‘The Traitors’ Puts Civilians in the Turret in "New Blood"
Everyday Americans will be donning the green hoods in the all-civilian version of the popular reality franchise.
Peacock’s hit reality series The Traitors is just getting bigger as it rolls along. The series’ fourth season, which aired earlier this year, saw Love Island alum Rob Rausch turn Traitor to play a masterful game of betrayal and deceit, winning it all and generating no small amount of buzz in the process. (Its viewership stats were up 66% from Season 3, which won the series the Emmys for Outstanding Reality Competition Program and Outstanding Host for a Reality or Reality Competition Program.) Season 5 isn’t slated to premiere until next year, but Peacock, keen to capitalize on the series’ buzzy popularity, is bringing a whole new version of the game to our screens later this year.
The Traitors: New Blood, the long-awaited civilian version of the show, will officially arrive in September, putting an entirely new spin on the game for U.S. viewers.
One of the things that sets the American version of The Traitors apart from its international brethren is that its cast is comprised entirely of existing reality stars. Technically, the show’s very first season had a mix of celebrity and regular contestants. But the vibes were... weird, what with the subsequent fame-based power imbalances and starstruck attitudes among those familiar with the reality cast members’ previous roles.
New Blood will feel more like the versions of the show that air in other countries, cast exclusively with normal Americans, hand-selected from a nationwide search resulting in over 60,000 hopeful applicants.
The rules of any installment of The Traitors are deceptively simple. All you really need is a group of people, a centralized location, and a willingness to sit back and watch human nature at work as contestants mislead, betray, and manipulate one another in the name of self-preservation, screen time, and cold, hard cash.
The players are divided into two groups. Most are “Faithfuls,” but a handful are assigned to play the roles of the titular “Traitors,” who must secretly work together to eliminate the majority. The Faithfuls know the Traitors are among them, but are unaware of their identities and must spend the season attempting to suss them out during daily banishment ceremonies that like as not often end with an innocent going home. Meanwhile, the Traitors select a Faithful to “murder” each night, taking them out of the game.
In the end, if the Faithful can banish all the Traitors, the surviving contestants who make it to the end can split the cash, but if one Traitor remains among them, that person takes it all. As you probably already know — or at least can guess — this makes for quite a lot of manipulation, betrayal, and some generally excellent TV.
A selection of Allan Cumming's fabulous wardrobe on 'The Traitors' (NBC/Peacock)
But, of course, the really important thing here is that host Alan Cumming will be back to wrangle the new group of normies, which means we’re all getting another full season of his excellent outfits.
The Traitors is produced by Studio Lambert. In addition to his hosting duties, Cumming also serves as an executive producer, alongside Mike Cotton, Sam Rees-Jones, Rosie Franks, Jack Burgess, Stephen Lambert, Tim Harcourt, and Doran Azouelos.
The Traitors: New Blood will premiere on Thursday, September 17, at 8 p.m. ET, with a two-hour episode. Seasons 1-4 of the flagship series, as well as full series of several international editions, including The Traitors U.K. and The Celebrity Traitors, are streaming on Peacock.
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