BBC / Studio Lambert / The Celebrity Traitors
James Blunt has set the record straight on James Acaster’s dramatic roundtable confession — and the singer insists it wasn’t the voluntary “fall on his sword” moment viewers saw.
Speaking to the BBC after the series finale (won by Faithfuls Sebastian ‘Bash’ Croft and Romesh Ranganathan), Blunt said the interrogation was far heavier than the edit suggested.
BBC / Studio Lambert / The Celebrity Traitors
“He didn’t fall on his sword. That’s what you saw, that’s what you feel, but he didn’t,” Blunt explained. “You didn’t see the full extent of the interrogation. It went incredibly hard… It was heavy in there, and it was clear-cut. He was pinned to a post. We got him. We really, really got him.”
Blunt was referring to the penultimate episode of The Celebrity Traitors Series 2, during which Acaster was caught in a lie about a perfume bottle used in Ross Kemp’s murder in plain sight. Once that fell apart, there was nowhere left to go.
Acaster’s Side of the Story
Acaster, who repeatedly called himself a reluctant Traitor, shocked his fellow players and the millions watching at home when he outed himself as a Traitor ahead of the roundtable vote.
Euan Cherry/Studio Lambert/BBC/Press Association
“I was made a Traitor, without wanting to be,” Acaster revealed at the roundtable. “I’ve had a unique experience on this that no one has had before, where I wanted to be a Faithful; that’s all I wanted to be. I couldn’t just go, ‘Guys, it’s me, vote for me’. But that’s all I can do, really.”
In his exit interview, he admitted the grilling caught him off-guard: “It was sprung on me. It was a surprise, definitely. So that was like a shocker. But I was glad that they caught me.” He’d previously thought there was “absolutely no heat on him whatsoever.”
BBC / Studio Lambert / The Celebrity Traitors
Victim of the Edit
Speaking to the BBC, Blunt summed up the classic reality-TV frustration. “No matter what really went on in that castle, you’re a victim of the edit,” he explained, adding that there were moments he was “screaming at the screen” because his memory of events didn’t match what aired.
BBC/Studio Lambert/Euan Cherry
Maya Jama, who recruited Acaster, later told Variety she had no idea he didn’t want to be a Traitor. “I just thought everyone’s kind of up for it,” she said, adding that balancing the game with real feelings is tougher than it looks.
The semi-final and confession pulled in 10.7 million viewers. Acaster, meanwhile, has said the whole experience still feels surreal: “Nothing feels very real at the minute… I prepared myself for being bombarded all the time, which hasn’t happened.”
