2 Highland hopefuls among 22 contestants in BBC's The Traitors series two
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International smash hit BBC TV series The Traitors returns to our screens tonight (Wednesday) – and there will be even more Highland interest in series two after a couple of Inverness women were named among the contestants.
The show already has a strong Highland connection owing to its filming location at Ardross Castle in Easter Ross, as well as the surrounding landscape.
But there will be added Highland interest after the 22 hopefuls were named by the BBC on the eve of the show airing.
For Inverness women Evie (29) and Tracey (58) will be among those vying for the £120,000 prize in the ultimate game of detection, backstabbing and trust.
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The show sees contestants take part in various missions but hidden amongst them are The Traitors whose job is to secretly 'murder' a player every night, without getting caught.
It’s up to the others, the Faithfuls, to try to detect who the traitors are, and banish them from the game, before they become their next victim.
For the lucky ones who survive to the end, they have the chance of winning that life-changing cash. But if a Traitor remains undetected, they’ll steal all the money.
Evie, who works as a veterinary nurse, was inspired to sign up as part of a personal list of 30 things she wants to do before she's 30.
She said: "When I turned 29, I said to myself, 'I’m going to do 30 things before I’m 30 that I’ve always wanted to do.' I ran the Edinburgh Marathon this year, I’ve visited Scottish islands and I do a lot of hiking. Working my way through my list I still had two more things to complete. I’d left two free to see what would happen, see if something came up, if I decided on something half-way through the year that I wanted to do then I'd do it.
"When I had one remaining, The Traitors series two came around and I said, 'OK, that’s going to be my last thing. That's going to be my final 30 before 30.'"
And she's excited by the intrigue which made the first series such a must-watch event.
"I want to be a Traitor," she added. "I think I would make a good Traitor because I look like such a Faithful. I don’t think people think I’m very mischievous, but I think that shows that I’d be really be good at it. So, I think my gameplan is to let people believe those preconceptions of me, I’m blonde and I’ve got the dimples, and I work with animals and I’m sweet.
"But there is a bit of an edge to me, and it’s an edge that has actually been carved out by my career, by veterinary nursing, because it is so tough. It’s really difficult, there are a lot of emotional tolls and there’s a lot of adapting to environments, stress, long hours, everything. The Traitors is a psychological pressure cooker, but I honestly do think you could apply that to working at the vets, you really could."
Tracey, meanwhile, is a sonographer and clairvoyant who has worked in the NHS for almost 40 years.
As with Evie, she too was excited to sign up having been glued to the screens during series one.
"I just loved it," Tracey said. "I thought it was the best game show I've seen in such a long time. I've never wanted to apply for a game show ever. Every day after I watched the series, I kept checking when I could apply for series two. I just knew I wanted to be on it and it just hit something with me, I thought “I want to be on this”. It was mainly the psychology of it and meeting people that you don't normally meet in your normal life."
And she hopes to win the £120,000 to help pay off the mortgage on her family's home.
"I would really love to retire," she continued. "When I got divorced, I bought the house because I wanted to keep me and the kids in the family home for stability. I had to re-mortgage and consequently still owe loads of mortgage. I sometimes think “Oh my god, I'm going to still be working in the NHS when I'm 70, they’ll be wheeling me in!” I've given the NHS nearly 40 years, so I feel like I would try and pay loads of mortgage off and then retire."
Stay tuned for full interviews with both Evie and Tracey later today.
– The Traitors series two gets under way on BBC One and iPlayer at 9pm tonight (Wednesday), with the next two episodes also released simultaneously on iPlayer. Those episodes also air on Thursday and Friday,
