How we got hooked on The Traitors

0:00This is The Guardian.

0:08Today, the secrets to the traitor's success.

0:18Quick warning before we start, this episode contains spoilers for the current series of the traitors. So if you aren't caught up, perhaps save this for when you have.

0:29we'd had a round table it had been quite emotional so we'd all gone to the bar and basically miles had been tasked with handing me a poison chalice if you're one of the few people in the uk who has not been glued to the traitors since it hit our screens on the bbc in 2022 then everything you have just heard will have made absolutely no sense at all but stick with us and basically Miles got me by saying I don't drink fizzy what? Fizzy rose I had called it and he said do you want it? And of course I'm going to I mean my god I'm from Ireland I don't mind a wee glass of fizz Anyway then the next morning we all turn up for breakfast and we're told that somebody has been poisoned in plain sight If however you are one of the Traitor's many millions of fans this Ulster accent will need no introduction It's bona fide traitors legend Diane from series two.

1:27She, of course, was secretly murdered with a glass of fizzy rosé by one of the traitors, Miles, and then told to attend what turned out to be her own funeral where she was buried alive. And then basically the coffin lid was smacked down hard of the person who was murdered, and that was me. We were asked before we went on the show if you're claustrophobic. I'm not claustrophobic. I could have stayed in there for a few hours. And apart from needing to eat or go to the low, it would not have been an issue for me. You see why she's such a legend. Oh, and I should have mentioned, all of this happened in front of her son, Ross, another competitor and a fellow faithful.

2:09Only no one knew he was her son because they kept that a secret too. And in fact, the other players suspected that her son was an entirely different player, Paul, who was really one of the traitors. Got it? And Ross came to throw a rose into my coffin, so I wanted to say goodbye, but I didn't want to say I love you because my mouth would have moved three times. It would have sort of promoted emotion and also they might have seen me speaking three words. So I just looked up at him and said bye and he actually thought I said miles. So for this emotional farewell, he didn't even hear it properly.

2:54The Traitors is a preposterous TV show. It is silly and convoluted and often incredibly frustrating, and I absolutely love it. Today, as its fourth series approaches its inevitably dramatic conclusion, we're going to go behind the scenes on Britain's favourite game show and work out why it has been such a soar-away success. From The Guardian, I am, and have always been, Helen Pidd. Today in Focus. Why are we all so obsessed with the traitors?

3:27Elle Hunt, welcome back to Today in Focus. You're a feature writer at The Guardian who had the great fortune to go and visit the actual traitors castle in Scotland last year. And you played the game with the actual Claudia Winkleman, which I'm very jealous of. So you are very, very well placed to talk to us about the majesty of this show. And you, like me, are a traitors super fan. But tell me, why do you love it so much? Well, it's actually very gratifying that it's had such a huge success since the Celebrity Traitors. Because as you say, I was watching from season one when it was really a word of mouth type phenomenon.

4:01Hardly any people were watching it then. What I loved about it, particularly as someone who had never been interested in reality TV or even game shows, was that there was so much human psychology on display. It was much more like a board game you'd play with your friends than it was a reality series. And the way that people responded emotionally to the accusations of being a traitor at the table, the way that it wasn't enough to simply be right, you also had to win people on side, the way that personal feelings about other people got in the way of being able to see objective evidence, I just found fascinating.

4:40and since then I have watched both New Zealand series both Australian series most of the US series oh wow yeah and I mean the thing that's so great about the format that I think people are waking up to if they joined with the celebrity traders is that it really is different each time like obviously we are now starting to see some kinds of consistencies but you can go into that game and that castle with a plan, but it can all fall over at the round table. And I think that's what makes it so refreshing and exciting each season, because a different group of people create a different dynamic. And there's really not a lot you can plan or prepare for, which is why when you see that play out on TV, it's so exciting.

