Jumpy Traitors contestant Stephen – all sweaty grins and guilty, darting eyes – might seem like a bag of nerves to the viewer, but Amanda Lovett, one of the reality show titan’s biggest icons, thinks he'll defeat the odds and make it to the very end.
Amanda appeared on the debut series, earning the nickname “mother of dragons” after becoming one of the first ever Traitors to scheme in the turret. She escaped detection until the 10th episode, when she was banished by the Faithfuls.
The Welsh reality star believes the latest selection of Traitors are doing a decent job, and thinks cyber security consultant Stephen, 32, is the one who will go far.
This prediction may come as a surprise to fans, given that Stephen has faced mounting suspicion in recent episodes, having made two slip-ups, but Amanda told The Independent “he is handling the pressure tremendously well” – and she thinks he’ll make it to the end if he’s able to shake off the scent in the next few episodes.
“If he succeeds at a few roundtables and gets the pressure off him, I think he will be OK,” she said. “I think he might even get through to the final.”
In the latest episode, Stephen was correctly accused of being the Traitor who set Ross up ahead of his banishment. The episode before that had seen fellow player Ben tell a room of five contestants that, if he was murdered that night, they should look at Ross. Stephen brought this information back to his fellow Traitors Rachel and Hugo, and they decided to murder Ben to frame Ross. The next morning, though, Ross deduced that one of the five people who were privy to Ben’s comments must be a Traitor.
Despite people voicing their suspicions against him, Stephen’s confidence grew in the latest roundtable – and he appeared to throw people off his scent by launching a campaign against Maz. Amanda believes that Stephen being under suspicion this early might help his game plan and will prevent him from becoming overconfident.
“Stephen is playing a fantastic game of tennis. He is bouncing that ball back, giving them an excuse that he's not a threat. He’s playing the game brilliantly. To go up against people on that round table and to just switch it – that's why I think he will succeed.”
She continued: “If you go under the radar and nobody is suspecting you, you do get a bit cocky. And what every Traitor needs to remember is: they are not invisible. No one is invisible. It takes one little thing to get everybody talking.”
Amanda said she believes people might get bored of accusing Stephen and will start to direct their line of questioning elsewhere.
The ex-contestant also shed some light on the “difficult” roundtable experience, revealing that filming usually lasts for longer than an hour – and that the room is intentionally left cold to unnerve the contestants.
“It’s a long time you’re sitting there. The room is very cold because it’s not meant to be cosy and warm; it’s meant to suppress you. They used to play ‘The Hanging Tree’ [the sombre song from the Hunger Games franchise] before we would start talking, which really brought us totally down.
“The only way I could describe it is if you're sitting at the back of the classroom when you’re in primary school, and the teacher shouts at you, and the whole class turn around to look at you, and you can feel yourself shrinking into the floor. That is the feeling. It really is difficult.”
Amanda said she was not surprised to discover Fiona was the secret Traitor, believing her to have been too “playfully joyous” for a Faithful, and also defended Reece for failing to bring a crucial bit of information to his fellow Faithfuls: that the traitorous Stephen and Rachel ushered him away from the family tree photo so they could publicly scheme about which contestants to put up for murder.
“Reece never even thought of bringing that up, and the public is saying, ‘Why can't they see that?’ It’s because we see snippets of a day, and there are so many different things happening that your mind is constantly everywhere...”
Amanda believes Harriet is the strongest Faithful, calling her “one to watch”, but sticking to her roots, she ultimately wants the Traitors to win.
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