A snake-wrangling Southern hunk…
…Taylor Swift’s future mother-in-law…
…a former “Bachelor” in his next act…
…and some Bravo Housewives…
…strut into a Scottish castle.
That mad mix of modern celebrity is the magic of “The Traitors,” the reality competition series on Peacock that has become a smash by pulling disparate threads of popular culture into a tangled, campy mess.
An elaborate cousin of murder-mystery party games like Werewolf or Mafia, “Traitors,” currently in its fourth American season, follows a clandestine pack of killers who operate among a cast of fellow players they must target for a murder each night. Everyone else — the Faithfuls, as they’re known — is tasked with sniffing out the Traitors, inevitably turning on one another in the process.
The real thrust of the action is the evolving social dynamic among the nearly two dozen contestants, who arrive as part of existing factions. The so-called Gamer contingent (plucked from competition shows like “Survivor” and “Big Brother”) meets reality TV characters from the globe-spanning “Real Housewives” universe, “The Bachelor” and “Love Island.” Sprinkle in some queens from “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” a “Top Chef” and a few secret ingredients and you have an unscripted stew with notes of both comfort and spice.
As “The Traitors” solidifies its reputation for assembling an “Avengers” lineup of reality TV heroes and villains, the behind-the-scenes executives responsible for casting the show revealed their methods for building the ideal mix of complementary and clashing personalities. (Spoilers ahead.)
Lean Into Existing Fandoms
“People tune in for one person.”
Decades into the evolution of reality programming — and the stigmas around it — the pool of potential participants has greatly expanded, according to the veteran casting director Deena Katz, an executive producer of “Traitors” who has worked on other medley shows like “Dancing With the Stars” and “The Masked Singer.”
Katz, the primary talent wrangler for a show this freewheeling, considers this evolution a major boon for her casting alchemy.
“Some of the bad P.R. that unscripted shows would get is like, ‘Oh, it’s all has-beens, people that don’t have a job,’” she said. But as the idea of celebrity has widened to include influencers, creators and niche stars whose reach is not actually so niche, “it’s a whole different word,” Katz added. The “buckets” she uses to cast the show — now including everyone from podcasters to viral TikTokers — “have opened up.”
Take Donna Kelce, the mother of the N.F.L. champions Jason and Travis Kelce, Taylor Swift’s fiancé:
Mama Kelce, was a big, left-field get for “Traitors” this season — a reality TV superfan who brought at least three distinct demographics of potential viewers with her: “She crosses over so many boxes, because if you’re a football fan then Donna ticks it for you,” Katz said. “If you’re older and you watch these shows always rooting for the older one, Donna ticks it for you.”
And then there’s the Swiftie contingent, which put Kelce, 73, squarely in the center of the zeitgeist. “The idea that you’re watching at home and you’ve got to figure that Taylor and Travis were having a viewing party just like you,” Katz said. “I think that’s great fun.”
“Traitors” gained another untapped audience with the casting of Eric Nam, a veteran K-pop performer and songwriter with millions of Instagram followers:
“In this past year, as a company, we’ve been looking at how to incorporate the popularity and the fandom of K-pop,” said Christine Cowan, the senior vice president of talent and casting for NBCUniversal, referring to fans known for their intense, participatory fervor.
“People tune in for one person,” Cowan said. “If you pull in different pockets, they will come.”
Embrace Corporate Crossover
“Television people watch television.”
The backbone of the “Traitors” cast, as with most all-star assemblages across entertainment, is corporate synergy.
“I do have buckets of like, NBC/Peacock talent,” Katz said of the show’s parent company, NBCUniversal, which also runs Bravo, with its franchises like “The Real Housewives,” “Vanderpump Rules” and “Top Chef.”
“I love synergy. I love crossover. I think that’s fantastic,” Katz said. Cowan estimated, “If you have a cast of 23, 24, I feel like we probably have at least one-third, almost one-half, of NBCUniversal talent.”
