All I can hear, above my thunderous heartbeat, is the stomp … stomp … stomp of Claudia Winkleman’s boots as she approaches the round table to determine my fate. It sounds as if she is treading unevenly, maybe even skipping slightly, to throw us off – but maybe that’s just my nerves, fraying by the second.
I became a fan of The Traitors with the first UK season in 2022. I’ve since watched as many of the 30 international adaptations of the (originally Dutch) format as I’ve been able to track down. Though I know better than to apply myself, I’ve naturally debated whether I’d want to play as a Faithful, tasked with flushing the Traitors out; or a Traitor, with more control but vulnerable to backstabbing. Now, I’m going to find out.
Ahead of the BBC’s first celebrity season, a small group of journalists have been invited to the Scottish Highlands, to go behind the scenes and – the real sweetener – play a game overseen by Winkleman herself.
Ardross Castle is a 19th-century, privately-owned mansion, a 30-minute drive from Inverness. For most of the year it’s a wedding venue, but since 2022 it’s been booked up for three to four months for Traitors business.
Even the tree-lined drive leading up to the castle is instantly familiar from the players’ conspiratorial convoys to and from the challenges off-site. Our minivan falls into jittery silence, at odds with the serene parkland.
We pull up beside a line of foreboding black 4X4s with TRAITORS numberplates. Any semblance of journalistic neutrality is flung off like a Traitor’s cloak as we pile out of the van, emitting squeals of delight.
To the left are the formal gardens, featuring the fire pit where the last players standing cast their final votes, and the bush into which UK season three fan favourite Alexander famously careened.
To the right is the terrace, looking out over verdant rolling hills, where players convene to forge alliances. I can even hear the caw of the resident peacocks. “They always go to the catering tent,” executive producer Mike Cotton tells me.
The castle is a hive of activity as the production team – having just wrapped The Celebrity Traitors – prepare for a fresh batch of civilian players. At this very moment, they are meeting each other for the first time, being filmed on the train for the first episode of season four.
Tomorrow they will descend upon the castle, and a select few will be shoulder-tapped to be Traitors by Winkleman at the first round table. Today, however, it’s our turn.
We’re led into the breakfast room to find the table laden with the same spread laid on for those players who survive each night: pastries, deli meats, dried fruit, some cupcakes. Watching at home, I’ve always thought it looked somewhat wooden, but I take a plate, hoping to settle my nerves, and sit down with my fellow players.
We size each other up. Our professional headshots are framed and mounted on the wall just like the contestants’ on the show, reminding us of the treachery to come.
“It’s all friendly now,” says one man darkly, between bites of ham.
We continue on our castle tour to the library, where players gather their allies for cosy chats, and the billiards room, wallpapered in tartan, where Winkleman conducts her interviews, which is a secret room – concealed behind a bookcase in the bar.
I’m more surprised to find the bar stocked with real booze, including mini bottles of wine and a brandy decanter. Cotton won’t be drawn on the rules for contestants, saying only that there are limits and they’ve “never had an incident” with drunkenness.
Paintings throughout, of skulls and cloaked figures, aren’t just spooky set dressing: they conceal mirrors that would otherwise reflect cameras. More cameras are integrated within the set, such as in the roundtable room: the castle’s Great Hall, made smaller with extra panelled walls, enables crews to move around undetected.
The table’s centrepiece conceals a camera and rotates like a lazy Susan, capturing players’ fleeting reactions. The goal is to create as immersive an experience as possible, to encourage the players to live the game. The groundwork is laid with casting, says Sarah Fay, another executive producer: “We want people who purely want to play the game.”
They are sorted into Faithfuls or Traitors based on what they say in their interviews with Winkleman and players’ individual preferences – if only to avoid an apathetic villain. “You’ve got to want to be a Traitor,” says Cotton.
Once roles are assigned, producers let the action unfurl. Only the challenges and certain set-pieces, such as the “death match” card game from last season, and season two’s funeral, are prepared in advance, says Cotton. “We’re really hands-off … Once we’ve set it up, we just let them go.”
Players sleep off-site and are kept apart when not on set, but are otherwise free to roam the castle. Cotton shakes his head exasperatedly, recalling their frequently futile attempts to find a private corner to scheme: “I often think: ‘Just go outside!’”
There was no special treatment for The Celebrity Traitors – despite the big names on the cast, among them Stephen Fry, Charlotte Church, Tom Daley, Jonathan Ross and Alan Carr.
