Former Celebrity Traitors star Joanne McNally is opening up about one of the biggest mysteries about how the show is made.
The comedian made it all the way to the penultimate episode of Celebrity Traitors last week, before eventually being shown the door by her fellow contestants after they banished her.
Usually, when a Traitors contestant is “banished”, they stand up on a raised platform in front of the group and declare their true identity before they disappear through a castle door and are never seen again.
During a recent episode of her podcast My Therapist Ghosted Me, Joanne revealed exactly what happens after that moment.
“You get off the podium, they rush you out the side door and you’re bundled into a van like Whitney Houston in the Bodyguard,” she joked to co-host Vogue Williams.
She continued: “You have a little backpack there, it’s like an emergency backpack in the castle at all times so that if [you leave at night] that you do go you have your essentials. And then you’re taken to a different hotel [to the rest of the group].”
Joanne shared that the banished Faithfuls’ work isn’t done then, though, as they’re brought back to the castle the following day to film interviews to camera – as well as footage of them lounging around to be shown during the Traitors’ deliberations.
“You actually have a full day’s work to do in the castle because you have to do all your B-shots and there was a video of me in the bath, so it’s all that stuff and your final interviews,” she explained.
Joanne noted that, during her time on the show, she’d “always wondered why in the castle if you needed to go to the bathroom or anything it’s this big kind of production”, explaining: “It’s because they have to make sure the castle is clear and there’s not people who’ve been banished the night before [hanging around] – because they were in the castle doing all their extra last bits of work.
“So, they were making sure no one crossed paths.”
“It’s such a huge production and they run it so military!” she added.
BBC/Studio Lambert/Euan Cherry
In the last few weeks, the Celebrity Traitors cast have been sharing a number of behind-the-scenes tidbits that we never got to see in the finished show.
James Acaster has revealed he was confronted about being a Traitor long before viewers got to see, while eventual winner Sebastian Croft has shared that he was involved in a medical incident early on in the series that wasn’t aired.
