Claudia Winkleman reveals how she selected her three traitors (Picture: BBC)
Warning: This article contains spoilers for the first episode of The Traitors series 2.
The Traitors is finally back after an agonising year of waiting for Claudia Winkleman and her alarmingly giant turtlenecks to return.
The second series had the impossible task of competing with the first which gave us the most thrilling episode of television ever.
After meeting the cast of series 2 though, and literally screaming over the game-changing twists, The Traitors may well have excelled itself.
We’ve got some high camp faithfuls and more importantly Claudia’s picked the three traitors: Paul, Harry and Ash.
But why did she pick them?
Paul was looking forward to meeting host Claudia (Picture: Mark Mainz/Studio Lambert/BBC/PA Wire)
‘They were passionate,’ she said at a recent Q&A. ‘You can’t show all of those chats because otherwise that would be hours, but I do talk to them for a long time.
‘Paul was adamant and I mean adamant in the same way that Alyssa in series one she was like, “give it to me – I have come here for this title and you’ve got to give it to me.”
‘Harry, because he’s compelling and I thought would play a good game because he did that whole “you want to kiss me or you’re gonna punch me – I’m going to pretend to be an idiot.” You’re not an idiot so I look forward to watching what happens here.
Harry was keen to be a Traitor (Picture: PA)
Ash thought ‘the best way for me to win is to be a Traitor’ (Picture: PA)
‘Ash because she really, really, really wants to win the money and she wants to be a traitor.
‘They felt like a good trio and then I wasn’t in control of the fourth which, you know, I’m not a control freak or anything but I was angry about it…’
Claudia summed why she’s sure they’ll make good traitors in one word.
‘Charm,‘ she said. ‘I think all three of them in their own very different ways could charm anybody. If you think about Amanda, who I still text a lot, she was very charming.’
The Strictly Come Dancing host would always rather be a faithful though – and she’s pretty sure she knows how to win.
‘If you watch the first series, you work out actually how to win is to be lovable, and inoffensive and to be close to the traitors,’ she continued. ‘I can’t say anything else. Honestly, I’ve probably just been fired but that is a that that’s the smart way to enter the castle.
‘So I don’t want to be a traitor, somebody I suspect is a traitor I’ll just get closer to them.’
In a fresh twist, Paul, Ash and Harry all picked a fourth traitor to join them with viewers being kept in the dark, watching everyone getting stuck in trying to work out which faithful isn’t actually a faithful at all.
Even better, the fourth traitor has no idea who they’ll be meeting when they take off their cloak later that night to murder the first faithful.
The Traitors is available to stream on BBC iPlayer.
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Has she made the right choice?