Richard E Grant has admitted he “never thought anyone would take it seriously” when saying he was a traitor on The Celebrity Traitors.
On the first episode of the latest season, the actor was chosen as a traitor alongside Love Island presenter Maya Jama, 32. Soon after being selected to deceive his fellow contestants, the actor admitted he was a traitor to several other people, leading to enough suspicion that he was the first person banished at the roundtable.
Grant's reaction to his early exit
Grant has now said that despite his slip-up, he was convinced none of the other contestants would have taken his comment seriously. During an interview with Victoria Derbyshire on Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, the actor said: “I never thought they would take me seriously.”
He added: “When he (Joe Lycett) said ‘are you a traitor?’ we had just come out of the roundtable being nominated and I thought ‘yeah, isn’t everybody going to say that’ and they didn’t, so I paid the price.”
The reality of the game
Explaining the paranoia that arises between the contestants, Grant said: “You are so institutionalised in that thing within 24 hours, because you are isolate, kept in a room, there is a guard outside your door, your food is delivered and there’s no internet access, so you are kind of shut down.
“You are also not told what time it is and are also proscribed on a daily basis what you are going to wear. So, you are kind of infantilised and institutionalised at the same time.”
When asked how he felt about deceiving others as part of the game, Grant said his daughter told him ahead of filming that he would be “slaughtered” as he was “incapable of hiding what you feel about people or anything”.
Regret and reflection
Despite being the first contestant banished, he added: “I think it’s the most wonderful format of a game and I love it.” However, Grant also said he had chosen to avoid watching the series.
“It’s a weird thing because as an actor it is very uncomfortable to watch yourself, and if you watch yourself unscripted – which Traitors is – there’s no place to hide,” he said. “That is unequivocally you.”
After admitting he was a traitor to a room full of people, Grant was encouraged by Lycett to back down from his comment and reassure everyone he was in fact a faithful and making a joke. “I think you’ve done something that’s never been done in the game. It’s a bold strategy,” Lycett said.
Realising his blunder, Grant said to the camera: “That may have been the biggest mistake I’ve made in my life. I was so thrilled to be chosen that in my excitement I said I was a traitor. I need to defuse all of the heat coming in my direction.”
During the roundtable he went on to receive votes from the majority of the contestants, including from both of his fellow traitors, Jama and James Acaster – who they had recruited.
As Grant stood in front of his fellow celebrities to reveal his identity, he said: “I am … an unfaithful traitor.” Speaking to the camera, he added: “I have been annihilated. I have managed to checkmate myself, which, as far as I’m aware, has never been done.”
The other celebrities all cheered as he left and host Claudia Winkleman told the group: “Players, this has never happened before. Your first try and you got one.”
Following his banishment, Grant admitted that revealing his true identity so early in the game was a “catastrophically idiotic thing to do”.
“I suppose what I should have done in retrospect is go round everybody and say, ‘Are you a traitor? Yeah. I am a traitor, I am Spartacus. I am a traitor’, to try and make light of it, but that may have dug my grave even deeper.
“It was a completely catastrophically idiotic thing to do! I can only imagine the faces of the producers looking at each other and mouthing ‘he said what?!’. The strategy of no strategy is the strategy, clearly.”
The Celebrity Traitors continues at 8pm Thursday on BBC One.
