Warning: This article contains major spoilers for The Celebrity Traitors.
Remember last year when Alan Carr couldn’t get through trying to tell his Celebrity Traitors co-stars that he was a Faithful without bursting out laughing?
At the time, we really thought that’d be the epitome of how blatant someone could be as a Traitor on the Bafta-winning reality show.
Well, Richard E Grant took that and said “hold my poisoned chalice”.
Yes, any doubts that The Celebrity Traitors couldn’t live up to last year’s series went out the castle window mere minutes into the 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’d set foot in the turret or donned his iconic cloak, the Other Bennet Sister actor had already landed himself at the centre of suspicion.
Following Claudia’s decision, the cast immediately began interrogating one another to look for early clues, with Joe Lycett insisting to Richard, truthfully, that he was part of the “Faithful”.
In the jaw-dropping scenes that followed, Joe reversed the question, asking the Oscar nominee outright: “What are you?”
Richard then somewhat overplayed his hand, trying to nonchalantly tell Joe and fellow comedian Rob Beckett: “Traitor.”
After a beat, they grilled him again, to which he doubled down: “Traitor. What’s the point in the being in the game if you’re not?”
“Right. OK,” a perplexed Joe responded, with James Blunt quipping: “That’s an interesting angle. You need to be very careful.”
Indeed, what Richard clearly intended to be a light-hearted joke or double bluff clearly came out a lot more seriously than he hoped, leading to suspicion in the castle growing like wildfire (apart from where Jerry Hall was concerned, as she maintained that her pal was kidding, even though he wasn’t…).
By 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 sceptics, to immediately try and diffuse 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 poised to become the series’ first casualty.
So yes, you might say that the new series is off to an absolutely flying start – and that’s without even getting into Julie Hesmondhalgh getting out of her chapel pew to tell everyone what a fan she was of them, Ross Kemp suspecting everyone who brushed against him of being a Traitor, and Claudia Winkleman sporting an outfit that looked like it was styled out of whipped cream.
Oh, Celebrity Traitors. It’s so good to have you back.
Find out who has been eliminated in the first murder of the season when The Celebrity Traitors returns on Friday at 8pm on BBC One and BBC iPlayer.