5:27Definitely. And Lord knows if anybody will click on this episode if they've not watched a minute of The Traitors, but in case some of them have slipped through the net and welcome, welcome to the Traitors fan club. Can you just explain for them in basic terms how the game works? I did meet someone in December, the host of my pub quiz, who had never even heard of it, which I was interested that there are people who are still out there. But in case you are listening to find out what the Traitors is, a group of players are sent to a castle in the Scottish Highlands and Claudia Winkleman, upon their arrival, selects usually three among the group to be made traitors.

6:08The rest of the group are the faithfuls. They do not know who the traitors are. They complete a series of challenges during the day to gain money and add to the prize pot. And at night, they gather at a round table and have to discuss who they think the traitors hidden among them are. Then they decide to vote out someone and hopefully they're a traitor, and if they're not then they've lost another faithful and the traitors gain the advantage. Yeah and of course at night the traitors don their cloaks and they meet in the castle turret to murder one of their faithful. And the outcome of the game is whoever is left at the end if it's all faithful they get to split the money between them and if there's a traitor within them they will take the prize pot home themselves.

6:50So the challenges of the game are trying to find out who is not who they say they are. Everyone is obviously pretending to be a faithful, trying to build relationships with the other faithfuls and strategic alliances to not only get more information, but also have those numbers at the round table when it comes to voting. And really trying to be attuned to slip ups. The traitors have much more control over the game than the faithfuls. The faithfuls have really very little to go by. And you are really depending on someone making a mistake, like mixing up morning and night when they were in fact in the turret, deciding who to kill.

7:28Yeah, yeah, yeah. One of them has slipped up this year, haven't they, saying last night. And then no, none of the faithful seem to notice that Stephen had said that. And I've spoken to you before, Maz, through this process. And so I was thinking to myself last night, you know, or sorry, this morning after we found out how, you know, the thing was done. Yes, this is the continual frustration of the traitors where you see time and again, there are concrete bits of evidence that seem to entirely elide the faithfuls. And they do end up making their decisions based on vibes, largely. And sort of prejudices, as we'll probably come on to discuss.

8:04Yes, yes. And that is has been a constant since series one as well. But yeah, I mean, I think it's just really interesting, because you can see play out for your eyes, the importance of influence, the importance of being able to make your case, express emotion where it will benefit you, but not to the extent where it will work against you. It really brings out a lot about human nature. And the producers are constantly tweaking the rules and introducing new twists. And there have been quite a few new twists in this season. What has stood out to you so far? This season, the big twist was the introduction of a secret traitor, which not even the traitors knew the identity of.

8:45You are not the only traitors. in this castle. At the round table, I picked one other traitor, the secret traitor. Oh my God. You still have power, but not quite as much. That person was the only person who was able to submit a list of faithful players for murder each night, which really you saw in episode one, really through the assigned traitor's game. Yeah, they were gutted, weren't they? Yeah, I just loved it. Because one of the problems with the earlier seasons has been that the traitors have so much control over the game and the faithfuls have none. And although it's still very enjoyable viewing, it does feel a little bit like picking off faithful.

9:29And really you are relying on a traitor to make a silly mistake or the pressure to get to them if you have any chance of winning. So just having that extra element of control and pressure on the traitors really did change the game up in a big way. I lost count of the number of times I was wandering around the Guardian's office in London and I would overhear people speculating. Oh, I think it's the old Welsh lady. Oh, no, it's the detective. Oh, I think it must be the quiet one. So it really did get people talking, didn't it, and speculating who was behind the red cloak. Totally. And it was the first time that the producers had decided to withhold something from us.

10:07And it really did work out well for the episodes that the secret traitor's identity remained a secret. And I wonder if the producers in an ideal world would have liked that to have carried on for longer. It was revealed to be this fantastically wicked Welsh woman. I think the unprecedented power and oversight of the game of the secret traitor role got to her head a little bit. I believe that Rachel is a traitor.

10:39she made some big swings was detected quite quickly and that's the way the game goes like that's the other thing that makes the traitor so good is that there is very little interference if any from the producers and the story that they end up telling on screen is led by the players and what happens at that round table the producers told me that their goal was to be as unobtrusive and even absent as possible. So the pieces to cam that we see are recorded in the same chair each time. That's an unmanned camera operator. It's like going into a bird hide where you walk in and then there's just a little box facing you and you can't see someone else.

