke the window shield and escaped.
— Idol School Former Contestants
The psychological and physical toll eventually caused the group to stop menstruating due to the stress. The three contestants claimed everyone’s “health deteriorated [as] none of [them] got their periods.” It was either they didn’t have periods at all or suffered bad cramps throughout the 2 months.
Finally, they also added onto the claims that the show was rigged from the start. During the segments where contestants held live video sessions during the show, the trainees were not allowed to mention anything about “manipulation”, “disqualification”, or any possible negative keywords about their current situation.
They gave us a list of words we weren’t allowed to say.
We weren’t allowed to say, ‘This is manipulated’, ‘She’s disqualified’, ‘We’re trapped’, ‘We filmed all throughout the night from the first day’, and such.
— Idol School Former Contestants
The producers of the Produce 101 series, Mnet, and CJ ENM are all currently undergoing investigation after evidence of voting manipulation was discovered by the police.
Check out the interview below:
