As the post-Christmas blues close in, what better time to stick on the telly and watch your favourite celebs backstab it out in a castle in the Scottish Highlands?
That’s right: the Traitors is back once more, and the nation is gripped. But as this year’s contestants (and the Secret Traitor) battle it out, another question presents itself. Namely, what actually happens when the cameras aren’t rolling. Where do the contestants sleep? Do they actually eat the breakfast food? How long are the roundtables?
The breakfast… and food
BBC/Studio Lambert/Euan Cherry
The breakfast table is a key set piece of the show. After all, it’s where the contestants gather to find out which of their number has been murdered overnight. As they sip tea and pick at grapes and the tension grows, it’s kind of impossible not to wonder if they actually eat anything at all.
Well – not really. Ivan Brett, who appeared on the show in series one, spilled the beans, writing on X, “I’m sorry guys, it’s time to come clean and leak something shocking… It pains me to tell you, but that breakfast is REALLY DRY AND NOT VERY NICE.” He also described the food as “set dressing” and “stale.”
In series two, contestant Aubrey Emerson told Ed Gamble that the buffet was “disappointing.”
“One of the things I was expecting was this lovely buffet in the morning. You were lucky if you got a cup of coffee. When you got it, it was cold. There was lots of melons.”
So, where do they eat? They actually have breakfast in their hotels, before being whisked over to the castle for the grand reveal.
Fortunately, the rest of the food served during the show is good. The contestants do actually eat lunch and dinner in the castle; Brett described it as “delicious and varied, everyone’s diets and tastes accounted for.”
Harry Clark, who won season two, added that “you could eat in your lodgings, eat in the castle – you were well fed. If anything I ate too much. People tell me they could always see me dipping biscuits because I wouldn’t eat the other food so I always had a cup of tea and a biscuit in my hand.”
BBC/Studio Lambert
Diane must have her fizzy rosé! We do see the contestants enjoying a glass of something here and there, and some of it is alcoholic.
Meryl Williams, who won season one, said that they “only got it every couple of nights, and it was rationed, not rationed but we got like one glass or two glasses each.”
Wilfred Webster agreed. “They said two but they always disappeared after one,” he said. “They don’t want us to mess up and get drunk and accidentally do something.”
The length of the roundtables
On-screen, they last a mere (very tense) five minutes. Off-screen, they actually take a whole lot longer.
“I can’t tell you the exact length, but they are long and they are laborious and they are stressful,” Paul Gorton told the Standard. “If you’ve not found a traitor for a certain period of time they are painful. And as a traitor you want it to be over as soon as possible.”
The former contestant added that he would “stare at Claudia and I’d be like, ‘Come on Claudia, we’re done,’ until she’d say ‘Your time for talk is over.’ And when she did that, you could have a lovely little exhalation because you’d think, ‘Oh OK, I’ve another night here.’”
You don’t see it on screen, but there are lots of people working behind the scenes to make sure the contestants don’t find the game to be too much of a mental stress.
Alex Gray, who appeared in season one, said that there were “about one welfare person to every two cast members, just to make sure you all had snacks or if you needed a little moment to yourself.”
BBC
Do the contestants sleep in the castle? Erm, they do not. The black Land Rovers that whisk them away at the end of each episode takes them to an off-site hotel – apparently, a Marriott Hotel near Inverness airport. The glamour!
The contestants are also not allowed to interact with each other. Back in season one, contestant John McManus told the sun that “we get breakfast served to our rooms in the hotel, before the on-screen breakfast!
“There’s security, your food’s brought to your room, and the welfare team are brilliant, knocking on your door regularly to check you’re okay, but there’s none of this mixing or hanging about.”
On entering and leaving the castle, the contestants are also held in ‘holding rooms’ so they can’t see each other coming and going (or indeed, heading up to the Traitors’ tower). All very cloak and dagger.
When the show starts, the contestants’ phones are taken from them, adding to their sense of isolation. They also have no clocks in the castle – which adds to the sense of disorientation.
“You get picked up in the morning and when filming is over, you get dropped back to the lodgings,” Clark told the BBC.
“I don’t know what time the mission starts or when lunch is – we rely on the production team to direct us and in between, we all just sit around and chat.”
The chatting isn’t all about the show, either: Clark says he spent “most of the day talking to Paul [Gorton] about Liverpool and Chelsea or finding out if everyone believes in aliens and obviously that stuff doesn’t make the final edit because it’s not relevant to the game.”
There are cameras everywhere
Ardross Castle is huge, but we only see a few rooms on screen during the show. That’s because they’ve been set up with cameras – which is impossible to do for the entire building.
Matt Harris, who appeared in season one, told the BBC that “you’re not allowed out of sight from the cameras so you can’t walk around the grounds”.
“They set up the rooms like the library and bar especially for the show and you’re told by producers which rooms you can go into.”
What happens when a contestant leaves?
BBC
Apparently, once they leave, that’s really it – banished or murdered contestants have to leave the show pretty much immediately.
“You’re taken to do an exit interview straight away and then driven to your hotel to pack your stuff,” season one’s Maddy Smedley explained. “The next day, I was escorted by security in the morning to the airport and was given my phone back.”
Being murdered is apparently even more stressful. “You turn up in the morning like you’re going to breakfast and you are all waiting in these holding rooms. Eventually, you get called as if you’re going to breakfast but instead, they take you to another room where the murder letter is sitting on a chair.”
The Celebrity Traitors is streaming now on BBC One