The round table sessions are easily the most tense and most entertaining part of The Traitors. Without them, it’s just a bunch of people milling about a breakfast room. An iconic former Traitor, Paul Gorton, has detailed the behind-the-scenes logistics of how the round table sessions in The Traitors are filmed. All the arguments are a bit more orchestrated than they might seem on TV.
Contestants have no clue what the time is
So, participants in The Traitors have no clue what the time is while they are filming round table scenes.
Paul told 10bet Casino: “As a player in the game, you have no idea how long the roundtable goes on for. You have no real idea how long anything goes on for – the best way of thinking about it as a player was breaking the day into three sections: Breakfast, the mission and then the round table.”
This guy
(Image via BBC iPlayer)
The contestants don’t find out how long they’ve been filming for until they return to their hotel rooms. For Traitors, this might end up being the early hours of the morning. Yikes.
This sounds bizarre, but it seems the producers have a reason for keeping players cut off from the world behind the round table room.
Paul explained: “They suspend time, and they don’t tell you the time to put you even more into the reality of the game.”
The round tables last for different lengths each time
Now, Paul obviously wasn’t allowed to monitor each round table with a stopwatch. But he felt the producers would play by ear how long each round table session would last.
What art
(Image via BBC iPlayer)
“Some round tables felt longer than others,” he said, “the people that run the show, they might have an idea that the round table lasts for two hours. They might keep it going if it gets really tense. The edit will always be ten minutes. But it might be a four-hour round table reduced to ten minutes. It might be a two-hour thing to ten minutes.”
We do sometimes see more of a round table than ten minutes – such as during the penultimate episode of The Celebrity Traitors. Still, I would be super offended if I opened my mouth at the round table, then Claudia Winkleman announced time had run out. We know the producers can grant extensions x
We don’t see everyone who speaks at a round table
Paul explained: “Normally everyone speaks at the round table, but you never see that in the edit. So, when people at home say, ‘X didn’t even say anything then’. The reality is that the player didn’t say anything important enough for the edit.”
So, players who seem quite on TV might not be introverted. They might just be boring.
Er, remind me who these ones are again?
(Image via BBC iPlayer)
Apparently, producers also control the temperature and music
Several former contestants have shared that ahead of each session, the crew would sit everybody down, then make them listen to The Hanging Tree (yup, that song from The Hunger Games) until Claudia Winkleman came in. Supposedly, this sets an appropriately apocalyptic atmosphere. Players from The Celebrity Traitors and versions of the show from other countries frequently used this song on their Insta posts, so it seems Traitors producers from across the globe use the same hack.
It’s also been reported that the crew deliberately keep the round table room colder than the rest of the castle. This makes everyone feel a bit more on edge (and also gives people an excellent opportunity to showcase their expensive knitwear).
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Featured image credit: BBC
