'127 prison guards applied': I visited The Traitors Ireland set — here's what to expect this year
Deirdre McArdle at the round table on the set of The Traitors Ireland at Slane Castle, where some tense scenes will be played out when series two begins. Picture: Andres Poveda
An iron-clad NDA, cloak-and-dagger travel arrangements, dodging cameras, and skulking around a castle. It was all part and parcel of a media visit to the set.
As the bus wound its way towards Co Meath, my excitement levels were rising. Like more than two million Irish people last year, I was glued to . For almost a month we analysed, criticised, judged, shouted, laughed, and cheered. We swooned over Siobhán McSweeney’s glorious wardrobe. We fell in love with a former prison officer from Limerick.
The runaway hit, attracting an average of 557,000 viewers per episode, dominated conversations across the country last September. And I was about to step onto the set, to sit at the round table, to stand around in the conclave.
We’re visiting right in the middle of filming this year’s series, which debuts on RTÉ this weekend. There are seven contestants remaining, and we’re told they’re out on a mission. But as we exit the castle through its massive front door, they return; we catch a glimpse of the fleet of black SUVs pulling in. We’re quickly ushered back into the house. For a few seconds, it feels like we’re part of the show as we sneak our way to the back door of the castle.
The location of , Slane Castle, has main character energy and is the perfect location for the fiendish reality competition. It’s undeniably Irish, and that’s something the production company Kite Entertainment and RTÉ leaned into last year, and will continue to embrace this year.
“We deliberately wanted to make the show as Irish as possible," said Darren Smith, MD at Kite. "Putting 24 Irish people in a castle tends to get that by default."
The choice language of the Irish contestants last year, compared to the UK and US versions, was a topic of debate.
However, Smith says: "This year’s contestants are not as sweary a bunch. Look, they are swearing — on missions, in interviews — they’re just a little bit less sweary.”
Another theme of last year’s show was the cúpla focail that snuck in. This wasn’t intentional, says Smith, but it did end up being a useful “mission device”, working as a type of code language for some of the contestants.
The Irish language features even more prominently in this year’s series, says returning host Siobhán McSweeney. “This year we've really embraced it, and we have contestants who spontaneously bring [Gaeilge] to the table every single night.”
Another distinctly Irish feature of the show is McSweeney herself. Indeed, Smith proclaims her “such a huge part of the Irish characterisation of the show”.
Last year the Cork actor enhanced her obvious Irishness with a wonderful wardrobe of Irish-designed and inspired outfits. She tells us she has ramped this up for the new series.
As we skulk around the castle, watching our steps on the hundreds of cables snaking the floors, avoiding the 44 cameras, while minding our heads on the very low ceiling that marks the entrance to the infamous conclave, I’m struck by how difficult it must be for contestants to act normally, to forget there are cameras everywhere, recording their every move and conversation.
When Smith shows us the production room, I’m taken aback. There’s a real vibe - dozens of screens display different rooms and camera angles. There are very few “dead zones” explains Smith.
Story producers are always watching, always listening, always taking notes on the thousands of hours of footage. “We’re constantly gathering information, but you can't get everything at the time, and little gems appear when you're in the edit, particularly from the car, or little side conversations that you didn't know about,” explains the Kite MD.
Even with all that footage, the producers are often in the dark when it comes to the round tables. “We think we have a very clear idea of how the day is going to end, and we are always wrong when it comes to the round tables.”
These tense affairs, which we found out can go on for up to two hours, are undoubtedly the highlight of each episode. Last year’s round tables threw up several dramatic moments, including Eamon O'Keeffe’s fiery exit. This year will be no different, Smith reveals.
“We've had some phenomenal round tables this year. You can just feel it in the production room when there's a tense round table, crew who should have finished up an hour ago will stick around. We see that as a yardstick - if we're gripped by it, a cynical room of telly folk, it's a good indicator that we have something pretty special again.”
Will there be another Paudie? In a series of memorable characters last time, Paudie Moloney stood out. His quote, “I’m not a fucking hugger” will surely go down in Irish TV lore.
“I think what's lovely about Paudie is people were responding to him because he is a lovely, decent man. He became sort of the nation's grandad,” McSweeney says. “It's not that we're holding somebody up because they behaved appallingly. He was a gentleman the whole way through.”
Given Paudie’s success – he enjoyed a prolonged moment in the sun with turns on , another Kite Entertainment production, and – it’s little wonder that this year’s applications were heavy on the prison guard demographic. ,another Kite Entertainment production.
Of the 8,000 applications this year, 127 were prison guards, according to Smith. “We also had some brilliant older guys apply. In a heartbeat you'd put them in any show, but we agreed that it might have felt like we were looking for another Paudie.”
Fear not though, while there may not be another Paudie, McSweeney says this year’s cast is strong, and she wasn’t long getting used to a new batch of “children”.
“They've cast incredibly well this year. You don't feel like you're getting like a supermarket-brand version of last year’s cast. You're getting a completely different gang with a completely different dynamic and completely different way of working with each other.”
Choosing the cast is a big undertaking. “You want all types," says Smith. "With over 8,000 applicants, it’s an embarrassment of riches. We start deciding case by case: there's a lot of background checking going on, a lot of psychological testing.
"We need to know they are robust enough. We get to a shortlist, you might sign off about 16 that everyone's happy with, and then there'll always be debate over the last few.”
There are big characters this year, says Smith. “There’s definitely one character who is as strong in terms of the national love as there is going to be for this person, and they couldn't be more different than Paudie.
"The level of accidental funny in the room when this person is around, you know, the kind of funny we get from . This person is like a one-person Cabra Girl from
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The MD of Kite, who is our guide around the castle, likens to a game of football. “When you put different players in, you get a different game.”
Going into the first ever last year, the team didn’t know what to expect. This year, with a huge success on their hands, Smith says most of the lessons learned were around the production side. When it comes to the show itself, aside from a few furniture or set tweaks here and there, it’s a case of if 'it ain’t broke'.
The prize pot of €50,000 will remain. “We like the game play at the moment in terms of the level of brutality to it," said Smith. "If the prize money suddenly became a bigger number, that would change. Look, change is not bad. Change is fine, and we have a very different energy with this year's cast, so that’s a good change.”
There was also an element of this year’s cast thinking they could outsmart some of the missions.
“That just gives us a story,” says Smith. “It's a bit of a cliché, but you trust the game, you trust the format. You have to learn to un-produce when you're doing .”
McSweeney agrees. “People don't realise how little control we have in the game. There's a lot of false rumours about editorial stuff or planning or that we set the ball rolling, but it is really up to the contestants, and it's terrifying.
"We don’t know what’s going to happen from one day to the next. Which is why I think it makes such amazing telly, because just when you think you've got your hand on something, there's a twist.”
- The Traitors Ireland returns to screens on RTÉ1 on Sunday, August 30.
