‘Being queer is the greatest secret weapon on The Traitors – Stephen can win it’

“Growing up queer in a small, isolated community is very difficult. I’ve spent my formative years
having to be different people depending on the environment that I’m in,” said Stephen in the
opening moments of The Traitors series 4.

To many of us in the LGBTQ+ community, it’s a remark that won’t only resonate but has been –
and perhaps still is – our truth every single day.

I have never been more self-assured in life than I am now at 38. Every relationship in my life
feels more secure with each waking day. I make more choices for myself now than I ever have,
and I care far less about pleasing others than I ever did.

But I still regularly pretend to be someone else – possibly even daily.

Like Stephen, my formative years were spent playing a completely different character. The only
time I could ever truly be myself was watching Britney Spears performances in the privacy of my
bedroom.

I never really came out to friends. Once I fled Stoke-on-Trent – notoriously homophobic in the
early 00s – to the liberal-leaning Bristol, I simply was an out gay man. I thought that was enough,
but I was still in the closet with my family until 2021.

If the man I was in Bristol was truly my authentic self, then my family didn’t meet him until he
was 33 years old.

Now, free from the shackles of being in the closet at all, it’s obvious I didn’t really know who my
true, authentic self was to anyone – relative or otherwise.

But as a gay man in an increasingly threatening world for LGBTQ+ people, I’m finding myself
shrinking even further into playing someone else. Sitting on the bus, am I safe to comfortably
exude queerness? If I’m in an Uber, can I use my real voice in its natural state and admit I have
no interest in football – but ask me about the Strictly result and I’m all ears?

‘If I’m in an Uber, can I use my real voice?’

I don’t think playing a character every day is completely unique to the queer experience. I know
straight men who have pretended to be more masculine than they are to impress both other
men and women or bury their anxiety like they’ve been trained to their whole lives, now
admitting they’ve always been Take That over Oasis when it would have been social suicide to
come clean about their musical tastes at school.

But as a gay man, I fear I’ve spent so much of my life being someone else – far more than most
straight people could ever really comprehend.

So would that make me a good traitor? In many ways, so many queer people have spent their
whole lives being a traitor – to ourselves.

Still, I know there are certain environments where I have to play someone else for my safety,
and others where I know my queerness is a superpower, or even a benefit. If I walk into a room
of women I’ve met for the first time, I know from experience my queerness puts them at ease.

I’m not a danger or a threat, and there’s an instant mutual comfort if I lean into my queerness
more than it naturally sits within me. Three episodes in, Stephen knows how to read and work a
room more than anyone else and so much of that is innately because of his life experience
as a queer man.

The Traitors might be the one game show where being LGBTQ+ isn’t just celebrated – it really is
a secret weapon.

Stephen follows a long list of LGBTQ+ contestants on The Traitors, but he’s the first gay man to
be tapped on the shoulder by Claudia Winkleman at the roundtable.

‘I’ve never resonated with a contestant more’

He’s also the first to acknowledge that he plans to use his past experience of keeping his queer
identity a secret to his advantage, tapping into the techniques us gay men know all too well to
convince others we’re someone we’re not.

It’s extremely early days, but while plenty of names have been thrown around the castle as
potential suspects, Stephen has largely gone under the radar with the exemption of Ellie and
Ross who, if the theories (and photos of them together in 2024) are to be believed are a couple
working together.

For the first time, there is a secret traitor – a questionable twist that takes power from the traitors
and hands it to an unknown force pulling the strings. If I had to bet on anyone being a secret
traitor too, right now I’d bet on Ellie.

What impact that will have on Stephen’s chances of making it to the final remains unclear but his
acute reflection on being young and queer proves he has the armoury to go all the way.

I obviously know very little about how Stephen portrays himself to the world beyond seeing him
for an hour playing somewhat of a version of himself.

If he’s anything like me – and the queer experience I’m familiar with – he’s been practising for this
moment his whole life. Finally, there’s a path where our shame can lead us directly to success
on The Traitors. Those torturous years of having to keep everything we now pride ourselves on
buried can be put to good use, and he could win a chunk – if not all – of the potential £120,000
prize pot.

Just a few episodes down, and I’ve never resonated with a contestant more, or rooted for someone so
quickly.

Can he go all the way? As long as Stephen and Rachel don’t tip my nervous system again over
the edge being as subtle as Lady Gaga in a meat dress discussing tactics by the Family Tree
again, they could be the best traitors we’ve ever seen.

But with decades of experience playing this game under his belt, I have every faith in Stephen.