Richard E Grant Immediately Admits He's a Celebrity Traitor — SkimNews
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- The Celebrity Traitors returned with 21 contestants at Ardross Castle, hosted by Claudia Winkleman, competing for up to £100,000 for their chosen charity.
- Richard E Grant was selected as a traitor but immediately told Joe Lycett "I am a traitor!" — behaviour the Guardian calls unprecedented in either the celebrity or civilian versions of the show.
- Grant's fellow traitor Maya Jama joined him in selecting a third traitor from journalist Amol Rajan and comedian James Acaster, who waited in coffins to hear which of them would be "murdered."
- Jerry Hall defended Grant by saying "He's just acting out because he hasn't been chosen" — even though Grant had just exuberantly shared the truth, forcing much of the episode into him trying to walk it back.
- Ross Kemp was singled out as the early cautionary figure, turning "bewildered circles" in the castle convinced that anyone who touched him was trying to murder him in plain sight.
- The Guardian's review judges the celebrity cast "slightly more muted" than the first series, noting that the law of diminishing returns is brutal in television and that opening episodes are always the weakest as alliances take time to build.
- Storylines the review teases as worth watching: whether James Blunt (former army captain) will reinvent himself as a "national hero" and whether Romesh Ranganathan and Rob Beckett's real-life friendship will be an asset or a liability.
Why it matters: Grant's immediate self-outing, unprecedented per the reviewer, threatens the show's central deception mechanic before alliances even form. The reviewer's verdict that the cast feels 'slightly more muted' than series 1 puts pressure on the 21-celebrity format to prove it can match the chemistry of the civilian original, with Winkleman's 'clothes and attitude' carrying more of the premiere than last time.
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