“Les Traîtres” return for a sixth season this Saturday on M6. While the filming of the seventh edition is about to start, the success of this hidden roles game show remains unchanged. It has a far greater appeal than other shows (“Mask Singer,” “Dancing with the Stars”…) to celebrities, many of whom seek to participate.
Despite this, each season, several candidates later reveal how unpleasant the experience was for them. “My husband picked up the pieces for me. I’ve never cried like that. I was at the end of my rope, it was pathetic. I thought about giving up,” confessed Charlotte de Turckheim to “Télé Star” two years ago. So what motivates participants to venture into this ordeal?
“I shouldn’t say this, but I loved it. I love to suffer!” joked Isabelle Morini-Bosc. She, who covered “Les Traîtres” as a media journalist, switched sides to experience the game as a player. “The castle is a character in itself, it influences you, it’s extraordinary,” she said, emphasizing that she always found the game’s concept and storytelling “fascinating.”
An “unknown” and “hostile” terrain for Sophie Davant
Sophie Davant had been contacted by the production “several times” but always declined, “due to lack of time.” The journalist and presenter eventually said yes to this season 6, pushed by her children and her friend Caroline Margeridon, a figure from the second edition. “She nagged me with this show, she told me she experienced something crazy, I didn’t understand what she was talking about,” she said. “I had a bit more time this year, so I thought I was silly never to have watched it, so I watched and I found it great, very well produced and edited, with suspense, like a series.”
“I had one certainty, that I was entering unknown territory and that I probably wouldn’t be a great player because I’m not very strategic. But I thought I’d be able to adapt,” she continued. However, on site, she felt immersed in a “hostile” environment: “Before filming started, we spent an evening together with the other candidates, we bonded, I wanted to know more about them, and as soon as the game started, poof, we were directly faced with betrayal, escape, behavioral changes. And that, I really didn’t handle well. It was violent. That’s the game, but it reinforced my idea that I had nothing to do there,” concluded Sophie Davant.
“A psychological and emotional experience”
Artist Richard Orlinski understands it. “We know that betrayal will come. At the same time, friendships are formed, all of this resonates with deeply rooted aspects within ourselves,” he said. For him, there is a “before and after” “Les Traîtres”: “It’s a real psychological, emotional, relational experience that is out of the ordinary, that few people experience, and there are no other programs in the world that make you feel that way.”
“When I left the game, I cried for three days,” revealed Nicole Ferroni. The comedian and presenter is perhaps the participant of this season who has most often consulted the psychologist provided by the production before, during, and after filming. “I had an interesting conversation with her. She explained to me that the stress we experience as a traitor or loyal is not the same… Traitors start with very high stress. Over time, as they master the game and know each other, their stress decreases. For the loyal ones, it’s the opposite. At the beginning, they are numerous, building human relationships. They suspect each other a bit, but as they are confident, they are more serene. And as the game progresses, they become more lonely and paranoid,” she explained.
What struck her particularly? Seeing how easy it is to act as a pack, to make accusations against a scapegoat, without real solid evidence. “I felt guilty for being so sure. I was impressed by my ability to feel superior, to think that I had the keys,” she confessed.
“I love the learning experience the show brought me. But, honestly, it was a bit traumatizing,” explained Nicole Ferroni. After filming, she often replayed the game in her head and even “dreamed a lot about it.” But paradoxically, if she were offered to participate in “Les Traîtres” again, she wouldn’t hesitate for a second. “I would say yes a hundred times! Because now, I know how it works.”
