Things are not going well. Halfway through my attempt to play the real-life version of the smash-hit reality BBC reality TV show The Traitors, I realise something: I may be less charming than I’d hoped.
“I don’t trust him,” intones a player to my left, scowling at my face as though she has just found it on the bottom of her shoe.
“Yeah, he seems shifty!” exclaims her friend.
I try to defuse the tension by smiling winningly.
“Look at that smirk. He’s definitely a Traitor.”
Oh dear.
In retrospect, this should not have come as a surprise. Since The Traitors first burst on to our screens in November 2022, it’s become obvious that it’s not easy to convince people you’re telling the truth while being subjected to death-ray stares.
Watching contestants go head to head as either traitors (who lie, scheme and murder fellow contestants by night) or faithfuls (who try to banish traitors so they can share a cash prize with fellow honest players) has united the UK around its TV sets. The show has won Baftas and Emmys, and drawn up to 10 million viewers an episode, and it’s largely down to the sheer unpredictability of what people will do when they’re put in a pressure cooker environment and suspicion is allowed to fester.
Players thrash out their theories at the round table. Photograph: Alicia Canter/The Guardian
It’s also what made Neil Connolly, the creative director behind The Traitors: Live Experience, decide to replicate the interior of a Scottish castle in Covent Garden in London and have players roleplay the TV show in groups of up to 12.
“I wanted to make people’s hearts race,” he will tell me on the phone the following day. “That moment when you feel your heart pounding in your chest, I know that I’ve done my job correctly.”
Well, as I play the game, his wishes are coming true. Largely because I am a faithful, who is doing a terrible job of convincing anyone.
Along with a group of other journalists, I’m sitting in a wood-panelled room containing an impressive replica of the round table around which all the TV show’s fiercest debates take place. Occasionally, our host – a tartan-clad Claudia Winkleman-channelling actor – announces that it is now “night” and instructs us to put on a “blindfold” (more commonly known as “blacked-out ski goggles”). We wait while the Traitors remove theirs and plot who to kill – or secretly recruit. And then, masks removed, fierce debate breaks out.
“The way you reacted there was a bit ‘Hugh Grant in a romcom’,” declares one player, casting suspicion towards a particularly emotive participant. “Bit strange.”
It’s not long before all the tropes of the TV show pop up. People begin to form cliques. The phrase “100% faithful” is repeated time and again. Rather than evicting people based on any form of evidence, players are banished purely due to looking a bit odd. Hugh Grant ends up being evicted – and turns out to be a faithful. Randomness rules.
“We had one woman who voted for someone, then said: ‘It’s because you remind me of Miles Jupp from Balamory,’” laughs Connolly. “One guy turned around his slate and said: ‘I’ve voted for you, Tom, because I don’t know how to spell the other person’s name.’”
I, however, am determined to learn from everything I’ve seen on the TV show. I refuse to go with the herd. I vote on the basis of evidence, rather than conjecture about facial tics. And I never throw around baseless accusations, lest I kill one of my own. In short: I repeatedly vote for the person next to me, as I’m convinced I heard him removing his goggles during the night-time.
As the debates go on, I somehow attract more suspicion. The number of votes against me increases. Luckily, my methodology proves popular and we successfully evict two traitors who were overly noisy when removing their blindfold. Less luckily, a faithful player announces that she’d like to banish me and then is murdered by the traitors.
“You killed her!” declares her friend, to the gasps of the room.
skip past newsletter promotion
Get the best TV reviews, news and features in your inbox every Monday
Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
after newsletter promotion
These traitors know what they’re doing.
‘Night’ time at Traitors Live Experience. Photograph: Alicia Canter/The Guardian
Fortunately, tension defuses as we break to play a game. We solve clues to find numbers hidden around the room, which we then put in the correct order by communicating with “the dead” – the players who have either been banished or murdered, and are now watching us on TV from a nearby room. Unlike the TV show, in which these tasks earn contestants money for the prize pot, we get points for our total on the daily leaderboard.
As we go back into another debate, it turns out that my dogged voting for the same player is paying off. Enough other people have become suspicious, and he is evicted.
“What a relief,” he announces before he leaves the room. “I was a traitor.”
Suddenly, people are looking at me differently. For the rest of the session, not a single player votes for me, until our host announces: “It is now time for the end game!”
Dramatic music swells and we’re told to press a button. We can vote either to end the game if we believe everyone to be faithful or to continue banishing if we don’t. Over three stressful rounds, we’re whittled down from six players to three. The game ends, and we have to declare. Are we all faithful? In which case we all win. Or is there a traitor among us? In which case only they are victorious.
I declare first. Then player number two proves to be on the side of good as well. And, finally, the last player announces: “I’m a faithful.” We won – and I’m in shock. Surely it doesn’t normally go this smoothly?
“Oh no,” laughs Connolly. “At the end of one game, a player had to tell his fiancee he was a traitor. Before he even finished speaking, she had ripped off her engagement ring and thrown it on the floor.”
Wow. Thank god I’m 100% faithful.