This year, in addition to the “Top Chef” winner-turned-host Kristen Kish…
…and five Housewives, including Lisa Rinna…
…the cast features the former Olympic figure skaters Tara Lipinski and Johnny Weir, real-life best friends and commentating partners for NBC’s coverage of the Winter Games.
“We’re not stupid,” Katz said. “The Winter Olympics are going to be airing right when this is on and that’s going to be all over, on every television.”
Still, some flexibility among rival network executives is crucial to Katz’s mix.
The casting director has dipped into her relationships from ABC’s “Dancing With the Stars,” where she originally used three of this season’s “Traitors” contestants (Weir, Rinna and Mark Ballas).
Players from “Survivor” and “Big Brother,” both CBS properties, have also been key characters in every season of “Traitors,” despite some admitted territorial reservations from the “Survivor” host Jeff Probst. Still, Cirie Fields, who first appeared on “Survivor” in 2006 and starred in the first season of “Traitors” in 2023, will be back on Probst’s island for the show’s 50th season, which begins airing this month.
“I do love when the networks open up this way,” Katz said, adding that audiences don’t tend to care where they’re following their favorites. “Television people watch television.”
Explore Interpersonal Lore
“It really helps to turbocharge a season.”
Network loyalty isn’t enough on its own to make a strong cast. In the case of Lipinski and Weir, their offscreen friendship was also a necessary ingredient in their selection, given how it could affect strategic gameplay.
“We thought of them as a duo going in,” Katz said — another one of her go-to buckets for casting. “Is there a bromance? Is there a couple? A mother and daughter? Is it good that you’re in a team? Is it bad?”
Most players know going in that Housewives and Survivors tend to stick together in voting blocs — at least until they don’t — so Rinna voting early on against Porsha Williams, a fellow Housewife, led to a multi-episode plotline this season about suspicions she could be a Traitor:
In addition to presumed loyalty, personal baggage works, too. In past seasons, fruitful “Traitors” plotlines have involved simmering, sometimes decades-long beef between pairs like CT Tamburello and Trishelle Cannatella, onetime rivals from their MTV days who forged a shaky, paranoid alliance through Season 2 of “Traitors”…
…or Britney Haynes and Danielle Reyes, whose revenge arc on Season 3 of “Traitors” stemmed from unhealed wounds originating on “Big Brother.”
“It really helps to turbocharge a season, to get it running on full cylinders from the off,” said Sam Rees-Jones, a “Traitors” executive producer. “A more layered history, be it beef or friendship, helps cement the cast quickly, to get the story running at 100 miles an hour straight away,” leading to “some brilliant arcs.”
Welcome Chaos (to a Point)
“I don’t like when anyone fights and yells.”
In the pressure cooker of reality competition — the “Traitors” cast is secluded for weeks in remote Scotland — clashes are unavoidable, and are often good TV. Just how loose the resident loose cannons should be is a balance that Katz and her fellow executives try to strike.
“I don’t like when anyone fights and yells,” the casting director said. “That’s not my thing. I don’t look for that on any of my shows. It’s like, there’s going to be drama,” she added, “but you also want everyone to feel really comfortable.”
Enter Michael Rapaport.
Though most recognizable today as a social-media loudmouth and podcaster, Rapaport was once known as a character actor in films like “True Romance” and “Bamboozled.” To Katz’s daughter, though, he was “the police officer who dated Phoebe,” the casting director said, “so she’s like, ‘Oh my God, mom, you got somebody great from ‘Friends’!”
Katz acknowledged that Rapaport could be polarizing — never shy about his opinions on rap, gentrification, the New York Knicks or Israel — but insisted that wasn’t the reason she chose him. “He’s a firecracker,” she said. “He is also really funny. I think he’s great.”
Crucially, he is also a Housewives scholar and superfan, appearing on Bravo’s “Watch What Happens Live” and as a panel moderator at the BravoCon fan convention.
