Toni Ireland (‘The Traitors’ producer) on being ‘really overwhelmed by the success’ of Season 2 [Exclusive Video Interview]

The second installment of Peacock’s reality TV show “The Traitors” absolutely exploded in terms of audience visibility and critical acclaim, and now producer Toni Ireland is admitting that she’s “really overwhelmed by the success.” As she explains, “One of the key things that we changed in Season 2 was to go for an all celebrity cast. We had a mixed cast in Season 1, which was brilliant and worked really nicely for us. But then we sort of changed to an all celebrity cast,” with many of them becoming “fan favorites.” Watch the exclusive video interview above.

This time around, the cast featured famous faces from shows like “Big Brother,” “Survivor,” “The Challenge” and “The Real Housewives,” plus sports stars and political leaders. In the show, which Ireland likens to a “murder mystery” and a “whodunnit,” regular players (the Faithfuls) must try to identify who among them are actually murderers in plain sight (the Traitors). Trishelle Cannatella and Chris “CT” Tamburello wound up making it to the end and splitting the prize pot of $208,100.

Ireland mentions how the casting process is “almost like assembling jewelry — we want different people from different backgrounds and different walks of life and we bring them all together to play this game.” The success of “The Traitors” is also attributed to the fact that, “It taps into human psyche. Can you spot a liar when you are faced with them? Can you do that? And I think that’s what was really sort of grabbing the audience’s attention. It’s just a really fantastic game to watch.”

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The host of “The Traitors” is Tony winner Alan Cumming, and when we bring up his name, Ireland smiles and asks, “I mean, isn’t he incredible? I can’t believe how lucky we are to have him at the front of this show. He’s just so, so perfect.” Ireland notes that Cumming’s character is that of the “Lord of the manor,” the “puppeteer” and the “games master.” She adds, “We knew that we wanted a bit of a camp tone to the show and we wanted theater and drama, and who better to bring that than Alan? We pitched the show to him and he got it straight away.”

The producers initially chose Dan Gheesling and Phaedra Parks to be the Traitors for Season 2, with others recruited along the way. Ireland reveals, “We wanted to make sure that both of our Traitors came from different worlds. So we didn’t want two gamers in there. We didn’t want two Housewives in there.” And in case you’re wondering, yes, “personality tests” are conducted on the cast members, “just to see how they would cope with lying and in what kind of situations they’d be good at.” But the “final decisions” aren’t made until Cumming conducts his “golden chats” with everyone.

Also in our exclusive video interview, Ireland talks about how Dan “struggled slightly” in his traitorous role while Phaedra “played that so brilliantly,” how the poisoned chalice twist was a way for the producers to “put [the Traitors] under a little bit of pressure,” and what she thinks are the biggest personality differences between American and British contestants. As for Season 3, Ireland teases that Cumming’s outfits are going to be “off the scale.”

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