Secrets of The Traitors: From blindfolded car journeys to sleeping locations

The Traitors is one of the few shows that has managed to get us through a dreary January. Three nights a week, it felt like the entire nation was tuning in to watch the drama unfold, full of secrets and scheming.

During the other four days the show wasn't on, we were all sharing our opinions and guesses, from colleagues to strangers online. But it wasn’t just strategy and players that viewers were discussing; my group chats were constantly pinging with questions about behind-the-scenes details: where do contestants go after they leave the castle? Will Charlotte ever reveal her real accent?

Luckily, we no longer need to wonder, as former contestants have spoken to BBC News about the secret workings of The Traitors castle. The order in which contestants arrived for breakfast was a source of tension and speculation on the show.

Maddy Smedley, a Faithful from series one, explained that contestants would arrive at the castle in the morning and be placed in separate waiting rooms before being called to breakfast individually or in groups. Similarly, in the evening, contestants would wait in a waiting room until a member of staff came to escort them individually out of the building and into a car.

Harry Clark, the Traitor winner from series two, said there were no clocks in the castle and that contestants had no concept of time. "You get picked up in the morning, and after filming, you get taken back to your accommodation," he explained. "I didn’t know when tasks started or when lunch was – we relied on the production team to guide us, and in between, we just sat around chatting."

Unlike the one-hour episodes we saw, Harry said the days weren’t filled with endless Traitor speculation. “I spent most of my time talking to Paul about Liverpool and Chelsea or finding out if everyone believed in aliens, which obviously doesn't make the final cut because it’s nothing to do with the game.”

Dr Amos Ogunkoya, a Faithful from series one, described his days in the castle as “a very nice holiday camp until the roundtable”. “Most of the time we were learning about each other’s lives, so everyone became very close.”

Matt Harris, another Faithful from series one, said that although the castle was big, “you were not allowed to leave the sight of the cameras, so you couldn’t just wander around the grounds”. “They set up rooms specifically for the show like the library and the bar, and the producers would tell you which rooms you were allowed to go in.”

The lack of clocks made it difficult to know exactly how long anything lasted, but the roundtable certainly took far longer than its 10-minute screen time. “There were 22 people at the start,” said Harry. “Even if everyone just spoke for 10 minutes, that’s over three hours.”

As viewers, it’s hard to understand why contestants get so emotional during and after the roundtable, but Harry said it was “really intense”. “Everyone has their own story, and if they get banished, you’re taking away their chance to win the prize money.” Maddy said she cried so much on the show that “the security guards were giving me ice every morning to help with the puffiness in my face.”

The exact location of the contestants' accommodation remains a mystery to us, and apparently to the cast too. “It was about a 30-minute drive from the castle, but you were blindfolded as you got closer, so you couldn’t see the car in front or work out where you were exactly,” said Maddy. She explained that the entire production team and cast were housed in private accommodation, but you were kept separate from everyone “with military precision”.

“You could go for a walk, but you had to be accompanied by a member of staff, and there were two security guards on each floor to make sure you weren’t leaving your room unaccompanied.” “At first, I was really scared of them because I’d seen the Dutch version of the show where the Faithful get murdered in their hotel rooms, so every time the guards knocked on my door, I thought I was about to leave the game,” she said.

Harry explained that he sometimes felt lonely during his stay, especially after the contestants’ phones were confiscated. “But I couldn’t complain because I knew I was getting a good night’s sleep every night and getting to go to breakfast!”

Every now and then, viewers would catch a quick glimpse of a bowl of fruit at breakfast or someone piling carrots onto their plate at dinner. The contestants we spoke to had mixed reviews of the food on offer. Dr Amos said “breakfast was awful, you definitely didn’t want to eat too much”, but Matt was more generous, describing it as “alright”. Harry said there was “a lot of Scottish food, like haggis,” adding that as a fussy eater, he “wouldn’t touch it”.

