Reason Celebrity Traitors’ Richard E Grant ‘murdered’ Amol Rajan first revealed
Amol Rajan was eliminated first on Celebrity Traitors (BBC/Platform Media/James Green)
Amol Rajan has described Celebrity Traitors as “agonising, miserable and astonishingly tense”, and said Richard E Grant told him he murdered him first “to protect” himself.
The BBC presenter and journalist, who was the first star to be “murdered” in this year’s series, after Grant’s blunder saw him reveal he was a Traitor, wrote in a newsletter that he met Grant after filming and asked him directly why he had killed him so early in the game. Rajan said Grant’s answer was: “To protect myself.”
Rajan added that he replied: “But if you really wanted protection, you should have recruited me. That would have been a compliment!”
Instead, Grant and fellow Traitor Maya Jama chose to recruit James Acaster.
Amol Rajan eliminated first on Celebrity Traitors
In the opening episodes, viewers saw Rajan face off against comedian Acaster before they lay inside coffins, with the loser set to be murdered rather than recruited to become a Traitor.
The pair then had to plead their case for why they should be saved and brought into the Traitors’ circle. Rajan ended up getting the chop, as Traitors Grant and Maya Jama chose to recruit Acaster.
The premiere also ended on a cliffhanger, with viewers facing a 24-hour wait to learn who would be saved and who would be murdered, making it a seriously tense opener for the new series.
‘Deprived of your phone’
Rajan also explained why the show can feel so all-consuming. “I want to make clear here how astonishingly tense, and intense, and heightened, and extreme, the emotional turbulence of this experience was,” he wrote.
“Yes, it’s a game, but while you’re in the game, a long way from home, in a cold new world, with people you don’t know intimately, disconnected from your family, deprived of your phone, the game is your world.”
Despite his early exit, Rajan said he still had a brilliant time. “To be on Traitors is to participate in one of the more enjoyable experiences our industry, and maybe our species, has yet invented – well, for some people at least. And I’m one of those people. I loved it. I loved the mission, I loved the Highlands, I loved the game, and above all I loved the players,” he said.
After leaving the competition, Rajan appeared on The Celebrity Traitors: Uncloaked and reflected: “It’s hard not to watch it and think I, obviously, with 20/20 hindsight, I played the wrong game.”
The Celebrity Traitors continues Thursdays and Fridays at 8pm on BBC One.
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