What to expect at The Traitors: New Blood premiere — Alan Cumming teases a twist and admits the "normies" shocked him
Clear your Thursday, because the doors of Ardross Castle creak open again on September 17 — this time on NBC proper, with a two-hour premiere at 8 p.m. ET and next-day streaming on Peacock.
And for the first time in the American franchise, there's not a single Housewife, Survivor, or Bachelor alum on the guest list. Just 22 civilians, a Scottish host in immaculate tartan, and up to $250,000 in a pot.
The normies have entered the castle
You'd think regular people would be calmer than reality-TV professionals. According to the man in the tweed, you'd be wrong.
"The energy is very different. I was shocked," Alan Cumming admits — adding that the Roundtable got so jumpy at points he feared he'd be launched clean off his platform.
He also promises a big twist in the two-hour opener, which, given this franchise's history of secret Traitors and mid-game rule detonations, could mean literally anything up to and including the castle itself being a Traitor.
Who these people are
The cast was whittled down from more than 80,000 applicants, ranges in age from 23 to 65, and reads like a tarot deck someone shuffled drunk:
- A funeral director (professionally unbothered by "murrrders")
- An astrophysicist (finally, someone who can do the banishment math)
- A dog groomer (relevant: Cumming's dog Lala is back on hosting duty)
- Plus, in Cumming's words, quite a few lovely oddballs
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Why civilians might break the game
Here's the thing that makes me feral about this format change: celebrities arrive with reputations, alliances, and podcast obligations. Strangers arrive with nothing. Nobody knows your tells. Nobody watched your season. As the trailer itself points out, when nobody knows who you are, you can get away with a great deal.
The mechanics stay sacred — missions build the pot, Traitors murder by night, the Roundtable banishes by day, and Cumming rolls his R's like a man being paid per consonant. The only variable is the humans, and the humans, apparently, jump around. See you at the castle.
Previously we wrote: Most Acrophobic Thriller Got a Sequel – It Doesn't Hit the Same Heights, but Still Worth the Climb
