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Warning: This article contains major spoilers for The Celebrity Traitors.
Remember last year when Alan Carr couldn’t get through telling his Celebrity Traitors co-stars that he was a Faithful without laughing?
At the time we really thought that was the epitome of how blatant one could be as a traitor on the Bafta-winning reality show.
Well, Richard E Grant took that and said, “Hold my poisoned tile”.
Yes, any doubts that Celebrity Traitors couldn’t live up to last year’s series went out the window just minutes into Thursday night’s launch show.
BBC / Studio Lambert / Cody Burridge / BBC Creative
During the first episode of the new season, Richard was chosen by host Claudia Winkleman as one of this year’s “traitors”, alongside Love Island host Maya Jama.
And before he set foot in the tower or donned his iconic coat, the Other Bennet Sister actor had already landed at the center of suspicion.
After Claudia’s decision, the cast immediately started asking each other to look for early clues, with Joe Lycett insisting to Richard, honestly, that he was part of “Faithful”.
In the raucous scenes that followed, Joe turned the question around, asking the Oscar nominee directly, “What are you?”
Richard then overplayed his hand a bit, nonchalantly trying to tell Joe and comedian Rob Beckett, “Traitor.”
After a beating, they grilled him again, to which he doubled down: “Traitor. What’s the point of being in the game if you’re not?”
“Right. OK,” replied a perplexed Joe, with James Blunt quipping: “That’s an interesting angle. You have to be very careful.”
In fact, what Richard clearly intended to be a light-hearted joke or double bluff clearly turned out to be much more serious than he hoped, leading to suspicion in the castle growing like wildfire (except where Jerry Hall was concerned, because she claimed her friend was joking, even though he wasn’t…).
At the end of the episode, when it came to Richard and Maya recruiting a new traitor, the duo narrowed it down to two of the actor’s biggest skeptics to immediately test the situation.
The launch show ended with James Acaster and Amol Rajan lying in two separate coffins, with one about to be recruited by the Traitors, and the other ready to become the first victim of the series.
So yes, you could say that the new series is off to an absolute flying start – and that’s without Julie Hesmondhalgh getting out of her chapel pew to tell everyone what a fan she was of them, Ross Kemp suspecting anyone who opposes him of being a traitor, and Claudia Winkleman sporting an outfit that looks like it’s made of whipped cream.
Oh, Celebrity Traitors. It’s so good to have you back.
Find out who was eliminated in the first murder of the season when The Celebrity Traitors returns to BBC One and BBC iPlayer on Friday at 8pm.
