Ed Gamble weighs in on the most surprising part of filming The Traitors
If you’re not watching The Traitors this year, hosted by Grazia cover star Claudia Winkleman, then you are wilfully not participating in the best collective viewing experience of the past five years. The backstabbing, the deceit, the blind guesswork at the round tables, the fake Welsh accents – it’s the best gameshow on TV. And it’s on in January when there's nothing better to do anyway. The Traitors has been such a success that even the spin-off, The Traitors: Uncloaked, has millions of viewers tune in each night. Its host Ed Gamble has revealed that the iconic round table scenes, where the players decide who to banish, are not as seamless or as snappy as they seem on TV. What is edited into 10-15 minute scene, full of tension, baseless accusations and often hysterical tears, apparently takes hours to film in real life. When asked by Metro what has most shocked him about the show, having met nearly every contestant to ever take part, Gamble said, ‘Speaking to all the players and people who’ve been in there before, it is how long they are at the roundtable for. ‘We get a good edit of it; it’s tense, it’s exciting, it’s bang, bang, bang, plot point, plot point, plot point, but they are there for a long old time. The [players] wait to go in there for a long time, in silence. ‘The are not supposed to talk to each other. They get to a point where they’re not gonna give any more stuff away; they just have to get in there and film what looks like a very tense situation.’ He then added, ‘They really put themselves through it for that show, but it’s great telly!’
It's an effort that is greatly appreciated by the viewers – 5.4 million of which tuned in to the opening episode on New Year's Day, beating last year's 3.1 million. Despite being in its third run, anyone who thinks they know the game is sorely mistaken too. This year has already seen several new twists including three players being dumped on the side of a railway line in the first episode (only to return in week two, with two out of the three of them saved), and a new rule in the finale that stops players from having to reveal whether they are a traitor or not. ‘The twist at the end makes it a lot more difficult for the Faithfuls because previously if you got a Traitor out at that final game, if you’d done enough detective work and research, you could probably work out when all of the Traitors were gone and then end the game,' Gamble added. ‘But now, you don’t know whether you’ve got a Traitor out! I would say before that twist, the game was weighted in favour of the Faithful.’ As things currently stand, only two of the original traitors remain. The over confident (game player, not person) Armani found herself banished at the round table at the end of week one after flying too close to the sun. Now Linda and Minah are left to decide who to recruit as a new traitor from the faithful, including the two new players Fozia and Alexander. Nikki Peach is a writer at Grazia UK, working across pop culture, TV and news. She has also written for the i, i-D and the New Statesman Media Group and covers all things TV for Grazia (treating high and lowbrow shows with equal respect).
Just so you know, we may receive a commission or other compensation from the links on this website - read why you should trust us
English (US) ·