Yahoo Lifestyle The ‘Traitors’ Contestants Have to Follow So Many Rules While Shooting
While watching The Traitors, you may have found yourself wondering things such as: How do the Traitors get to the turret without anyone seeing them? How does anyone resist talking about the game when the cameras aren't rolling? And do the contestants really sit around pondering their next move while taking a bath with a rubber duck (looking at you, Tom Sandoval) or eating fruit off a crystal platter (hello, Dolores Catania)?
The competition show exists in a campy, stylized world where everyone is suspicious and decked out in what can only be described as Scottish highlands glam all the time. But, to achieve this facade and make the actual gameplay work, there's a lot going on behind the scenes. Thankfully, some cast members and production staff have spoken out about what really goes on. And no, Dylan Efron is not just casually working out shirtless in a Scottish castle at night—because the cast doesn't stay there at all! Read on for the rules the Traitors cast have to follow.
They can't look up their castmates.
The cast of The Traitors is not announced until the show is in production, meaning that the contestants don't find out who else is on their season until they are already in Scotland. Because of this, they can't research anyone else and only go into the game with the knowledge and preconceptions of their castmates that they already have.
"The cast doesn't know who else was on the cast, until they all show up there. Because it's a game, you don't want them to be able to research each other or talk to each other or form alliances before," casting director Deena Katz told TIME. The exception to this rule was season 2's Larsa Pippen and Marcus Jordan, who were a couple at the time that they were cast.
Their phones are taken away.
Seeing as they aren't allowed to look each other up—or talk about the game outside of it, but we'll get to that—it's not surprising that the contestants don't get to have their phones all the time. When they're in the game, they're really in the game.
"You get your phone—I don’t even know—every six, seven days," season 3 star Ciara Miller told Us Weekly. "But it’s all supervised so you can’t go on social media. You can only make a couple phone calls and if you send a text, they have to read it."
They can't talk to the outside world.
Other than their allotted phone time, the cast can't talk to the outside world. And apparently, one cast member tried to get around this rule by using her TV??
"I heard Kate Chastain learned how to talk to her friends with the clicker and so they took it away from everyone," Dolores from season 3 told Page Six of Kate from seasons 1 and 2. "You could go on YouTube with the remote, so [now] no one gets a remote!" the Real Housewives of New Jersey star said.
They don't sleep in the castle
The show operates under the guise that the contestants are staying in host Alan Cumming's Scottish castle. Not only is it not his castle, neither he nor the cast stay there overnight. This is not something that the producers like to talk about, but Cumming told The Daily Beast after season 1, "Spoiler alert: None of us stayed in the castle. None of us. They all stayed in the airport hotel in the Inverness airport [laughs]. How glamorous—you come to Scotland, and you stay in the Inverness airport hotel."
Cumming added that he "stayed in a little house in Inverness," but would take naps in a dressing room that he had in the castle. "I did actually sleep quite often, but not overnight."
They can't talk about the game off-camera.
On that note, the cast also can't talk about the game when cameras aren't rolling. So, while they are all staying at a hotel, there aren't, like, secret gossip sessions. Couple Larsa and Marcus couldn't even stay in the same room. She resorted to communicating with him via a banana.
"Marcus asked me for a nail file, and I put it in a paper bag—and they go through everything, you're not supposed to send anything back and forth—but he wanted a nail file and I was like, I'm just going to send him a nail file," the Real Housewives of Miami star told People. "And then I was like, oh, there's a banana. He said he wanted a banana. So I [write] 'I love you' on the banana and send it to him with the nail file."
The Traitors have to take an oath.
Executive producer Mike Cotton told Variety that the Traitors have to take an oath to officially become Traitors: "The Traitors take an oath with Alan, where they promise to murder every night and they promise to keep the identity of their fellow Traitors a secret."
The Traitors can't reveal that they are Traitors.
This one is a little tricky. While the Traitors' oath states that they have to keep the identity of their fellow Traitors a secret, they are allowed to accuse them of being a Traitor at the roundtable as long as they don't reveal their own identity as a Traitor.
"The rules say that they can, at the roundtable, accuse a fellow Traitor of being a Traitor, but only from the guise of being a Faithful themselves," Cotton told Variety. "What they could never do is say, 'I know that he’s a Traitor because I’m one as well' — or '…because I’ve been to the turret.' They have to be acting as the Faithful when they accuse another Traitor."
Traitors can't reveal they're Traitors in their exit speech, either.
When two Traitors get into it at the roundtable and one of them is eliminated, you might think they'd be tempted to reveal their fellow Traitor in their exit speech. But, nope, obviously that's not allowed, which Cotton confirmed with Variety.
Everyone has to sign paperwork.
What's stopping the contestants from doing things like revealing others' identities on their way out? It's probably the paperwork they have to sign. You know, so they don't do anything that would ruin the entire season in the middle of production. And I'm guessing, also so that production has the go-ahead to let them participate in challenges like swinging from the bottom of a helicopter!!!
"They sign a lot of paperwork, and the Traitors sign their own oath and agreement with us," Cotton said.
They have to take personality tests.
In order to help the producers decide who should become the Traitors of the season, the cast members take personality tests.
"All of the contestants that take part in our show, we’ve done personality tests on them. We see attributes that might make someone a good liar or particularly deceptive," Cotton told Variety.
Cumming's talks with the cast—in which he asks them on-camera if they want to be Traitors or Faithfuls—are also taken into account. "That has a really big bearing on it, as does Alan’s opinion," Cotton added.
They have to do their own hair, makeup, and wardrobe.
"I like doing my makeup. I don’t love doing my own hair," Ciara told Us Weekly. "There were a couple mornings where I didn’t wake up on time and I’m like, 'I have to get in full hair and makeup. Guys, can we have a day off? I don’t wanna do this.'"
And while they sometimes have to dress to a theme for certain challenges, their wardrobe is all their own—except for some accessories. For a funeral-themed episode in season 2, executive producer Sam Rees-Jones explained to Variety, "I think we said something like, bring clothes that might be appropriate for a black tie event, and then we have a stylist on location who can sort of accessorize and add things.
You can't wear your own brand.
Fans of The Real Housewives of Atlanta know that Shereé Whitfeild's SHE by Shereé clothing line was in the works for a long time before it came to fruition. But, unfortunately for her, she was not allowed to wear it on The Traitors. "They said I could not!" the reality star told People. "You can't wear your brand." Hey, for a reality star, this could be one of the harder rules to abide by.
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