Strictly Come Dancing presenter Claudia Winkleman has opened up about her new game show, The Traitors. The television star is the host of a nail-biting competition that sees 22 contestants play the ultimate game of detection, backstabbing and trust.
Since it launched on Tuesday, November 29 in the prime-time slot viewers have been hooked by the twists and turns as the players trick one another in order to survive and be in with the chance of winning the £120,000 prize pot.
That's because among the 22 contestants are three traitors, hand-picked by Claudia, whose job it is to secretly "murder" a player every night without getting caught. It's up to the others, the faithfuls, to try to detect who the traitors are and banish them from the game before they become their next victims.
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The show is gripping and Claudia has been labelled "savage" by both the contestants and viewers at home following a couple of unexpected moves in the first few episodes. One fan wrote: "I honestly really like this show. And whoever gave Claudia Winklemen [sic] the gig, is a total genius, her savagery in the first episode even before it started is something else."
The comments came after the presenter eliminated two players before the game had even started, asking them to leave the grounds immediately after an experiment that saw them hail themselves as least likely to win. You can read more on this here.
And while viewers are loving the show, and Claudia's new cold persona, the star has admitted she initially said no to the gig. Speaking on The Graham Norton show, which airs on Friday, December 2, the 50-year-old said: "I initially said no but then watched the Dutch version and I wept. I loved it so much and said, 'Please let me do it.' I was so lucky to do it."
Asked about being mean in this series, she explained: "I am not always mean but I did have to do something at the beginning that I felt very uncomfortable with. I loved them all but I knew too much about everyone so had to stay separate from them all."
The Graham Norton Show continues on BBC One on Friday December 2 at 10.40pm and is also available on BBC iPlayer. For more showbiz and television stories get our newsletter here.
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