*Warning: This article contains massive spoilers for Celebrity Traitors series 2, episode 1.
Who knew there could be a messier Traitor than Alan Carr, but Celebrity Traitors season two has blessed us with Richard E Grant.
Claudia Winkleman has picked two of her Traitors: the Withnail and I actor and Love Island host Maya Jama.
And what a pair they are already.
The third is yet to be decided, but we know it will be either journalist and presenter Amol Rajan or comedian James Acaster after the pair were handpicked to meet the Traitors face-to-face and plead for their lives. One will be murdered, and one will be recruited.
Maya and Richard were backed into a corner for their first murder/recruit after the single most extraordinary moment that has ever happened across any series of The Traitors when the Oscar nominee so confidently told a room full of Faithful that he is the Traitor.
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Not only was it a slip-up, but he also repeated it over and over again without a single hint of sarcasm or humour. It was to anyone with a brain cell a genuine mistake.
Somehow, though, half the castle are now even more convinced he must be a Faithful.
I was lucky enough to watch the opening episode with Claudia Winkleman, Ed Gamble and executive producer Sarah Fay who gave their first reactions to Richard’s unfathomable mistake that will surely change the entire course of the series.
‘He was just so happy,’ laughed Claudia, remembering the moment she picked him as a Traitor to Metro and other press.
‘He just couldn’t believe it. And me, Sarah, and a whole brilliant gang, you go into a room after I’ve interviewed them all, and they say, “This is what I want to be.”
‘You just couldn’t not give it to him because he wanted it so much, and he was compelling, and he’s Richard E Grant.
‘I couldn’t believe that he was actually in the castle. He was so giddy, and then the minute he said it, well, actually not the minute, about five minutes later, he went, “The genius of the game.”’
She added: ‘The game is everybody plays it completely differently, and he took that to the next level.’
Ed agreed: ‘He was just vibrating with excitement and the terror as well. It felt like he’d just been given the lead role in the film, and he just had to tell everyone – it’s such an insane moment.
‘I hadn’t even arrived in Inverness. I watched the Traitor selection, and then I was like, “right, well, I better go and pack for Inverness” and then next thing you know my phone’s buzzing on the Uncloak group, going, “You will never guess what’s happened.”
‘This is why you never stop watching the feed because something like that could happen. What an amazing moment; such an insane way to start a brilliant series.’
Sarah revealed that witnessing a bombshell like that explode in real-time, everyone immediately has to react. Plans change, the game changes and everyone is left thinking: ‘How is he going to try and get himself out of this one?’
‘Never in our wildest dreams did we think that we’d have a Traitor admit they were a Traitor five minutes after the round table,’ she said.
Thankfully, for Richard, there are enough Faithful adamant that he’s just playing an eccentric game they just don’t understand.
‘We’ve never, from the moment of being picked, seen a Traitor have to try and backpedal like that, but every series we want the cast to bring something new, bring a new freshness to the show, and hopefully you all agree that episode feels a lot different from series one.’
Tonight, we’ll learn who has been recruited as a Traitor and who will be the series’ first murder.
Whichever way it pans out, surely there will only be more eyes on Richard when one of his biggest threats to the game is wiped out of the game for good. However, we’ve seen Alan Carr get out of sticky situations – perhaps not quite as sticky as this – and learned anything can happen in Ardross Castle.
Celebrity Traitors continues tonight at 8pm on BBC One.