Celebrity Traitors is back - here's what you need to know ahead of the first show — SkimNews
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- Celebrity Traitors series 2 premieres Thursday 1 October at 20:00 BST on BBC One and iPlayer, with Claudia Winkleman again hosting the 75-minute debut episode.
- BBC expanded the format to 21 contestants (two more than series 1) and added an extra episode after the first series became 2025's most-watched UK programme with 15 million viewers; Alan Carr won that inaugural run.
- The cast spans TV, film, radio and YouTube, including Michael Sheen, Jerry Hall, Richard E Grant, Amol Rajan, Bella Ramsey, Leigh-Anne Pinnock, Maya Jama, Joe Lycett, James Acaster, Romesh Ranganathan, and mathematician Hannah Fry, all playing for a £100,000 charity prize.
- Executive producer Sarah Fay told the press launch the team "always want to push the envelope," evolving existing tasks with fresh cultural references.
- Comedian Romesh Ranganathan said he'd happily betray best friend Rob Beckett on the show, while Hannah Fry called herself "toxically competitive" and admitted she had already hunted for "statistical patterns" in past games.
- Leigh-Anne Pinnock took advice from singer Cat Burns, a 2024 finalist who played as a traitor, who warned her the round table "might get intense" but "it's just a game."
- Ed Gamble hosts BBC Two spin-off Uncloaked, telling BBC News he spends hours each day watching cast footage from a monitors room, often "in my pyjamas eating cereal."
Why it matters: BBC is doubling down on its biggest entertainment hit of 2025 — a 15-million-viewer phenomenon — by enlarging the cast and adding an episode, while the £100,000 charity prize and a roster spanning comedians, actors, and a mathematician promise fresh strategic angles for viewers and ratings.
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