Miranda Hart has spoken out about returning to television for The Celebrity Traitors after a decade in which illness often kept her confined to her home.
The actress and comedian, 53, spent much of the past 10 years battling Lyme disease, a bacterial infection that can be spread to humans by infected ticks and can include symptoms of fatigue.
She said her body was “a bit shocked” while taking part in the BBC series, after months in which she was unable to leave the house or get out of bed. Hart has now said she felt “very emotional” on The Celebrity Traitors.
The condition can be difficult to diagnose because it shares similar symptoms with other illnesses. She documented her life with the chronic illness in her 2024 memoir, I Haven’t Been Entirely Honest With You.
Speaking on ITV’s This Morning, Hart said: “A lot of people who are watching the show didn’t know that I’d been for 10 years kind of really quite unwell.
“It was my first television back since feeling better and so there were times it was very emotional.”
During the series, Hart appeared visibly upset when comedian Joe Lycett was banished from the castle after he fell under suspicion for wanting to be recruited as a traitor.
She added: “I got particularly emotional with Joe leaving because we’d had such a good time together, and we’d played and connected, and that’s a lot of what was in my memoir: the important things that help us thrive even when we’re suffering.
“It was just great because I didn’t think I’d maybe walk round my park at one point even. I couldn’t leave the house or get out of bed for months.”
She said her time on the show was like “a cross between boarding school, Outward Bound and a murder mystery weekend”.
She added: “I’m like, fine, I’m all in. But my body was a bit shocked.”
Since Hart’s return to screens, fans have been calling for her to bring back her hit self-titled sitcom, which follows an awkward and clumsy shopkeeper as she gets into bizarre situations.
She said: “It’s so nice that there’s some enthusiasm there. It just means everything. It seems that the papers every one or two years tells me I’m bringing it back. But that’s very much never come from me. So I don’t know. Your guess is as good as mine at this point whether we do more.”
Hart starred in the sitcom from 2009 until 2015, and she has also appeared in the BBC sitcoms Hyperdrive and Not Going Out.
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