11:19You don't have to interact with anyone to go into it. Like the diary room in Big Brother. Exactly like that. I imagine they are given some prompts to say, talk about this part of the day, then what happen how did you feel but um the impression I got was that the producers really just want to turn the cameras on turn on their mics and shoot right okay and and did you get a sense when you were there any insight into just how such a gigantic production is brought to life because it's massive it must be really expensive and if I was a producer I would be holding my breath for those three weeks because so much could go wrong and the game could be spoiled really quickly the The way the producers described it to me was like they imagined it like setting up a murder mystery, where if they have thought through all potential outcomes, then it really is just a matter of letting people loose and seeing what comes back to you.

12:11So the thing that we've seen this season, which is different from past seasons, is that there's now much more control and oversight of the traitors and how much they can do. Like you'll notice that even after the secret traitor has been exposed and banished, it's very rare that the traitors have their pick of all the faithfuls to kill, which means that they can't just go for the smart ones who are onto them, which has been the case in previous seasons, with the effect that the more trusting or naive faithfuls are the only ones that make it to the end, which can be a little bit frustrating if you want to see someone rewarded for their gameplay and acumen.

12:45The other thing that we've seen happen with this season is that the challenges used to be famously your phone time where you could go and do the washing up and make a cup of tea. And now this season, there are a lot more pointy challenges where players are required often on the spot to pick who they're closest friends with, air their suspicions. there's a little bit more of a kind of ruffling of feathers in that moment of the game whereas previously it used to be a really stark split between challengers go make a cup of tea and round table hooked on everyone's word you have been to the castle and you've played the game so you've sat around that that round table how was it and how did you think you would be at playing the traitors and how did you actually do the thing that really struck me about it was is it's absolutely nerve-wracking.

13:37Like, we weren't being filmed. It was only, you know, 10 of us out there. We were only playing 20 minutes. And yet, as soon as those blindfolds go on, all you can hear is your heartbeat, like, pumping in your ears. I was a faithful. And ended up just sort of picking out some random girl at the table. And she got voted off and she was a faithful. So I just really came away with this understanding of how difficult it is and how little control you have over your reactions. It made me much more sympathetic to the faithfuls and the intensity of that experience.

14:19Diane, I am not ashamed to admit that I'm absolutely thrilled that you have agreed to come on the podcast. I actually shrieked, Diane, when you replied to my DM after I slid into your Instagram inbox. That's very kind. Thank you for that. And anybody who watched season two of The Traitors will no doubt share my excitement because you were an absolute titan, a legend of that show. And to me and everybody else, you're probably better known as Mum because you were responsible for the first big twist of that second season when it was revealed that your son Ross was another contender but you guys had kept it a secret paul just couldn't be my son but ross is and the rest as they say is history and tell me how did ross end up joining you on the show well obviously makes great tv if there are secrets amongst the contestants you know so you've had secrets of relationships alex isn't a traitor straight up she's my girlfriend

15:17You've had career secrets Traitors I may not know who you are But I want you to know who I am I'm the author of published psychological thrillers And I'm also a former criminal barrister Some of us were definitely asked if a member of our family would like to take part with us So I just asked Ross just to see. I didn't expect him to be fair to say yes. And then he said, I'm not having you telling me what to do on national TV. That would be embarrassing. And I said, I'll be telling everybody what to do. So you won't be anybody special. Talk to me about how difficult it was to pretend you'd never seen Ross before in your life, despite having given birth to the boy.

16:05Well, we are a really big games family. And we do a lot of pranks and teasing as well. and we play Dungeons and Dragons and all our family are actors, not me or Ross, but the rest of them. My daughter has been in a coffin on stage. She's been smacked over the head by a rifle. My son has been blown up on a ship in Game of Thrones. My son-in-law has been mowed down by a van, and so it goes on. So we're sort of used to role, not role playing, because that sounds weird, but we are used to that sort of world and that sort of life. And don't forget, we both just wanted to have a laugh with it. And it was harder for him because he had to not call me mum.

