Everyone was gutted when Tom Daley was murdered by the Celebrity Traitors in the dead of night this week, including Tom Daley himself.
The Olympian turned knitter extraordinaire – when Metro sits down with Daley for a post-murder debrief, he’s knitting away throughout – admits that part of it was a fear of missing out, as well as facing the agonising wait with the rest of us to find out who triumphs.
A clear fan of the hit BBC One murder mystery show, Daley found the reality of life in the Scottish castle such a treat, he’s already prepared to go back. ‘In a heartbeat,’ he tells us. ‘I’m ready for my invite. My email inbox is open.’
The rumours are that casting is underway for season two, so who knows? But for all the fun of backstabbing and plotting in the Celtic corridors, Daley also says that the reality of holding rampant suspicions for your longtime friends was a twist to the civilian Traitors format.
Of those going into the castle, Daley already knew Jonathan Ross, Clare Balding – who was touchingly upset at his cloak-and-dagger murder – as well as Alan Carr and Stephen Fry.
‘It was really interesting to have Jonathan and Alan end up being Traitors,’ he tells us, needles going apace. ‘I spent a lot of time with Alan in the castle. We always joked back and forth and I think he felt like I was very much on his tail.’
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Turns out, it’s not easy watching your friends lie to you. ‘I think that was something that was hard to, once finding out who the Traitors were, I was, like “Hmm, they did me dirty there.” But then, Alan and Paloma, for example, are besties in the real world, and he didn’t have a problem killing her off.’
It’s brutal in there! Before Daley, we also saw Niko Omilana banished for nothing more than his prankster day job. The gold-medal diver admits that the celebrities seemed to have gone in with ‘a preconceived notion of who everyone is’.
He explained: ‘There was no chance of changing people’s first impression of you.
‘It was hard to go into it and be known for anything less than being competitive, being a sportsperson, being somebody who wants to win, all of that. So it was probably the difficult part of the Celebrity version, that people already have some kind of idea of how you might play the game.’
But Daley also says that the goings-on of the Traitors chess game have been put to bed now – it’s only a bit of fun after all. The cast is all in one big happy WhatsApp group, which Daley says keeps him in the loop since he lives in Los Angeles and can’t go to the meet-ups.
While Daley might be gone from our screens for now, certain Traitors moments of his will live on in infamy forevermore. First off, that eye roll.
‘I don’t even remember me having any kind of reaction to it,’ he laughs. ‘When I saw it, I was like, “Oh my gosh, there was no poker face from me”.’
His comment section is now routinely flooded with the word ‘flabbergasted’.
Then there was that shower scene shortly before the Traitors wrote his name on their blood-soaked scroll. ‘Those bedtime shots are always a little bit tongue in cheek and a little bit on the nose,’ he says. ‘That’s the fun of it.
‘It plays into the campiness of it all, because The Traitors is a pretty camp show.’
As for the shower itself? ‘Surreal’ is the word he uses, before hastily clarifying that he was not in fact completely nude when he stood under the running shower head with the lights and camera of the BBC production.
‘I was like, why not? Do a random shot in the shower. I’m gonna join the Freddie [Fraser] shower club.’ There, and in our Traitors-adoring hearts, he shall now live.
The Celebrity Traitors returns to BBC One next Wednesday at 9pm.
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