The winner of the first season of The Traitors US has revealed a series of behind-the-scenes secrets from the hit show, including long, grueling days with “terrible” food, and the lengths to which producers would go to keep up the shield. the identity of the traitors.
Hosted by Alan Cumming, the popular Peacock game show is currently in its second season with an all-star cast including Real Housewives of Atlanta’s Phaedra Parks and Survivors star Parvati Shallow.
But as her grand finale approaches, season one winner Cirie Fields spoke exclusively to DailyMail.com to explain what it’s really like to take part and revealed the strategy she adopted to pocket a whopping $250,000 in prize money.
“I thought it was going to be like a scavenger hunt,” he said. ‘I thought it was going to be like The Amazing Race because that’s how it was presented to us.
The Traitors season one winner Cirie Fields has shared what goes on behind the scenes of the hit Peacock series.
The Survivor star became the first contestant to win the show in the first season.
‘We didn’t know the concept until we were there in Scotland, and that’s when it was explained to us that they could be selected as traitors, and so on. And I was still like, ‘Sign me!’
Cirie said she quickly adopted her strategy from four seasons of Survivor to help win the show: making friends with the first people she comes into contact with. In this case it was Rachel Reilly, Michael Davidson and Andie Thurman, whom she met while she was boarding the train to Ardross Castle.
‘We were assigned seats, so when Rachel and I sat down, guess who was sitting in front of us? “Michael and Andie,” she said. “From that moment on, I used my Survivor game strategy.”
Each day begins with a big breakfast, where the contestants wait patiently to find out which faithful was killed during the night by the traitors.
Cirie’s role as traitor weighed heavily on her throughout the filming process, and the daily breakfasts did nothing to calm her anxiety, and to make matters worse, the food was, for the most part, inedible.
She said: “The anxiety of walking in to breakfast and having everyone look at you and feeling like, ‘Damn, they know I’m a traitor.'”
“Your mind will play tricks on you and you will be so anxious at night that sometimes you won’t be able to sleep.”
On the food, Cirie said: ‘I can’t give all of Scotland a bad name when it comes to food just because I haven’t really experienced Scotland in those terms.
The first season of The Traitors US premiered on Peacock in January 2023.
Cirie revealed to DailyMail.com that her game began before she arrived at the castle, and before the game began.
The television personality revealed that her role as a traitor weighed on her throughout the filming process.
But I didn’t have any good dining experiences during my stay.
‘For breakfast we had a huge charcuterie with toast, coffee and orange juice. There were no omelettes, no pancakes, no bacon, no grits. The only good food I remember eating was beef cheeks for dinner, they were delicious.
“Other than that, the food was terrible.”
He said there was a lot of waiting for the daily challenges to begin, which gave players a chance to discuss their theories about who the traitors were; the conversations, she said, were often too repetitive to make it to the final cut.
“If it was too cold, we’d sit at the bar and go from the library to the bar to the pool room and just talk,” he said. ‘For the most part, we would be talking about who we thought were the traitors.
Cirie said she spent a lot of time pacing around each morning while waiting for the daily challenge.
Cirie beat second-place finalists Quentin Jiles and Andie Vanacore as faithful
‘Once the faithful meet a person, all conversations revolve around them. You can only take part of that and put it on the show because it was the same conversation.”
Cirie described the roundtables as ‘so emotionally exhausting’ with people’bursting into tears,” before revealing how the traitors were escorted to the turret to choose their next victim while the faithful were transported back to their hotel rooms.
“A lot of times I was emotional,” he said. ‘I cried at the round table several times seeing the emotions of others.
‘At the end of the night we would all end up in the bar and usually we would all have some wine, and then one by one our cars would come to take us back to the hotel. Each time you would go separately.
‘The producers would call someone’s name, and then they would hug everyone and then they would walk out, and then the producers would call the next person and so on.
“This way no one can vouch for anyone and say, ‘Oh no, it wasn’t you because you were in the car with me,’ or ‘I know it’s not this person because they rode with me.'”
“Everyone left individually, and we were leaving as if we were going to the hotel, but then we would do a little U-turn and head to the turret.”
She revealed that being a traitor was not only mentally exhausting, but also physically, due to lack of sleep.
Cirie described the round tables as “brutal” and said that emotions were always heightened
She said: ‘There are people bursting into tears. Many times I would get emotional. I cried at the round table a couple of times watching others’ emotions.
“Usually by the time we finished it was around midnight, and then everyone would go to their hotels,” he said.
‘We, the traitors, went to the turret, so we did not return to our hotels around two in the morning.
“We were exhausted because the call time is usually around 9 in the morning.”
Cirie revealed that the players are staying in a basic hotel, which is situated just opposite Inverness airport, a long way from the picturesque Ardross Castle where the show takes place.
“If you look at the maps, there’s nothing nearby,” he joked, before divulging details about the amenities and how the contestants were able to entertain themselves during downtime.
“We had a bed, we had showers, we had room service,” Cirie shared.
‘We had television to a certain extent. They gave us a little fire stick that they had programmed, so it was a treat compared to what I was used to on other shows.’
Cirie focused her attention on how she approached the game as a traitor and insisted: “I never chose anyone.
Cirie explained how the traitors make their way to the tower without attracting the attention of their loyal rivals.
“He wasn’t looking for victims or people he could manipulate.
“My friendships are real friendships and they are palpable, and people trust me, and that’s what helped me in the game.
“Honestly, the only lie I had to tell was that I’m not faithful.”
Reflecting on the series, Cirie said, “Every time I look back, I always think, damn, that was so much fun.”
‘I would tell anyone who plays these games to try as hard as they can to allow themselves to enjoy it and have fun in the process.
“Because I was a traitor and didn’t want to be banished, I didn’t relax much.”
He also noted that being a traitor really isn’t a walk in the park, despite what it may seem to viewers at home.
“It’s not that easy, especially when things play with your conscience,” he said. “Your anxiety increases, multiplies and is magnified to the thousandth power.”