Following Tuesday's nail-biting finale of The Traitors, RTÉ's Behind the Story podcast spoke with two of the people behind the hit show to find out how it all came together.
Katie, David and Fran – who are self-confessed fans – sat down with Darren Smith and Mairead Whelan of Kite Entertainment to uncover some of the secrets of the show.
From 24 hopefuls to five finalists, and three victors, The Traitors has had the Irish public hooked to see what came next – with 79% of 15 to 35-year-olds who watched TV watching the final.
"The figures are just so surreal," Ms Whelan said.
"It’s like everywhere we went, everybody was watching".
Finding contestants
Ms Whelan said there was a "huge response" when they were looking for contestants.
"We got about 4,000 applications," she said. "But at the beginning a lot of the applications were huge fans of the series – but then we went back to old-fashioned casting as well.
"We pounded the pavements and are casting producers were at the Ploughing, they were at tattoo conventions, they were meeting people everywhere".
Ms Whelan said all contestants would have gone through the same application process, but some were "approached on the street".
Mr Smith said the casting process can take months, so they are already casting for the next series. "We’re casting now – we’ve got 5,5000 applications in since Friday," he said.
Paudie and Andrew
Ms Whelan said the casting of Paudie and his son Andrew was done separately and carefully.
"We really loved Paudie and knew Paudie would be great – he happened to mention that other members of his family had applied," she explained.
"So, we went trawling through the applications and found another Moloney: they really didn’t know, and we weren’t sure when we met Andrew that it was definitely him".
Ms Whelan said they actually have very little involvement in the gameplay.
"You can decide who comes into breakfast and you can decide where they’re going on their mission, but you can’t get involved in anything that happened in terms of the game while they’re playing it in the castle".
Mr Smith said there was such secrecy on-set that contestants have their ears covered when not on camera.
"In the castle when we’re not rolling the players have to wear ear defenders," he said. "We don’t want them chatting to each other – we have to save all gameplay and all that stuff for camera".
Cover stories
Contestants can have no contact with the outside world – but as Mr Martin explained, it does not always go as planned.
"There were allowed tell one person [they were taking part] in case of an emergency", he said.
"As it happened one girl had a cover story was that she was going to a yoga retreat in Thailand, and then there was a tsunami near Thailand.
"Her father couldn’t contact her on the phone and her sister said, 'I have to tell him because otherwise he was getting on a flight to Thailand’".
With similar versions being produced all around the world, Ms Whelan said they made a conscious decision to give the show a unique Irish flavour.
"[Siobhán McSweeney] was our number one choice, we knew we really wanted an actor," she said.
"We also knew we didn’t want a Claudia Winkleman comparison; we didn’t want somebody that was stepping in to be a version of Claudia Winkleman because that wasn’t going to work.
"So, we wanted it to feel very Irish and Siobhan just felt like the right [person]".
You can listen to Behind the Story which is available on the RTÉ Radio Player.
You can also find episodes on Apple here, or on Spotify here.
