Welcome to the castle - it gets worse here every day | 2026 Celebrity Traitors Thread 4 [TV Pace]

[CaveMum]

Previous thread: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/telly_addicts/5587046-welcome-to-the-castle-we-take-it-day-by-day-2026-celebrity-traitors-thread-3-tv-pace?page=1

This is a tv pace thread so make sure you’re up to date with the live broadcast and yes, previous series (regular and celeb) will be discussed!

Please no spoilers if you read them online!

The story so far (as at end of episode 4)

Traitors (still active)
Maya Jama
James Acaster (recruited)
Professor Hannah Fry (recruited)

Faithful

James Blunt
Jerry Hall
Joanne McNally
Joe Lycett
King Kenny
Michael Sheen
Miranda Hart
Sebastian Croft
Sharon Rooney

Up for Murder
Leigh-Anne Pinnock
Rob Beckett
Romesh Ranganathan
RossKemp (full name)

Murdered
Amol Rajan
Bella Ramsey

Banished
Richard E Grant (Traitor)
Myha’la
Julie Hesmondhalgh

Ditto! She seems a wonderful human.

Ah you think that the group thought, well there'd be one black woman, perhaps its her?

I really did enjoy starstruck, but nobody else I know ever watched it and dont know who she is.

Myha'la's wink secured her own banishment! 😉

Quite a few faithfuls ruining their own games...

No I think it was the massive wink to REG.

Yes he does according to Wikipedia and numerous other online sources, including confirmation from him.

😄😄

I was put off Julie though 😒

It was so well written, and incredibly touching. I don't know why we don't see more of her writing and acting?

The last series didn't. It was Hugo, Rcahel and Stephen with SecretFiona. All white.

I agree with all of this!

I miss Joe already 😭

Yes they are, and in a really bizarre way too. You had REG literally saying “yes i am traitor “ then you had Joe begging to be a traitor in the most in your face way to everyone which put an instant target on his back, then Joanne with her weird slip up, I appreciate it really was a genuine slip of the tongue but blimey it was a corker. I don’t recall all this happening as much on any other traitor 😅

Richard and Marina on TRIE have said the show won’t broadcast conversations that are about trying to second-guess production decisions, like ‘Well, if I were the producers I’d have made either Rob or Romesh a traitor’) as it spoils the suspension of disbelief .

I loved it too.

Id like to see heat on James A or Maya to see if the ther traitor would fold and vote them off as easily as they have for every other traitor.

I have a theory that they were influenced by production to pick Kenny. We’ll likely never know but by that point things weren’t going so well for the show because the original traitors weren’t the best picks. Would be easy for someone to step into the room and make a ‘suggestion’.

I think this has been denied in the previous series. Producers don't interfere as it's for charity.

They aren't allowed to interfere because there's a cash prize, and that goes for the regular Traitors as well.

Ah, okay, that makes sense. I was only thinking of it in reference to the celebrity version.

They can interfere on some level though, or adapt the rules. They only do the "be recruited or die now" thing when there's only one traitor left.

If the show is potentially ever in trouble though, because the traitors all go out really quickly, then there could be no cash as they may not be able to broadcast the show as it would be over too quickly. And they constantly interfere with allowing or not allowing recruitment etc which I’m sure they do based on how things are going.

Having said that, if they’ve actually said they don’t go as far as telling the contestants what to do, I can imagine that they wouldn’t take the risk in case someone spoke about it afterwards. I still think it was odd that they chose Kenny as Maya didn’t seem keen. Although maybe they edited out that bit.

I agree that we are suddenly seeing a lot more of Michael so he could well be up for the next murder, after the yawn fest has played out. Or the herd decide he might have been a good traitor all along…!

There's definitely some producer manipulation 😩

Same with all other reality tv shows

They'd still be able to broadcast I think, as they'd recruit new traitors until the last couple of episodes, at which point all the traitors might have gone, but the faithful left don't know whether they have or not (the banished players don't say at that point whether they are faithful or traitors). So it would still go until the end regardless. I expect they decide after it's all filmed how many episodes to break it up into - some have been slightly longer than others, or had longer amounts of discussion/roundtable/mission, and different times of cliffhangers - before banishment or before we know the murder victim etc. There must be flexibility to stretch it out to a ten decent episodes (or more if they wanted) by extending the earlier ones etc.

I do think producers interfere to an extent, though, by coming up with the new rules about how they have to murder in plain sight, or choosing the hide and seek victims, or whether they have to recruit, etc. And even choosing which missions might favour certain people. They can't make them pick certain ones or make certain people get banished, but they probably try to influence it in some way. I'm sure they were trying to find some way to allow it not just to be Hannah/Jerry who was up for murder, though banishing REG and causing the recruitment was an easy solution that time.