🎧 TV Tales: How ‘Traitors’ Broke Through & Upended Reality

I talk to exec producer Mike Cotton about one of my personal viewing obsessions, how they did it and what twists and turns lie ahead

HIGHLAND KING Mike Cotton outside Ardross Castle in Scotland, where both the U.K. and the U.S. editions of The Traitors are filmed. (Courtesy of subject)

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts

This is the fifth and final in Richard Rushfield’s second season of Hollywood Stories, featuring TV Tales. Earlier episodes include hilarious, smart and candid conversations with Nell Scovell, the TV writing titan behind Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Leesa Bellesi, who prayed for aspiring singers as the proprietor of American Idol Ministries, Bruce Vilanch, the comedy maestro behind years of Oscar telecasts and some of the most memorable and unhinged variety TV spectaculars from the 1970s, and Big Mouth creators Nick Kroll, Andrew Goldberg, Mark Levin and Jennifer Flackett.

In the final edition of this season’s Hollywood Stories, I got to talk about The Traitors — a show of which I am an unapologetic superfan — with executive producer Mike Cotton, the man who brought it to both the U.K. and U.S. Originally a Dutch format, Traitors landed in Cotton’s hands when he snapped up the rights and then “took that idea and helped supersize it for a U.K. and U.S. audience,” as he put it.

At a time when reality TV feels overly crowded and mostly staid, Traitors is the rare original to break through, taking the well-trod format to new places while incorporating the genre’s best competitors, from Housewives to Survivors and Bachelors, all treacherously competing for a grand prize. Last year, the series dethroned RuPaul’s Drag Race at the Emmys, ending its five-out-of-six-year run as top reality competition.

REAL HONOR Mike Cotton and Amanda Lovett, a star of The Traitors' first U.K. season on the BBC, at the 2023 BAFTA TV Awards in London, where the show took the top reality prize. (Antony Jones/BAFTA/Getty Images for BAFTA)

“What I love about this show is it’s a really rich world,” Cotton told me. “We can take inspiration from murder mysteries, from thrillers, from horror movies, and we’re constantly thinking of what we can do different.”

Over the course of our conversation, the executive producer shared how the show’s contestants get sucked into the game, why his team takes a “hands-off approach” to let the drama develop — and what might lie ahead for Peacock’s breakout hit. “It’d be great to see some sort of All-Stars bringing back some of the best players, but I think we’re a little away from that yet,” he said.

FAITHFUL FAN I interviewed Cotton via Zoom on June 11. (Screenshot)

---