9 Million People Just Watched Richard E. Grant Blow His Own Cover on The Celebrity Traitors

Britain barely left the sofa on Thursday night. When the second season of The Celebrity Traitors premiered on October 1, it did not just win the night. It rewrote the record books for the BBC’s most talked about reality show, pulling in an average audience of 8.9 million viewers and peaking at 9.1 million. At one point, more than half of everyone watching television in the United Kingdom, a staggering 54.9 percent share, was inside that Scottish castle.

The numbers are the biggest debut of any series of The Traitors ever seen in the UK. And the kicker? These are only the overnight ratings. Once the iPlayer catch up figures land, the total is expected to climb even higher.

The biggest debut in Traitors history

To understand how big this is, look at what came before. The first celebrity series launched last autumn with an overnight audience of 6.1 million, which was already a ratings winner for the broadcaster. Its finale later peaked at 15.4 million viewers, making it the biggest television audience of 2025.

The civilian edition, which first launched in 2022, has been a phenomenon in its own right. Its most recent series premiere in January drew an overnight audience of 6.4 million, and its finale peaked at 9.6 million. Season two of the celebrity version has now sailed past both of those launch figures in a single night.

The follow up show, The Celebrity Traitors: Uncloaked, which aired directly after the main episode, averaged 3.1 million viewers on its own. That is the kind of audience most primetime shows would celebrate as a headline act. For this franchise, it is the after party.

How Richard E. Grant became the most chaotic traitor in the show’s history

Ratings do not arrive by accident. This premiere had something viewers could not look away from, and his name is Richard E. Grant.

Within the opening episode, Grant and Love Island host Maya Jama were selected as the first two traitors. What happened next has already entered Traitors legend. Just minutes after leaving the roundtable, Grant openly told a group of Faithfuls that he was a traitor, nearly wrecking the game before it had properly begun.

Executive producer Sarah Fay could barely believe it. Speaking to press including Radio Times, she described the moment as a mixture of a little bit of sickness coming up and a punch at the same time. In her words, never in their wildest dreams did the producers think they would have a traitor admit they were a traitor five minutes after the roundtable.

The fallout set up a delicious cliffhanger. The traitors were told they had a chance to recruit, and could kill another contestant at the same time. They chose comedian James Acaster and University Challenge presenter Amol Rajan, who were brought face to face with the two traitors and challenged to plead their case. Both argued they could help deflect attention away from Grant after his blunder, and the episode ended before the traitors chose who to save.

That is the kind of ending that sends people straight to the group chat, and straight back to the television the next night.

The cast chasing the prize

Grant may have stolen the premiere, but the castle is packed with names. The 21 celebrity contestants include Bella Ramsey, Myha’la, Maya Jama, James Acaster, Jerry Hall, James Blunt, Michael Sheen and Amol Rajan, all playing the game of trust and betrayal under the watchful eye of host Claudia Winkleman.

It is a lineup that blends acting royalty, music stars, comedy and television presenters, and that mix is part of the formula. Viewers tune in for the strategy. They stay for watching famous people be gloriously bad at lying.

The show airs on BBC One and iPlayer every Thursday and Friday at 8 p.m. BST, which gives the watercooler conversation a full weekend to build between episodes. Expect social media to do the rest.

Why the numbers keep climbing

The Traitors has become that rare thing, a franchise that gets bigger every time it returns. The UK format, filmed in a Scottish castle with Claudia Winkleman’s now iconic wardrobe and delivery, has spawned a global empire. The United States version, hosted by Alan Cumming on Peacock, has become a hit in its own right, and the civilian spinoff New Blood launched in September.

Celebrity editions raise the stakes because the audience arrives with opinions. Everyone watching already knows who Richard E. Grant is. They know Maya Jama from Love Island. They have feelings about James Blunt. That familiarity turns every roundtable into a personality collision, and Thursday’s premiere proved that when the casting is right, the ratings follow.

Nine million people did not tune in by chance. They tuned in because The Celebrity Traitors has become appointment television, the show you have to watch live so nobody spoils the traitors for you. With numbers like these, expect the BBC to keep the castle doors open for a very long time.

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