The Celebrity Traitors is the biggest show on British TV right now, but this year’s cast aren’t making it easy to avoid spoilers, with the 2026 contestants blurting out plot twists and breaking rules left, right and centre.
It was revealed at the weekend that Richard E Grant actually let slip he was a Traitor long before episode one aired, during a live radio interview back in June.
Speaking on their BBC Radio 6 Music show on Saturday (10 October), hosts Mark Radcliffe and Stuart Maconie said that Grant had told them that he was a Traitor during the summer broadcast. The moment was subsequently cut from any on-demand versions of the episode.
“This bit was taken out by the brilliant production team at this show,” they said. “People were saying when Joe Lycett said to him on Traitors, ‘What are you?’ and he said, ‘Traitor’, that that was his downfall, but if they’d been listening in June, they would have heard that he revealed it earlier.”
The show then played the original clip, in which Grant could be heard saying: “The very nature of being an actor is that you rely entirely on the camaraderie of the people that you’re working with and to trust them, and when you’re a Traitor, it’s far more challenging than you might anticipate.”
Grant famously told his fellow contestants that he was a Traitor, just moments after being chosen by host Claudia Winkleman and as a result, he was the first to be banished at the Celebrity Traitors roundtable.
The BBC show is known for enforcing strict secrecy around spoilers – with James Acaster recently admitting that he was told off by a producer for telling his partner during a monitored FaceTime call to home that he went outside while filming.
Speaking to The Times, Acaster revealed that cast members cannot leave the hotel they stay in without being chaperoned and are given ten minutes each morning to FaceTime a friend or family member. “And a member of the production team is there with you, so you can’t have an authentic conversation because you can’t tell them anything that’s happening,” he said. “At one point my partner said, ‘Have you caught the sun?’ I was saying, ‘Oh yeah, we were outside for one of the missions.’ I was told I couldn’t even tell her that.”
Now that he’s out of the castle, Acaster has been spilling behind-the-scenes details about the show’s edit. The comedian recently revealed that scenes were cut from the BBC show that would explain why singer James Blunt led the charge to banish Julie Hesmondhalgh, who turned out to be a Faithful.
“In the edit James Blunt’s reason was that Julie was given the first shield. What actually happened is that when they did the shoulder tap for the Traitors’ pick at the beginning, James told Julie who he thought was acting suspiciously around the table,” he said, adding that after the Traitors were picked, Hesmondhalgh said that Blunt had not put forward any theories as to who the Traitors could be, which was a sign he was a Traitor, however Blunt had actually shared his theories with her.
When arguing for Hesmondhalgh’s banishment, Blunt pointed to this as evidence of the actor lying in the competition, which is actually “why Julie got voted off” and “isn’t in the edit”.
Meanwhile, James Blunt found himself in trouble with the show after violating the BBC’s guidelines around commercial activity with a social media post.
The singer shared a still of him in a £1,695 suit from a Celebrity Traitors episode on Instagram, writing, “The name’s Blunt. James Blunt,” alongside a link to clothing brand Barrington Ayre’s X account.
Both the BBC and Celebrity Traitors logos were visible in the photograph, which goes against the broadcaster’s rules around commercial advertising.
A BBC spokesperson told The Independent: “The BBC has clear guidelines in place around commercial activity which we take very seriously and players have been reminded of this. The social media posts referred to have been taken down.”
As for show spoilers yet to come, it has been reported that BBC bosses are panicking over the identities of this year’s finalists being leaked within showbiz circles. Banished contestant Julie Hesmondhalgh even admitted that she’s removed herself from a WhatsApp group with the rest of the cast after the cast began discussing the winner.
“People were sharing who'd won at one point and me and a couple of other people removed ourselves because we just don't want to know,” she told BBC Breakfast on Monday (12 October).
According to The Mirror, spoilers about who makes it to the final have become a “hot topic at showbiz parties”, with the BBC hoping that anyone who hears the information will “keep the secrets of the castle and stay quiet”. The BBC declined to comment when approached by The Independent.
It has also been reported that the celebrities face a hefty bill should they spoil any moments from the show. According to The Sun, the stars will be fined £100,000 should they breach their NDAs, which they all signed before filming started. The BBC declined to comment.
The ongoing series of Celebrity Traitors kicked off with chaos after Grant let slip to the other players that he was a Traitor.
Spin-off show Uncloaked host Ed Gamble revealed ahead of the series that his premature admission sent producers into meltdown.
“I hadn't even arrived in Inverness. My phone was buzzing on the Uncloaked group going, ‘You will never guess what's happened,’” he said at a screening of Celebrity Traitors. “Such an insane way to start a brilliant series, I think.”
The BBC competition continues tonight, with viewers finding out whether the Traitors choose to “murder” either Romesh Ranganathan, Rob Beckett, Ross Kemp or Leigh-Anne Pinnock (although the latter is immune from the killing).
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