These Traitors Behind-the-Scenes Secrets Are Delectably Deceiving

1. While scheming is certainly a hallmark of The Traitors gameplay, contestants have no choice when it comes to their Traitors vs. Faithful status. Though, starting with season two, stars like Phaedra Parks and Kate Chastain were able to plead their case to host Alan Cumming.

"That has a really big bearing on it, as does Alan’s opinion,” executive producer Mike Cotton noted to Variety. "It’s almost like a job interview to be a Traitor, and we take all of that into account and decide just before the pick who that should be. We want to make sure we’ve got an interesting mix of characters that will bring their own unique skill set to it."

Though it’s not immediately clear to the cast just how many among them are Traitors. "We knew that there could potentially be three to five Traitors in the game,” Survivor’s Cirie Fields told E! News in 2023 after her season one victory. "That was explained to us from the very beginning.

4. As for Cumming, he was excited to sign on for his campy role and bring his little dog, too. Recounting the initial pitch to Daily Beast in 2023, "I said, 'It’s sort of like you want me to be like a Bond villain. And I should actually bring my dog and pet her.’ And they went, 'That’s a good idea' And I thought, oh, I want to do this.”

With rescue pup Lala on hand, he leaned hard into his role, quoting playwright William Shakespeare and philosopher Plato on-camera. "So I had this flaring-nostril sort of persona,” he told the outlet. "And you’re kind of making stuff up as you go along. Literally, sometimes, they’re feeding me lines in my ear. So it was a bit like doing stand-up comedy actually, because you’re just winging it."

5. The cast might have a royally good time in Scotland’s Ardross Castle, but they don’t actually get their own palace digs.

"None of us stayed in the castle,” Cumming divulged to the Daily Beast. Instead, he continued, "You come to Scotland, and you stay in the Inverness airport hotel." While he had his own nearby digs, "I had a room in the castle where I would get made up and dressed," he added. "It had a huge bed in it. So I did actually sleep quite often, but not overnight."

7. Contestants weren’t able to wade into every corner of the castle. "We use a section of it," Cotton explained to Variety. "We’ve taken a wing of the castle, and that’s their area that they can play the game within. They’ve got all the outside as well. They’re free to roam around."

But with enough square footage for some 30 bedrooms, he noted, "If we covered that huge space, it’d be impossible to cover them all. They can split up and have their own conversations, but it’s small enough that someone could be listening on the door outside, and someone can see when someone disappears and has their own secret chat."

11. In order to arrange the nightly murders, "It’s a massive military operation each night to get the Faithful to bed in individual rooms," Cotton told Variety, "and get the Traitors back out to have their meeting."

Even season two then-couple Larsa Pippen and Marcus Jordan weren’t able to share a room. "I think they would have wanted to," acknowledged executive producer Sam Rees-Jones, "but they weren’t allowed to because it would have given them a foot up in the game."

13. Not that there is all that much time for fun and games. "We mainly like to film an episode a day, which is quite a big undertaking," Rees-Jones detailed to Variety. "But the reason we like to do that is because it keeps an immersive bubble, keeps their heads in the game. Schedule-wise, it’s a real pressure, but content-wise, it’s definitely the right thing to do. We start the day with breakfast, have a roundtable, have a mission, have a murder and then start again." (Stause revealed there was one night they got back to their rooms at 2 a.m.)

While the breakfasts are a strategic operation where players are brought in at staggered intervals, Cotton told Variety, the meals last "from start to finish, an hour max."