Fans have been obsessed with BBC’s new reality TV showThe Traitors, which sees a group of contestants try to discover three 'traitors' among their midst - fellow contestants who are 'murdering' contestants to try and win the prize pot. But what are things really like filming behind the scenes? We sat down with Alex to find out more…
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Do the eliminated/murdered contestants really leave without saying goodbye?
"Seeing your significant other getting voted out is really brutal, that is the only time I cried throughout the game. It was a lot to watch and deal with - I knew he was just going home - but as soon as he was gone that’s it. He’s gone. There are no hugs or making sure he was okay, that’s it."
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She added: "You’re gone! Poof! Gone from the game. Even Kieran and Amos, that was it, that was the last we saw them - until they came back obviously. Brutal!"
Does everyone write who they think is a 'traitor' at the same time at the roundtable?
Yes! The deadlocks where the final person gets a deciding vote are just a coincidence, and all contestants do write their names in at the same time. "The decision is locked," Alex confirmed.
Alex opened up about filming the show
Is there more to spotting a 'traitor' than what we see on screen?
While viewers might have been surprised to see Alyssa voted as a traitor at the roundtable, Alex revealed there is more than what you see in the edit. She explained: "It was increasingly obvious to me because I had suspicions on her and I could see her cracking… but as soon as word got round that it might be Alyssa, people saw her in a different light and thought, 'Oh my Gosh, it is Alyssa!'"
How did Alyssa get caught out so early?
When do the eliminated/murdered contestants find out who the traitors are?
When they sat down to watch the show with the rest of us! Speaking about how she still didn’t know who were the traitors when she left - except Alyssa who had already been discovered - she said: "They didn't tell us which was really annoying. I was begging.
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When will Wilf be caught?!
"I was like, 'Please, for my own sanity, just tell me.' We were kind of left guessing. It plays on you, even in the last couple of months you think, oh if I’d just said this and done that, but you can't go back in time and change anything."
Contestants had an idea of what the show would be about
Since there is already a Dutch version of the show, the contestants were sent the first three episodes to watch so that they had an idea of what to expect - and get their gameplay ready! Alex explained: "We all got sent the first three episodes to watch but it is completely different from actually being there.
There is a Dutch version of the series
"You’re on 24/7, you're filming for the longest days and throughout filming, if ever you're around someone, your game mode is on because someone might just be trying to have a nice conversation with you, but you're like, 'Wow, that's a bit weird that they said that, maybe they're lying about that’. You're constantly second-guessing everyone and that is so tiresome."
Are contestants given any information from production?
According to Alex, production wouldn’t give a single bit of detail on the traitors, which made some things - like potentially being able to work out whose handwriting was on Alex’s note inviting her to join the traitors - difficult.
Why wasn't Amanda's handwriting discussed?
"I asked like, who wrote this? I was like, ’Is this production? Who wrote this? And they didn't tell me," she explained. "So I didn't really know. I mean, it obviously looked more from an [older] person. I thought maybe it was Andrea. It looked like the writing style that Andrea might have had. And the words to describe me were the sort of words she would have used to describe me… but we didn’t know they were writing it themselves. Obviously, for the next series, they’ll know these things, but we were guinea pigs in that sense!"
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