“How fun to have him on, knowing he’s a big Housewives fan, because what’s he going to do when he meets the Housewives?” Katz said. “Do they like him, do they not like him? He’s going to know people in that house that you might not realize he knows.”
Drama can also come in less-suspecting packages. “Traitors” chaos this season has revolved around the former “Bachelorette” and “Bachelor” contestant Colton Underwood, a onetime pro football player who came out as gay after his time on the dating shows.
(In 2020, before coming out, Underwood was the subject of a restraining order related to accusations that he had stalked his “Bachelor” girlfriend, a point of controversy and extracurricular drama surrounding “Traitors” this season. The restraining order was dropped later that year.)
Dividing fans, Underwood has played the white hat, “knight in shining armor” role — a “Traitors” archetype previously filled by Dylan Efron, brother of the actor Zac, and Peter Weber, known as Pilot Pete, another former Bachelor — but also attracted ire both in and out of the castle because of his history and aggressive gameplay.
After fans (and fellow contestants, like Rinna) seized on the past accusations against Underwood, leading to threats and recriminations, the show released a statement condemning the “cyberbullying or harassment” of its players.
Leave Room for a Lovable Wild Card
“Part of liking ‘Traitors’ is you kind of become their friends, right?”
Because “Traitors” unfolds in an unpredictable way — the much-hyped Kelce, for example, lasted only three episodes before being banished — casting must leave room for Cinderella stories, in which lesser-known underdogs can emerge as favorites.
“Out of any other show I’ve worked on, it is the most hands-off, genuinely,” Rees-Jones said. “We create a set, we create a rulebook for them and we open the castle gates.” He added, “We would never tell anyone who to talk to, what to talk about — you can’t, because there’s a secret at the heart of the show.”
Amid splashier names this season, Rob Rausch, an aw-shucks, snake-catching charmer already known to “Love Island” fans, has become a breakout sensation thanks to his laid-back mien, sharp vocabulary and confident style, like going shirtless under overalls:
“It’s really funny,” Katz said, “how important everybody’s wardrobe is.” Contestants bring their own clothes, which have become an important ingredient in how fans respond to their presence.
The casting director pointed to Gabby Windey, of the “Bachelor” universe, as an earlier contestant who used “Traitors” as a launchpad to wider celebrity, because she played a more psychologically complex game than audiences may have expected from a former N.F.L. cheerleader:
Katz noted that audiences got to see a smarter, savvier side of Windey, who also worked as an E.R. nurse before becoming the Bachelorette (and later, like Underwood, coming out as queer). “I think part of ‘Traitors’ is you kind of become their friends, right?” she added, which in turn leads to more opportunity.
“There is such a thing now as the professional reality star,” said Rachel Smith, the executive vice president of unscripted content at NBCUniversal. “You can make a living doing this.”
Katz, who is currently winnowing down hundreds of names for Season 5, keeps a running list of potential talent at all times — the more “out-of-the-box,” the better. “I want to find more Donna Kelces,” she said, adding that she pores over Reddit and blogs and has even been known to Google, Who do you want in Season 5 of “Traitors”?
“I want to see what the audience likes,” Katz said. “I’m not making this for me.”
Photo and video credits: Peacock (“Traitors” and “Love Island”); NFL (Donna Kelce and Taylor Swift); ABC (“The Bachelor” and “Bachelor in Paradise”); Bravo (“The Real Housewives of New York, Potomac, Beverly Hills and Atlanta” and “Top Chef”); Christian Petersen/Getty Images (Travis and Donna Kelce); Roberto Ricciuti/Redferns, via Getty Images (Eric Nam); Loccisano/Getty Images (Tara Lipinski and Johnny Weir); CBS (“Survivor” and “Big Brother”); Bright/Kauffmann/Crane Productions, via Everett Collection (“Friends”)
Joe Coscarelli is a culture reporter for The Times who focuses on popular music and a co-host of the Times podcast “Popcast (Deluxe).”
The post How ‘The Traitors’ Builds a Reality TV Dream Team appeared first on New York Times.
