“Welcome to the roundtable. This is where you do battle.” Nothing can prepare you for sitting directly opposite Claudia Winkleman – knitted rollneck jumper up to her chin, bright studio lights bouncing off her shiny fringe – as she gets ready to start a new game of The Traitors.
“I need you to really look at each other,” she says. “Really, really look at each other, because this is the last time you sit here as equals.” I’m nervous – my hands are shaking; my mouth is dry. Before I know it, I’m tying a (surprisingly opaque) blindfold around my head.
Winkleman – who describes her on-screen character as “Cruella de Vil with a touch of Miss Trunchbull” – makes her way around the circle, letting the Traitors know she has picked them as murderers. To avoid us having any sense of who she has chosen, she throws us off by stomping her boots loudly at random junctures, tiptoeing at others. “In the real thing I go around four or five times,” she says later. “I’m petrified they’re going to work out who I picked.”
I had always thought I’d want to be a Traitor – to have control over the game, to have the upper hand – but as I feel the presenter pass by me for the third time, I find myself willing for her to leave me as a Faithful. My wish is granted – but it’s far from over.
I’ve been invited to Ardross Castle, the grand 19th-century Scottish estate where The Traitors is filmed, alongside other journalists to experience the roundtable and have a peek behind the curtain of the country’s favourite gameshow. Only 69 people have shared this nerve-wracking adventure, having taken part in the previous three series, a game in which “Faithful” players must root out “Traitors” whose aim is to “murder” their opponents and take the prize money (which can reach up to £120,000) for themselves.
Tomorrow night, we’ll watch another 19 take their seats for The Traitors. But there’s a twist – this time, they’re famous. And not just “reality TV famous”. Stephen Fry, Alan Carr, Celia Imrie, Jonathan Ross, Paloma Faith and Clare Balding are just a handful of the recognisable faces we’ll see take part in the first ever British series of The Celebrity Traitors.
“We just thought the sky’s the limit,” says executive producer Sarah Fay of the calibre of celeb the series has managed to clinch. “If we don’t ask, we don’t know. We still can’t believe we got Stephen Fry.”
“I could barely breathe when I saw them all in the Highlands,” says Winkleman. “I’m such a fan of every single one of them. It was hard not to scream ‘you’re here!’ When I talked to Stephen Fry I almost welled up.”
The line-up is made up of celebrities who were approached by the Traitors team to take part and others who asked to come and play the game, though Fay and her fellow executive producer Mike Cotton democratically refuses to reveal who. Did they turn anyone down? “I’m not going to say that,” smirks Cotton.
We’re walking through the grounds of the castle and, on a sunny day like today, the Highland surroundings look like something out of a storybook; the peacocks – who regularly crash the party during filming (especially at lunchtime) – are cawing in the distance. On the huge gravel driveway are several imposing matte black SUVs, each bearing the number plate TRAITORS. On the day I’m there, filming commences on the next original, civilian version of The Traitors and the celebrity version has just wrapped up.
“It’s definitely different,” says Cotton. “Everyone has preconceived notions of each other. Some of them had relationships outside of the game – they might think someone was a bit of a traitor in the past. Even if they weren’t friends, they will know what their public persona is like.”
With the exception of a few family members who have played The Traitors – mother and son duo Ross and Diane in series two, sisters Armani and Maia Gouveia in series three – this is a new element to a game that already exploits the players’ relationships. Cotton is tight-lipped: “It can be used in many different ways,” he teases. “You could leverage your relationship with someone. You could use the preconceived notions of who people think you are.”
And just because this series is made up of celebrities used to the finer things in life, don’t think they got any special treatment. “We do a lot of prep work with anyone who comes to take part,” says Cotton. “We were really clear with everyone about the process that’s involved.” That includes staying in a hotel room (or “individual lodgings” as the producers call them), alone and without their phones, for the fortnight of filming, which consists of long hours and fierce mind games. “The game is designed to be psychologically intense; it becomes a bit of a pressure cooker.”
Two psychologists and a welfare team are always on hand to make sure the players – even the celebrities – are OK. “There’s a line between someone getting upset about the game and someone’s mental health being threatened,” says Cotton. “If it gets a bit too personal, that’s when the team would step in.”
But as for how the game is played, the producers keep their distance. “Compared to other realities that I have worked on in the past, we’re really hands off. We don’t ever want to tell them who they should talk to or where they should go,” says Cotton. “Partly so they’re completely immersed in the game, partly to minimise the chances of them finding out who the Traitors are – none of our crew talk to them.”
By this point we’ve made it into the wood-panelled breakfast room, where I find that my portrait has been hung on the wall alongside my fellow players. But never mind that – the table is laid with a bountiful silver service breakfast of croissants, cinnamon rolls, fruit, coffee, jams, muffins. Former players have decried the famous breakfast as “horrible”, but that is certainly not the case this morning.
Conversation turns to the normal series, which, in the years since it premiered in 2022, has won two NTAs and two Baftas. Thirty-five countries have their own version of The Traitors (Australia, New Zealand and the US editions are available to stream on iPlayer, with Ireland’s first series on the way later this year), but the UK was the first to feature non-celebs. “We want normal, authentic people,” says Cotton. “We call it the ‘pub test’. Would you like to go to the pub with them? You can always root for relatable people on TV. People who just want to be famous aren’t right for our cast – like with the celebrities, we want them to just want to play the game.”
Our tour of the castle – which is privately owned by the McTaggart family, who rent it out as a wedding venue a couple of times a year – takes in the kitchen (tiny and stuffed with pick ’n’ mix sweets), the library, the billiard room (complete with a lit fire), and even a secret “room of requirement” hidden behind a bookcase. Before I know it, I’m standing at the double doors that lead to the roundtable. A haunting version of “The Hanging Tree” begins to play – as it does in the show – and I walk towards my fate.
After Winkleman has chosen her Traitors – “You know what you must do: find them and banish them,” she tells us – suspicion descends on the room like a thick fog. Before we can accuse, however, we must go round each player and declare to one another: “I am a Faithful”. How to play it? Too quiet and you look like you have something to hide, too talkative and you seem to have too much knowledge. Accuse others and you appear to be deflecting, accuse no-one and you seem too protective. While the roundtables often take up less than half an episode, I now understand why in reality they can be debating for hours.
In the end, we choose our victim based solely on the fact that he took a large gulp of water after Winkleman had chosen her Traitors. As in the first roundtable of every series, there isn’t much to go on. But our instincts were right, as the Traitor reveals himself and the anxiety is replaced with euphoria. On TV, we laugh at the real player’s overenthusiastic relief at successfully banishing a Traitor, but having been in a similar situation – and even though I’m not playing for any prize money – there’s only one word for the feeling: euphoria. I have survived.
The celebrities will also not be playing to line their own pockets, instead their winnings – which can reach up to £100,000 – will go to a charity of their choice. Yet however noble their end game is, there will still be treachery and backstabbing galore. Hosting the celebrity version was “scarier” than usual, says Winkleman. “All I wanted to do was chat to them and make them like me. But of course, I have to be extremely unlikable. My role is aloof and grumpy. The biggest challenge was being ‘strict’.”
Understandably, the idea of a celebrity version of such a beloved series has worried some fans, Winkleman among them. “I’m in love with this show and I wanted to keep it small,” she says. “Once a year or maybe once every two years felt like enough. My bosses, thank goodness, ignored everything I said.”
As for whether the star-studded version lives up to the other series, Winkleman is holding her cards close to her Aran knit clad chest: “They play the game beautifully.”
‘The Celebrity Traitors’ is on tonight at 9pm on BBC One