16:48And then he would use this ridiculous voice. He would say, Diane. And he kept lowering his voice. And he also kept using my name. And obviously, if you meet somebody, you're introduced them. So I would say, you know, hi, Helen. How are you? And then I probably would never use your name again in the rest of the conversation. But he kept using my name. So I had to pull him aside and said, stop that, because that is very obvious, you know. But of course, in this series, you had Roxy and Judy, the mum, and she did actually call her mum in one of the challenges and nobody noticed. A traitor did go on to win your season.

17:25Yes. And that, of course, was Harry. Yeah. How do you think he pulled it off and what do you think makes a good traitor? Harry was just a very polite, lovely young man. I mean, he would pull out my seat at the round table for me every time I sat there. And you know something, when you hear shared stories, his grandpa has Alzheimer's and I lost my dad to Alzheimer's. You then share these common experiences. So you sort of then think he couldn't possibly be a traitor. I know that sounds, it's mad. But, you know, when I think back, he basically kept under the radar. I went to tarot card reader before I went in I was told to beware of the snake and she had no idea I was going on this game and one of the tasks Harry decided to take his top off and there tattooed right across his chest and back was a snake tattoo I didn't even notice so there you go And another iconic traitor from your season was Paul, evil ginger Paul and you were murdered before you had the chance to boot him out although you did have your suspicions, didn't you?

18:33But he was such a good liar. What did cause me a bit of a wobble when I was talking to Paul before I ever suspected, you know, when everybody was saying he was my son and he cycles and my husband cycles and I have a number of friends who cycle and there was a big cycling event coming on in the real world. And he said, oh, I'd love to do that with your husband. And I went, oh, great. Anyway, we all get onto our WhatsApp group. And when he joined the WhatsApp group, I said something about going cycling and he said to me I don't know what you mean I've never been on a bike in my life and that actually threw me I I didn't care about traitors and and who's a trait that just doesn't worry me it's the fact that he had lied about who he was as a person and I hadn't sussed that I think I'm good at reading people and I remember going on and on and on about this to my husband he said don't be ridiculous it was a game and i went no no we'd made genuine connections but that threw me out of the whole game and and traitors and faith that threw me because i thought i'd got him wrong that one little lie that one silly thing yeah i know

19:56Elle, there's been a growing debate about the unconscious biases that the players reveal, particularly in the early stages of the game when they really don't have very much to go on at all and they leap on the tiniest of things or they say that they just have a gut feeling that something is off with somebody. And the result of this has been that minorities have been booted off first. So Judy, this time around, you had Nico, the YouTuber in the celebrity game. Do you think that we can read anything into that? I do. And again, partly because I think I've seen so much of the traitors. This goes back to season one, where a woman had aspersion cast on her for being a traitor because she hadn't cheersed with the rest of the faithfuls at the end of the round table.

20:41Someone brought this to the table and she said, the reason I didn't choose is because I have a limb difference. I don't have a hand. And they still voted her off. So, I mean, I think it's great that this, you know, the new popularity of the traitors since the celebrity traitors has raised this question. It's not unique to this show. Most of the time we see in reality TV, whether it's Love Island or anything else, people of colour do get sign-lined and evicted first. and these formats are a kind of microcosm of British society. It may not be fair to call the other players racist, but in a game where you have so little evidence, you can only go by vibes, you can only really go by whether you trust someone intuitively or not, we really see how that in and out group functions and we tend to trust implicitly people we think are like us.

21:34You know, if the round table was majority black and there were a few minority white players, I suspect it would go differently. But when there is so little information, and they are having to make snap judgments, the fear that you get sitting at that roundtable is sort of existential. It's being cast out, literally, it's being banished. And we have evolved as a species to equate that with death. So one way you could call it is bandwagoning. The other way you can call it is, you know, wanting to belong to the in group. and sadly and persistently people of colour end up bearing the brunt of that.

