Celebrity Traitors finalist Nick Mohammed has revealed one contestant “kicked off” after the crew removed a “basic human right” from the set.
Mohammed is one of five players that will face off in Thursday’s final, alongside Traitors Cat Burns and Alan Carr and fellow Faithfuls Joe Marler and David Olusoga.
The Ted Lasso actor, 45, explained that production expertly created a tense environment behind-the-scenes during filming at the remote castle in the Scottish Highlands.
He revealed players were totally “isolated from the outside world,” weren’t allowed to have phones and were even banned from knowing what time of day it was.
While the comedian praised the crew for being “so clever” in a “positive way”, he admitted one of his celebrity teammates was less pleased about being cut off.
“All your devices are taken from you. I was allowed one phone conversation a day with the kids. You are isolated from the outside world,” he said on The Comedian's Comedian Podcast.
Mohammed went on: “We weren't even allowed to know the time. So when we were in the castle, you'd be like ‘What's the time?’ And they'd be like ‘It's Traitors time’.
“Every single member of production had to just answer with that until someone kicked off and they said, ‘It's a basic human right, you can just tell us the time, it doesn't mean anything!’”
Former Traitor Jonathan Ross, who was kicked off the BBC competition last week, dished more of the show’s strict rules, including where the cast stayed.
“We all stayed in the same hotel, I believe, but I can’t say that for sure because you never saw who was in which room or where,” he told his daughter Honey on their podcast, Reel Talk.
“We stayed at the Inverness Airport Hotel, which was lovely. It was fine. You wouldn’t normally stay there for a few nights at a time, I guess.
“All of us found towards the end it was a bit claustrophobic, and there wasn’t a bath in the room so the day after we’d done that first challenge where we had to push that enormous Trojan horse up the hill, we all wanted to soak in a hot bath – especially the older people – and we couldn’t, you were standing in a shower instead.”
He went on: “The food they made for us was very nice there and they looked after us… I think we were all in the same hotel, but I don’t know.
“We were completely isolated from one another, and you don’t even have a phone in the room. When you want to order food or talk to somebody about something, you have to stick a laminate under the door.
“We had TVs set up. Before they took our phones away, you could put your passwords in for Netflix and Amazon and stuff like that… when you first arrived, before the game began. I had mine set up, and when I had any time off there I would sit and watch House.
“One day when there was a day off I watched 11 episodes of House back to back. I watched House because it was comforting to watch something I’d seen before, because I was getting more than enough surprises outside.”
Elaborating on the show’s rigid routine, he added: “Those of us who had smart watches on, they were taken away as well, which was understandable because I guess you could connect by WiFi to emails.
“It serves two purposes – certainly that no one can cheat… not that anyone would have done.
“For example, say the celebrity version, if someone gets banished or murdered, and the other people in there have their phone number, they would know that the day after, they would have found out who the traitors are.
“But also, it does have the effect of destabilising you a lot. We all found it an incredibly immersive experience. You really get into it, and you feel a bit trapped in it, and I think that’s because you don’t have any of your normal outlets to relieve stress or pressure.”
The star continued: “You haven’t got your phone to pick up, you can’t check your emails, you don’t know what’s going on outside, you don’t even know what time it is. So I think that forces you to enter into it even more wholeheartedly than you might otherwise, so it’s a pretty smart move.”
