Does Claudia Winkleman really pick the traitors? She just revealed what goes on behind the scenes, and it might surprise you
We've always wondered how the chosen few are picked - and now we finally know
Claudia Winkleman has just revealed how the traitors are picked for the BBC One show The Traitors – and it's not as simple as we thought, with tonnes of work going on behind the scenes to make sure the perfect chosen few are selected.
The Traitors Season 3 final is tantalisingly close to airing and it's a bittersweet fact. We can't wait to see what drama unfolds but, of course, we'll be sad to see the unforgettable residents of The Traitors castle leave our screens - and we'll miss Claudia Winkleman's cosy Traitors style even more.
But we've still got plenty of Traitors content to look forward to - and Claudia has given us some brilliant insight into the behind the scenes going-ons, particularly about how the traitors themselves are chosen.
As we all know, the award-winning show begins each season with Claudia asking each contestant about how they’d fare as traitors. She wants to know whether it’s a job they’d actually want, whether they think they could get away with the risky behaviour of a traitor, or whether they'd really rather just sit and not be forced to lie about themselves and their motives.
She then heads to the iconic round table and will tap the chosen few on the shoulder - then the games begin.
It seems to us, then, that Claudia herself is picking the traitors. She interviews them, then uses what she's learnt to immediately make her selection and weed out the traitors from the faithful. But she's now revealed that it's really just a bit of TV trickery and the selection process is actually a lot more rigorous than we'd first think.
Speaking about the process in a recent interview with Radio Times, she made the revelation, "It’s not down to me."
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So how do they decide? “There’s a group of us, including the brilliant producers and casting team," Claudia explained. "We go into a room and don’t leave until they’re chosen.”
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There's one major consideration that the producers of The Traitors factor into their decision, Claudia added, with her revealing that anyone who requests not to be a traitor is immediately ruled out of the process. They automatically become part of the faithfuls team - so yes, our traitors really have been scheming and plotting their deceit from the very start of the show and have been enjoying it too!
Would you go in wanting to be a traitor? Do you have what it takes? Claudia Winkleman isn't sure that she does.
“I think I’d prefer to be a faithful, but I genuinely have no idea if someone is lying to me,” she said elsewhere in the interview and jokingly added, “My 18-year-old told me she’d done all her homework for years!"
Earlier in the season, we learnt about another bit of TV trickery that goes on behind the scenes from banished contestant Kasim Ahmed. After his emotional exit from the show, he revealed that the round tables we get to see are actually massively cut and edited - and you won't believe how long they really all sit around talking for.
“The roundtables ahead of the banishments are a good couple of hours long," he told Yahoo UK.
He added, "It’s long, but it has to be because you have to be able to dissect everything that’s going on, what everyone’s saying. You have to have that time to really have a discussion, so an hour, an hour and half is how long you spend each day in the roundtable.”
We can see why they're all crying by the end of it now!
Charlie Elizabeth Culverhouse is a freelance royal news, entertainment and fashion writer. She began her journalism career after graduating from Nottingham Trent University with an MA in Magazine Journalism, receiving an NCTJ diploma, and earning a First Class BA (Hons) in Journalism at the British and Irish Modern Music Institute. She has also worked with Good To, BBC Good Food, The Independent, The Big Issue and The Metro.
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