This is the Celebrity Traitors line-up of dreams
After months of speculation – and doubtless many pleading phone calls from showbiz agents keen to boost their clients’ profiles – the star-studded line-up of The Celebrity Traitors’s second series has been unveiled. It’s not just the largest celebrity cast to date, with 21 players heading to the Scottish Highlands, but an impressively heavyweight one.
The VIP version of the series was a runaway success last year, pulling in a record-breaking 15 million viewers and dominating the cultural conversation. The second series promises to be bigger and better, with two more contestants and one extra episode, making it a 10-part series.
Host Claudia Winkleman will welcome an eclectic mix of personalities to Ardross Castle, ranging from Bafta and Brit award-winners to social media stars and a frankly worrying number of comedians. They will decamp from their homes in Hollywood, Ibiza and beyond in the hope of winning up to £100,000 for their chosen charity.
The Celebrity Traitors is bound to become a major TV talking point once again when it dons its cloak and swishes onto our screens this autumn. But in the ultimate game of backstabbing and betrayal, who is likely to scheme and strategise their way to victory? Here’s the full treacherous teamsheet, ranked in reverse order of predicted success. The game is afoot and the floor is yours…
Amol Rajan
The journalist and broadcaster is used to firing questions at undergraduates on University Challenge and politicians on the Today programme. He will surely do the same to suspected Traitors around the Round Table, but will this backfire? Rajan is clever, personable and will relish the ruthless gameplay. However, he’s the sort of ostentatiously intelligent player who tends to arouse suspicion among the Faithful, meaning he could bite the dust early.
Sebastian Croft
Among the least-known players is this 24-year-old musician and actor from Oxford. Croft started his career in West End musicals before bagging the role of young Ned Stark in Game of Thrones, and he’s since found cult fame as Ben Hope in Netflix romantic drama Heartstopper. His youth and lack of fame-factor could both be drawbacks and mean he’s beheaded early, a bit like Sean Bean.
Joanne McNally
The Irish comic signing up is hardly the biggest surprise. She accidentally hinted at it on My Therapist Ghosted Me, the podcast she co-hosts with pal Vogue Williams, letting slip: “I have a job coming up where I’m not allowed to have a phone on.” McNally is razor-sharp but a self-confessed motormouth, which could very well lead to her downfall.
King Kenny
It’s compulsory in reality TV nowadays to cast one “content creator” or “influencer” in a blatant bid to appeal to youth audiences. Here the job falls to YouTube prankster whose real name is Kenny Ojuederie. As Niko Omilana discovered last year, though, being a showbiz outsider doesn’t do you many favours inside the castle. This is an early exit waiting to happen.