Peacock greenlights a second season of ‘The Traitors’

On Thursday, Peacock announced it was re-upping its reality series The Traitors.

The unscripted competition series stars Tony winner Alan Cumming as a mysterious figure who hosts a cutthroat competition at his Scottish estate.

The series, which dropped its full season on the streaming service, is “a nail-biting psychological adventure in which treachery and deceit are the name of the game.”

Season 1 featured “a mix of reality icons and America’s best game-players,” including Amanda Clark (an emergency room nurse), Andie Thurmond (director of music services), Anjelica Conti (hair stylist), Arie Luyendyk Jr. (Bachelor/Bachelorette), Cirie Fields (Survivor) and Brandi Glanville from The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.

In The Traitors, 20 contestants compete in a series of challenges, with a quarter of a million bucks at stake. But the twist is, three of their kind are secretly traitors trying to undermine them — even conspiring to “murder” them.

Cumming told ABC Audio that he wasn’t immediately sold on the show, but the idea of playing the show’s “campy” games master, dramatic costumes and all, soon got him hooked.

“I watched the Dutch one because it’s based on a Dutch show,” he explained. “So they sent me that, and then I talked to them and I sort of was like, ‘Oh, I don’t know.'”

He adds, “But then they told me they wanted to play this sort of character, and it was my castle, and I’m playing this sort of heightened version of myself, and that really interested me. And then when the stylist, Sam Spector, started, you know, talking about ideas for the clothes, I thought, ‘Oh, I get it, this is going to be a hoot.'”

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.