A former contestant on The Crystal Maze has shared surprising details about what really went on behind the scenes of the iconic Channel 4 show.
Iqbal Hussain, who appeared on the show 30 years ago, revealed that contestants did not get to choose which games they played. Speaking to Heart Bingo Online, he said: "Unlike how it appeared on the screen, you didn't get to choose which game you played - the production team assigned that for you, I'm not sure based on what!"
Long Filming Days and Locked-In Contestants
Filming was gruelling, with days starting around 9am and often not ending until 10pm. Hussain recalled: "We were exhausted at the end of each day... the one hour show you saw on the telly was edited down from many hours of real-time filming."
He also revealed that contestants who failed challenges were genuinely locked in rooms for the duration of the show. "We had two people locked in! One in the Ocean zone and one in the Aztec zone I think," he said. "They were genuinely left locked in for the duration of the show, until we paid a crystal each to release them later on."
Flimsy Sets and Filmed Twice
Hussain was surprised by how "flimsy" some of the sets were, likening them to "polystyrene that had been painted to make it look like rocks." He also explained that the final Dome scene was filmed twice, with contestants scrambling for tokens on the floor, then re-filmed leaping around for TV.
The Crystal Maze originally aired in the 1990s and was revived by Channel 4 in 2017, but was axed in 2020 due to the pandemic. It is currently available to stream on Amazon Prime Video.