Luckily, though, Harry had the option of ordering in. During the day, he said he ate “a lot of chicken nuggets and chips”, and in the evening, he’d request “the perfect Traitor fuel” be delivered to his accommodation – a crisp sandwich. According to Maddy, if a contestant was banished at the roundtable, they would “literally leave immediately”. “You’d be taken for a departure interview and then taken to your hotel to pack up your things. The next morning, security would escort me to the airport, and then my phone would be given back to me.”

Maddy said the more stressful way to leave the show was through murder. “You go down for breakfast as normal, and you’re all waiting in these waiting rooms. Eventually, you get called, like you’re going to breakfast, but they take you into another room where there’s a murder letter on a chair.” “It’s so intense.”

“The biggest shock was how unscripted everything was,” said Dr Amos. Maddy said the only time the producers intervened was to tell her to announce that she was an actress at breakfast. She explained that she had already shared this with her fellow contestants and had her microphone removed by the time they were waiting to be taken back to their hotels. Matt said there were moments that were producer-led. “Occasionally, someone would be pulled aside and told to go and talk to some other people – it’s natural that they guide you into a position that’s going to make good TV.”

“It felt really weird at first having cameras in your face, but after a while, you forgot they were there, and the producers never intervened,” added Harry. “Most rooms also just had cameras in the corner, and you had a microphone on you, so sometimes, you wouldn’t see any producers until the end of the day when they’d come to check on you.”

Mike Cotton, the creative director at the production company that makes The Traitors, explained that cameras were “all over every room”. “I would say, in the living spaces of the castle, there are probably 50 or 60 of them.” He said that a team of camera operators would work in pairs to follow the cast into different rooms – but at a distance. At the roundtable, he said the cameras were hidden, with some built into the table itself. “The contestants can’t see any of the cameras, which is to keep them immersed because they can only see each other,” he explained.

“I was so nervous when I met Claudia because she’s so powerful,” said Harry. “I really wanted to be a Traitor, and I thought she wouldn’t notice us, but actually, she knows everything about everyone. “She’s really involved and makes you feel really comfortable.”

“Very little,” said Harry. “There’s a team that creates the tasks, and no one else knows about it. I would try to get them to tell me about the tasks off-camera, or I’d give them ideas, but they wouldn’t listen.”

Claudia recently said that her biggest fear was accidentally revealing the Traitors’ identities while filming the roundtable. “I was absolutely paranoid about not looking at the Traitors, so I was just looking above everyone’s heads,” she explained.

In interviews with BBC News and other outlets last month, Claudia explained that there was a team who made the decisions. “We talk to all of them, and then six of us go into a room, the brilliant casting people, and we eat seven packets of biscuits. “I’m the quietest person in the room, but you come out of those conversations having decided who’s going to be who.”

The team would take into account the contestants’ wishes, and if someone asked not to be a Traitor, they wouldn’t be chosen. Dr Amos said he made it clear that he wouldn’t have gone on the show if he wasn’t a Faithful. “I wanted to go on the show, but as a doctor, I thought being a Traitor and lying to people could have real-life implications because my patients might not trust me.”

It's clear from speaking to the contestants that applying for the show is a gruelling process. After sending in an initial written and video application, you'd have multiple meetings with producers. “They mainly ask you to tell them about you and your story in life,” said Dr Amos. “Eventually, if they like you, then a few weeks before [filming starts], you get a call saying you’re going to Scotland,” added Harry.

The Traitors is filmed at Ardross Castle, a 19th-century building about 30 miles north of Inverness. It sits within around 100 acres of gardens and parkland and has been owned by the McTaggart family since 1983. Fun fact: its former owner was Charles William Dyson Perrins, whose grandfather, William Perrins, (in partnership with John Wheeley Lea) created the recipe for Worcestershire sauce.

Mike Cotton said that the crew on location was made up of more than 200 people. “It sounds absolutely massive, but we’re filming an episode a day,” he said. He explained that the team included everyone from producers and camera operators to the art department, who worked their magic on the interior design of the rooms. He likened the production to what you’d see on a Hollywood movie set.

Dr Amos said that every member of the crew knew who the Traitors were. “It looks like the Faithful are the majority on the show, but in reality, you feel like you’re absolutely in the minority – everyone knows who the Traitors are, from the psychologists to the people supporting you.”