A former contestant from the hit BBC series The Traitors has given a startlingly honest account of the surreal and intense conditions faced by players, describing it as being completely 'suspended from reality'.
The 'Post-Apocalyptic' Castle Life
Paul Gorton, a business manager from Manchester who featured as a Traitor in the 2024 series, has compared the experience to living in a post-apocalyptic world. He revealed that the 22 contestants are cut off from the outside world in a Scottish castle, with their access to technology severely restricted. Participants are only issued with basic 'brick phones' containing numbers for emergency contacts and production staff, nothing more.
'It's like a post-apocalyptic tale where the last people left on Earth are the 22 people in a castle in Scotland,' Gorton told The i. 'You forget about literally everything at home. Every now and again it can bleed through and it cuts you like a knife.'
The Gruelling Reality of the Round Table
Gorton singled out the show's infamous round table discussions as the most challenging aspect, where the suspension of time is most acute. He disclosed that filming these high-stakes scenes is a marathon effort, not the quickfire sequence viewers see.
'The round table scenes could take two hours to film, or it could be four hours — I couldn't say,' he explained. 'Time passes slowly or fast depending on how stressed you are.' This intense process, where players vote to banish one another, creates an environment of prolonged psychological pressure.
Life Under Constant Surveillance
Gorton's insights are echoed by other former contestants. Dr Amos Ogunkoya, a Faithful from series one, told the BBC that the experience felt like 'a really nice holiday camp — until the round table,' highlighting the stark contrast between daily camaraderie and nightly tension.
Furthermore, fellow Faithful Matt Harris described the constant monitoring players are under. 'You're not allowed out of sight from the cameras so you can't walk around the grounds,' he said. 'They set up the rooms like the library and bar especially for the show and you're told by producers which rooms you can go into.'
Since his betrayal by fellow Traitor and eventual winner Harry Clark, Paul Gorton has moved on to co-host a true-crime podcast with Harry himself. His revelations come as The Traitors continues to dominate ratings in its fourth series, cementing its status as a major fixture in British television. The show's success appears built on a foundation of genuine psychological strain, carefully manufactured isolation, and marathon filming sessions that remain hidden behind its polished final edit.
