A room, a dinner, several guests, a butler, a crime and a murderer. Six ingredients that belong to one of the most famous board games, El Cluedo. What if they turned it into a reality show? They have turned it. Tinet Rubira’s production company, Gestmusic (Banijay Iberia), has been commissioned to adapt the first HBO Max reality show, The Traitors. From today anyone who wants to immerse themselves in a brutal psychological game of betrayals and manipulations can do so.
18 celebrities, with practically nothing in common, a master of ceremonies, Sergio Peris-Mencheta, a castle with a ghost included, a week locked up, three traitors and a crime every night. This is how The Traitors could be summed up, a relentless psychological game in which the participants must decide who they can trust -spoiler, nobody-, originally developed by IDTV and All3Media for RTL4 in the Netherlands, and versions of which have already been ordered in the United Kingdom, the United States, Belgium and Australia.
“We have raised the adaptation of Traitors for HBO Max and the Spanish public from a very cinematographic point of view. We have spared no means to make the public feel part of and complicit in this world of intrigues, plots and betrayals”, explains Tinet Rubira.
I know that because I have been a politician, I am the one with the most ballots to be suspected, but I don’t know how to betray, I know that they betray you
They all want to be traitors and not for a matter of survival, as explained by Peris-Mencheta, who lived every hour of the intense eight days of filming with them: “I think the main reason why they all wanted to be traitors is to put themselves in the skin of evil. I think we are a country of the faithful, ruled by traitors. We are too good and being given the chance to be bad attracts.”
Cristina Cifuentes, one of the participants, is the one who best dodges the difficulties of having to betray and interpret that you are still the good guy: “I know that because I have been a politician, I am the one with the most ballots to be suspected, but I don’t know how to betray What I do know is that they will betray you”.
Traitors is not just a game of betrayal or victory, it is manipulation in every possible way. Only the three traitors, chosen by Sergio Peris-Mencheta in a conclave reminiscent of the novels of the queen of mystery, Agatha Christie, know the truth: who are the faithful, the 15 remaining contestants, who will be killed, they kill him , and who is really manipulating the minds of others to become the real traitor.
The game, like El Cluedo, is attractive on its own. Who does not like to discover a crime? But it is also that The Traitors has chosen one of the best castings that are remembered in a reality show. Actors such as Anna Allen, Apolonia Lapiedra, Fernando Guillén Cuervo or Rubén Ochandiano, among others; politicians (and former), such as Cristina Cifuentes, noted from the beginning and, in her words, a good connoisseur of betrayals “because I have experienced many”; athletes, such as Jaime Nava, Joana Pastrana or Ray Zapata; scriptwriters, such as Abril Zamora; journalists, like Juan Sanguino; and, of course, black novel writers, such as Julio Muñoz Gijón. A hodgepodge of characters who are experts in double faces and imagination who begin their journey on a kind of Orient Express and who end up doubting everything and everyone.
“It’s been a lot of fun,” says Peris-Mencheta, chosen as a guide not for being an actor but for being a “gamer.” “In the end it’s a game, but a role-playing game and some of them took it more personally because they know there can only be one left. There were small crises, even one of the contestants couldn’t stand it and had to leave Traitors,” he confesses.
The game begins as soon as you get on that train. Three groups, divided into three wagons where the first alliances are created. Alliances that will last as long as a candy at the door of a school. Everyone, including the traitors, has to get the most silver bars in each test. Because, although they know that three traitors are hiding among them, the game must continue and they will have to team up despite their suspicions.
During the first night, Sergio Perismencheta chooses those three traitors, only the three of them know that they are traitors and they know that the rest are the faithful, their victims. Every night, the three traitors will meet and decide who is going to die. But, be careful, among the traitors there are those who betray even more. One of them will seek from the beginning to confuse the faithful, but also his cronies, which will bring with it an extreme psychological game from which everyone will be touched. An exciting competition between good and evil in which no one knows who to trust.
Traitors discovers you and teaches you a lot about the human soul”
Traitors pushes the contestants and the spectators to the limit who will see how the human being can transform into authentic Fausts making a pact with the devil to save his soul. The reality drags them to that extreme. There are no risky, shocking, or physical strength tests, they are all destructive. To such an extent that Traitors even celebrate the funerals of their victims. They invite relatives, place the graves in the middle of the cemetery, even with wreaths and the image of the murdered. And no, it is not to say goodbye to the deceased, but so that right there, in the middle of the burial, they continue playing. The reaction of all of them shocks. Few, if any, are affected by that cruel moment, everyone continues to play.
“When I got to the first funeral, it impacted me a lot. Seeing the coffin, the flowers, the photo of the dead man, but it is true that you are so absorbed by the game and by the recording of that moment that it was in real time that you do not get carried away. I lived it with humor, that black humor that got in the way,” says the actor.
Only the best players, the coldest, the most ‘destroyer’ will be able to withstand such pressure. Because in the midst of all this, ties will be created that will have to be broken and that will cause terrible confrontations that can lead to death. “Traitors reveals you and teaches you a lot about the human soul,” concludes Sergio Perismencheta, convinced that he would play without hesitation, but “would be faithful.”
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
