'It’s like cold war torture’ - Siobhan McSweeney on The Traitors Ireland ahead of premiere
Siobhán McSweeney discusses all things The Traitors Ireland ahead of the shows premiere on RTÉ
Excitement is growing ahead of the highly anticipated premiere of The Traitors Ireland on RTÉ One television this coming weekend.
Ahead of the first episode - on Sunday, August 31 - presenter and host of the show Siobhán McSweeney has been speaking about all aspects of latest iteration to The Traitors growing global franchise.
Speaking to Kieran Cuddihy on Newstalk, McSweeney expressed her nerves ahead of the show's much-awaited Sunday premiere: "I really really am nervous about it. I'm nervous about it because everybody is so excited about it."
She continued: "You want to be the underdog – we're Irish, we like to be the underdog right? I like sort of surprising people with that, oh well she didn't mess that up as much as I thought she would and instead people are going this is going to be really lovely. Thing is, I suspect they're right but I'm still nervous."
Despite being the show's presenter Siobhan stated being a contestant is not something she would ever consider. "I would never go for this show, no I wouldn't last an hour, I wouldn't last a second – not at all no."
She even went on to say: "I do think that everybody who applied for the show is a bloody weirdo and shouldn't be allowed out in normal and should actually be chipped and kept because you're weird if you want to be in this game."
The Traitors Ireland was filmed at Slane Castle in Meath earlier this year
Following in the footsteps of other Traitors hosts such as, Claudia Winkleman of the UK series, Siobhán explained her belief that she had to make her persona her own. "There was no point trying to do a carbon copy or even like a rubbish copy of it."
Instead, her presenting persona was formed from the "pressure cooker circumstances – so this diamond was formed" that jokingly became known as 'Lady Muck'.
Siobhán detailed how she was warned (by producers) not to favour certain contestants, saying: "My instinct is to be their friend and you can't do that or you can't say that things are going to be okay because they're not – they're going to get worse."
Host of the American version of The Traitors, actor Alan Cummings, warned her to "be careful about your face".
She revealed that when he was filming, he would feel his face was neutral but watching back he would see that he was "eyerolling in the back."
Siobhán quipped that this was a very hard aspect of hosting. "I have no poker face. I have a thought; you see it on my face immediately."
A fan of the show herself, McSweeney detailed how in the show's "extraordinary environment" that all the contestants' gameplans went out the window completely after filming started.
"As soon as they're put under pressure, those game plans go out the window completely, I'm not even talking about the challenges or the extraordinary things they had to do – I'm talking about the length of the days, the constantly being in front of the camera, the constantly talking to people, the constantly trying to figure it out."
Concluding the interview, she spoke about the pressures of the show. "It's a way to make somebody mad. It's like cold war torture."
Along with their game plans, she explained that contestants trying to mimic gameplay for other versions of the show "fell away very quickly, adding: "That's one thing that surprised me is that despite the show being about being duplicitous and inauthentic in a lot of ways, the circumstances and conditions of the show forced you to be exactly who you are – it stripped away that artifice."
The Derry Girls star joked alongside Cuddihy that one of the main problems the show's production company, Kite Productions, would have faced in Ireland was finding a group of contestants who do not know each other – or who aren't related!
On the show's upcoming premiere, Siobhán finished by teasing: "I am nervous, and I am nervous of the reaction but from what I've seen and of course filming it you don't see everything – it is really good."
Other than The Traitors Ireland, McSweeney revealed that she will also feature in Pottery Throwdown as well as on the Nation Theatre stage in England in 'Playboy of the Western World' alongside fellow Irish actors, Nicola Coughlan, Anna Hardwick and Roy Keane.
The Traitors Ireland can be watched on RTÉ One and the RTÉ Player from 9.30pm on Sunday August 31