James Acaster reveals the Celebrity Traitors are monitored even when they call their families

James Acaster has revealed the surprisingly strict rules Celebrity Traitors contestants have to follow while filming, and it sounds like an absolute nightmare.

The comedian was recruited as a Traitor by Maya Jama and Richard E Grant during the first week of the series, despite making it pretty clear that being a Faithful was the role he actually wanted. 

Via BBC

Speaking to The Times, the 41-year-old explained that he had been desperate to experience the show from the Faithfuls’ perspective.

“I was looking forward to being a little detective, solving puzzles and looking for clues,” he said. “When you watch it at home you know everything, and I thought: I’ll never have the opportunity again to experience it as someone who doesn’t know who the traitors are. I wanted to figure it out…”

However, he wasn’t exactly devastated by the twist. “But that doesn’t mean I didn’t think it was absolutely hilarious that I got made a traitor after one day. I was in that coffin smirking to myself.”

While James can’t spill the beans about how Celebrity Traitors ends, he has shared a few details about what life is actually like behind the scenes, and it’s considerably less glamorous than you might expect from a show packed with famous faces.

Via BBC

According to James, contestants stay in a “Travelodge-level hotel about an hour from the castle in the Scottish Highlands, which is a bit of a trek each morning and night”.

The isolation is arguably even worse. Depending on how long they survive in the game, contestants can be cut off from the outside world for anywhere between four days and three weeks. They can’t even leave the hotel without someone accompanying them, and their only daily opportunity to contact someone back home is a ten-minute FaceTime call.

Even those brief chats aren’t exactly private, either.

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“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,” James explained.

He recalled one particularly awkward moment with his partner, who asked him: “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.”

Via BBC

Imagine being unable to explain why you’ve got a bit of colour in your face without potentially giving away classified information about a reality TV show. The paranoia really does start at the hotel door.

James compared the experience to communist-era East Berlin, although he was quick to acknowledge that the comparison might be a little dramatic.

“I think people who lived under the Stasi might have a thing or two to say about that comparison, but it is intense, and apparently on the normal version of The Traitors they don’t even get the phone call,” he said.

With James now playing alongside fellow Traitors Maya Jama and Hannah Fry, the pressure is only going to get worse. Tonight’s episode will reveal who the trio decided to murder next, so the Faithfuls could be in for another nasty surprise.

For all the latest news and drops about The Celebrity Traitors, like The Holy Church of The Traitors on Facebook. 

Featured image credit: BBC