Richard E Grant has inadvertently revealed his Traitor status moments after being selected, and the BBC is being blamed for not preventing the blunder that has spoiled the first half of Celebrity Traitors series 2.
Minutes after being picked as a Traitor by Claudia Winkleman, the actor let slip his identity to Faithful Joe Lycett. Lycett, half-jokingly, quizzed his fellow players, asking, "What are you, Richard?" Grant replied, "I'm a Traitor." When Lycett pressed, "You're what?" Grant repeated, "A Traitor," adding, "Obviously. What's the point of being in the game if you're not."
Damage control after the slip
Following the revelation, a full damage control operation was launched. Grant has spoken of trying to start an 'I Am Spartacus' moment, where everyone else would stand up and claim to be a Traitor, or claim it was a joke that fell flat. Some theories suggested the whole thing was planned, but it appears Grant genuinely has no idea what he's doing, what he's done, or that the 'game' is real and still being played.
An amused Lycett then told Grant, "I'm going to pretend that I didn't hear that," before asking him again, "What are you Richard?" while mouthing 'faithful' and nodding. A confused-looking Grant slowly replied 'faithful', looking completely at sea.
Chain of events
The incident has set off a chain of events that each took something away from the series. The Traitors, Richard and Maya, were on the back foot and forced to try to keep Richard alive by killing one of his loudest accusers, Amol, and then recruiting another. This ruined James Acaster's game, who clearly wanted to be a Faithful and looked excruciatingly uncomfortable being quizzed by Julie about a potential recruitment the morning after he became an unwilling Traitor. Acaster said nothing at the round table, and his complete change of personality is likely to be spotted quickly.
The Traitors then chose poorly in going for Ross Kemp in a task in a bid to push suspicion to another big name, as Kemp banished all doubt against him by exhuming every player. This ruined the challenge because only Jerry Hall, who couldn't stand the burial, was left up for murder alongside her unfortunate partner Hannah Fry. Now a murder choice between two candidates looms, and Fry, who'd have made a great Faithful too, is not going to last much longer even if she survives 50/50 murder odds.
It's been great entertainment, but for Traitors fans who want to see top strategy, it's also a bit of a let-down, and the show's bosses should have done better by Richard E Grant so that none of this would have happened.