Some were approached to take part, but there is such buzz around the series, “there were some people who did come to us,” says Cotton. (He won’t name names – but Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York, reportedly declined an offer.) “We still can’t believe we got Stephen Fry to come to the castle,” adds Fay.
The only difference from the civilian series, they say, is that the celebrities had their public personas and in some cases preexisting relationships to play with, creating more opportunities for subterfuge. “I don’t know what beasts lie within me,” muses Fry in the show’s first trailer.
“It’s designed to be psychologically intense,” says Cotton. The entire production is set up to minimise interactions with the contestants, lest they risk giving a Traitor away. Their only regular connection on-set is with the welfare team, with whom they meet twice daily.
“The cast are looking for clues all the time … who we interview; how long we interview them for,” says Cotton. The worst-case scenario, Fay adds, would be for a production slip-up to be brought up at the round table as evidence. “We shouldn’t ever be a player in the game.”
They are summoned to the nightly round table remotely, by a song – The Hanging Tree, the theme from The Hunger Games films – playing through the castle.
The Big Brother-style “diary room”, where players record their bits to camera, is also unmanned. Just outside, he points out a grille in the ground: the dungeon, where players were held during a season-two challenge – I can glimpse the dingy cell beneath my feet.
The producers didn’t even know it existed during season one, Cotton tells us. He is more vague about the location of the “Traitors’ tower”, no doubt wanting to keep some secrets back – rumour has it, it’s closer to ground level (and potentially not even at the castle).
Cotton has also heard the speculation online that the roundtable room is deliberately kept cold, so tempers run hot. “It’s just a big castle – it’s really hard to heat!” he says.
All this reflects the frenzy surrounding the show. About 300,000 people applied to take part in series three, v just 20,000 for the first.
Last season, the Faithfuls were fixated on the Traitors likely being predominantly women after criticism of the “boys’ club” of season two. (They were right.) Cotton denies that it was a deliberate course-correction – but you can see why the players would come to that conclusion, having so little else to go on.
Now it’s my turn, as “ah-yoo, ah-yoo” sounds through the castle: The Hunger Games song, summoning us to the round table. One of our group instantly has to go for a nervous pee.
On our way into the Great Hall, we pass the gleaming pile of gold coins – the prize pot – take our seats and don our blindfolds.
I have rarely ever felt so nervous nor, as Winkleman’s footsteps draw closer, so ambivalent. My assumption has always been that I’d make a great Traitor – and that I’d immediately be targeted, even as a Faithful, for my resting bitch face. Do I want to feel her tap my shoulder?
But Winkleman stomps on past; I feel a brief stab of disappointment not to be chosen.
We remove our blindfolds, blinking at each other. The room is cold but my face feels hot; I’m acutely conscious that I have literally nothing to go on.
Winkleman, watching over us with her Mona-Lisa smile, asks that we address each other one by one with the magic words: “I’m 100% Faithful.”
One journalist jumps on another’s intonation, finding it suspiciously at odds with his breezy demeanour earlier. The rest of us are only too happy to vote him out – and he admits he’s a Traitor. (He also happens to work for the Sun.)
The response among us Faithfuls is instantaneous, as though we’ve been electrified by the table. The flood of relief is accompanied by a confidence boost. Maybe we’re great at this!
Another Traitor remains. Not wanting to stay silent, I start talking. With far more conviction than I feel, I argue that I heard rustling to my left, singling out another woman, the youngest at the table. She looks innocent – perhaps too innocent … Enough players are somehow persuaded that we agree to vote her out.
She actually is 100% Faithful; I feel terrible, as if I’ve shot Bambi. But before I can find out the size of the target I’ve placed upon my back, Winkleman mercifully ends the game.
Some players are so eager to be selected for the dark side – she tells us, having shed her steely gameplay persona – they try to signal their enthusiasm at the first round table. “People offer their shoulders,” Winkleman says, miming an alluring shrug. (Of her own stop-start loop around the table – which she does four or five times for filming – she jokes: “Have you seen dressage?”)
The producers join us, carrying a couple of Traitor’s cloaks, long and lined with green satin. The fabric is heavy, Fay jokes as she drapes it over one of my fellow Faithfuls, “so that you feel the weight on your shoulders”. I still can’t shake the sense of blood on my hands.
As we pile back into the minivan, to return to civilisation, my mind goes to the people arriving tomorrow to play the game of their lives. At least now I know the role I’m best suited to: neither Traitor, nor Faithful, but watching at home.
