The Traitors producers explain the thing they’re changing for season 3

No matter how season 2 of the U.S. version of The Traitors ends, people will be yelling. After a season of twists, turns, some disappointing traitor strategies, and incredible Alan Cumming looks, season 2 has skyrocketed The Traitors to a runaway hit for Peacock this year. To help kill some time before season 3, people will, no doubt, turn to other countries’ editions (the U.K. one is even better than the U.S. one, depending on who you ask) — which, according to Traitors producers Sam Rees-Jones and Stephen Lambert, might give you a clue as to what’s in store for season 3.

While season 2 of Traitors changed the game by featuring a cast of all notable public figures (mostly reality stars, but also a boxer, a former House of Commons member, even one of Michael Jordan’s sons), Lambert and Rees-Jones believe there’s more places to go in the next season. Here’s what they told Polygon about how they built season 2’s cast, what surprised them most this season, and the big change they can’t wait to make for season 3.

Polygon: Tell me about how you go about building a cast of contestants — what do you look for to get the right mix of personalities?

Sam Rees-Jones: It sort of develops as you focus on different people and you go, OK, well, what he was going to bring us, I don’t know, Who’s going to bring us a fish out of water? Bergie brings us a different lane; Kevin brings us a different lane.

Of course, you can sort of start and go, There’s 22 players, we need to feel this. But I don’t think that’s the best way of looking at it. [The best way is] when you start adding to the list, and you can see where the holes are, and who will bring different things. But if you try too hard, then it sort of doesn’t feel organic.

Stephen Lambert: You initially approach people you think are gonna be great and exciting and must-gets. And when you get some of those, OK, well, who else can we get? Who will balance?

Rees-Jones: And who wants to play the game, as well. You want people to actually really want to play it, because that’s when you get the most compelling content, with people that want to do it.

Lambert: The biggest argument in favor of doing a civilian cast, because with a civilian cast it really matters when they win. This is nice money, but for some of these people, it’s not life-changing or anything. I think they’re very good at caring about it.

Do you think you’d ever do an all-American civilian cast?

Lambert: Well, it’s not really up to us. I mean, yeah, we would be happy to do that. But at the moment, we’ve embarked on doing it with — I don’t know the right word to describe these people — reality celebrities. And that seems to be working. So I think we’ll stick with that for a while. But yeah, I mean, I think if the show becomes sufficiently well known then they would work with a civilian cast to see what it would be like.

Generally, shows go from starting with civilians, and then you have a celebrity version. I can’t think of many examples where it started with celebrities, and then the civilian version has been created. But, I mean, a lot of the biggest unscripted shows in America are with civilians.

Plus, I imagine with so many different versions around the world, you can start to borrow from each other.

Lambert: Yes — well, we do. We come up with things and the other versions adopt them. And there are some things that we hear are happening in other versions that we’re gonna borrow in our next season.

In terms of season 3, how are you approaching it? Is there anything you’re looking to change from season 2?

Lambert: Making the missions more relevant to the narrative of the show. I think that’s been a watch word for us for the beginning, really. Because I think the missions can sometimes be just — the idea that they’re revealing of character, and that this will actually guide the traitors, is a bit limited.

So having the shields as part of the missions I think helps a lot. But I think there are other ways that we don’t want to go into yet about how we can make those missions more sort of integral to the real narrative, which is trying to work out who’s a traitor and who’s a faithful, and play into what happens in the roundtable. Because the heart of the show is the roundtable. And that’s the best part of the show. And we need those missions to be informing what happens and influencing what happens in the roundtable. And we think there might be ways of doing that.

Do you feel like season 2 hasn’t done that as well as you would like?

Rees-Jones: I think it’s taken us a step in the right direction — because we implemented the shields into this season, which I think really worked. So you had, in episode 5, Peter’s plan hatched around that bird mission, which kind of broke off into story. The funeral march was obviously embedded in the narrative, which we loved.

But I think it’s just continuing to develop and, you know, continuing to sort of push it and keep on going in, [all] in the direction of making what needs to happen — and has happened this season, but making it better. If you take the missions out of the episode, does the episode not work? Well, it shouldn’t work, because the missions should be integral. I think in season 1, you could have taken some of the missions out and it wouldn’t have actually impacted the story. We’ve been getting much better at that. But we can keep on improving.

How far in advance do you come up with the missions? Or is that about to change, too?

Lambert: As soon as we start putting work on a new season, we start planning the missions and getting the missions to the point where we’re happy with them. And in this case, NBC/Peacock are happy with them — because they need to be built. There’s a lot of work that goes into making them, so the earlier we can get them agreed, the better. But at the same time, everybody wants to make sure that we’ve come up with a really good one. So sometimes it’s a tension.

How has it been watching this season with all reality celebrities now that you have all the personalities in there?

Lambert: With civilians, they don’t know each other. So it takes them a while to form an opinion of each other. Whereas here, in many cases, they do have history with each other. And I think that’s interesting. [With] nearly all competition shows, the biggest problem is getting going. And if people have got a bit of history with them, it’s easy to get going.

Rees-Jones: Yeah, with episode 1, we were out of the block straightaway in season 2; to have those pre-rivalries, it’s great to riff off straightaway. There were accusations at the first pick — not even the first roundtable, [we saw] those accusations thrown. So within the first 10 minutes, the game was going, which is quite challenging sometimes in this type of show.

As far as watching it: I mean, genuinely, when we’re making it, it’s like we’re a viewer. And we’re very hands-off, producing-wise, so you’re watching things happen in front of you, and we are reacting like the viewers will be at home. And that’s the joy of the show: We let these narratives play out, and we don’t influence them.

Have you been surprised by any of the feedback in terms of what fans are pulling out of the season?

Rees-Jones: We’re obviously over in the U.K., and we listen, we watch the social media reaction, we keep an eye on it. But some people don’t like some people; some people will love that person. Some people think that someone made a terrible decision, some people sort of argue it. So it’s creating conversation […] and we’re enjoying people being able to watch it weekly and have those watercooler moments as they discuss what’s happening.

Were there any moments that surprised you, or that you didn’t expect to go the way they did? What’s been the most surprising or favorite moment from the season?

Rees-Jones: There’s some great moments you think, Oh, I didn’t really think about that — [like] MJ walking out of room uncomfortably sort of blew up as a meme. I just saw that as an awkward walking out of the room!

Lambert: The shock of them all realizing that there was a funeral, and that they were going to have to put the rose into them, and then seeing the coffin close.

Rees-Jones: That breakfast when the traitors [didn’t kill] Ekin Su and just watching that it’s amazing.

Lambert: I think Dan being banished—

Rees-Jones: Dan being blindsided was great. […] We don’t have Big Brother over [in the U.K.] so we were taking him on face value. But, he played a good game—

Lambert: Well, he did and he didn’t. I mean, his reluctance to express any opinions about who was a traitor didn’t help him at all.