22:10In the celebrity traitors, you know, you mentioned the YouTuber. You could also say that he was voted out first because he wasn't a sort of institutional legacy media kind of personality relative to the others and you could also say it was because he was young. There were different ways of him being highlighted as other at that table that people might have been playing on. Also, Stephen Fry led the charge, and who's not going to listen to Stephen Fry? Nico, you have received the most votes, and you are banished from the castle forever. Please reveal, are you a traitor, or are you a faithful?

22:49First things first, I just want to say, I can't believe I'm out so quickly. Yeah, and there was a column in The Guardian recently by a comedian called Athena Koblenu, and she was talking about what happened to poor old Judy, who, as I said, was the first player to be banished in this new series. And saying that she was sort of, people said, oh, you seem very angry, Judy. And sort of feeding into the old tropes about black women and black women, just because they express something forcefully, being accused of being aggressive in a way that would be kind of innocuous in a white person. And, you know, I think you can see from the traitors every episode that people react emotionally, defensively, and it's only it's not everyone has it you know challenged I mean you can see that if people want to bring suspicions they can find different ways to do it and of course that is the game and I want to stress that this sort of unconscious bias is not a traitor specific problem like I said if you've been watching any reality tv it's very very consistent yeah but I think what we see now is that this is the first time that we've had a tv show that has really been a point viewing water cooler discussion in years and that is what's kind of bringing it under the focus

24:06one of my favorite moments of this season was amanda who decided to confide in exactly the person in the castle who she should not have trusted that being rachel one of the traitors and saying i've got a secret i'm only going to tell you i was a detective for decades i'm amazing at reading people. And she reeled off her list of traitors, none of which were correct. Brilliant. Rachel, I was a senior detective in the Metropolitan Police. So I'm very adept at covert policing. That was my job. I mean, you've got to wonder if the police force is sort of doing crisis comps at this point, because what I found interesting is even after Amanda had been banished and left the game, the faithfuls are still sort of looking to her as an authority and trusting her suspicions because she was in the police.

24:53It's interesting. Who do we decide to listen to? Who do we decide to trust? To what extent do our own prejudices blind us from seeing what's blindingly obvious in front of us? Coming up, can the faithfuls pull it back?

25:23Mark Pozz, who is the Dutch creator of the show, explained that the idea for the traitors was inspired by his observation that humans have become less trusting of institutions and each other, but that they can't stand not being able to rely on those around them. And I just wondered, do you think there's anything about this particular moment in history which means that a show that revolves around mistrust and deceit and the individual versus the collective has really resonated. That's interesting. I hadn't thought of it that way necessarily. I mean, we know that trust in institutions has been steadily on the decline.

25:57I know some people who actually object to the popularity of the traitors and refuse to watch it because they think the game glorifies lying and deceit at a time when we should be rowing together. But I guess to them, I would say, you cannot win this game alone. The only way that the faithfuls can win is by pooling their knowledge working together against the traitors. So, you know, in theory, it could be seen, if it played out differently, as an example of how we do need each other, we are interconnected. And one of my all-time favourite traitors moments, the one that had me shouting at my TV the loudest, was in Diane's season, the final of that season, season two.

26:37And Harry, the final traitor standing, won the game by hoodwinking poor, innocent young Molly, his supposed best pal in the castle, who may or may not have had a massive crush on him. Molly ignored logic, she ignored reason, and she went, oh, she went with her heart. And it cost her almost 100 grand. Harry, please reveal, are you a faithful or are you a traitor? I am, and since the start, being a traitor. Oh my fucking God. Oh my God. Fuck. That poor girl. And she spoke about the impact on that of her. The sort of, I guess it's not only finding out that you've been played by someone you trusted, but also the kind of national exposure and humiliation.

27:35But yeah, I mean, it just shows how very real the feelings are, even in this contrived situation. No one wants to be called a liar. People are out to win the money for themselves and they can and are encouraged to play the game. It doesn't mean that feelings won't get hurt. Yeah, and we're recording this ahead of the final three episodes. There are eight contestants left, including two traitors. And if I had a complaint about the show generally, but this one has followed the same pattern, is that it tends to get less interesting as it goes along because the faithfuls who get left tend to be on the more boring and stupid end of the spectrum.