The Traitors finalists on the ultimate betrayal: ‘I trusted the wrong person’
Spoiler alert: This article contains details of the final of the second series of The Traitors. You have been warned.
Judas level treachery, the advent of Jazatha Christie, and death by fizzy rosé – this series of The Traitors has had it all.
After 12 episodes, the nail-biting finale saw baby-faced British army engineer turned arch-manipulator Harry winning the entire prize pot of almost £100,000 – leaving faithful Mollie, his closest friend in the group, with nothing.
Viewers of the hit show have watched Harry, 22, play a near perfect game throughout the series, fooling almost everyone while quietly “murdering” the faithfuls one by one, and hanging his fellow traitors out to dry when the heat was on.
The Traitors finalists (L-R) Harry, Andrew, Evie, host Claudia Winkleman, Jaz and Mollie. Pic: Studio Lambert/Paul Chappells/BBC
Such was the secrecy surrounding the ending that all the contestants – bar the final three – were kept in the dark about the result; they watched the finale together, finding out the outcome at the same time as viewers.
Speaking after the big reveal, Harry admitted he did feel guilty, despite making the daily betrayal seem effortless.
“I feel like everyone deserved the chance of that money,” he said. “And I was the reason none of them got it… so I was sort of hard on myself, but then it was the game and I was like, if the shoe was on the other foot, they would do the same to me.”
‘It makes you feel you’re about to do something naughty’
After telling host Claudia Winkleman at the start that he wanted to be a traitor, Harry said he initially regretted it as he waited to see whether or not he would get the shoulder squeeze inviting him to the dark side.
“I was like, oh my gosh, what have I done? I didn’t want to be tapped. Because of the pressure… how am I going to lie to everyone’s face and keep a poker face? Then as soon as she tapped me, I sort of was like, okay, cool, I’ve got a job to do now, let’s get it done.”
And putting on his traitors cloak each night was a highlight of the game.
“It just makes you feel like you’re about to do something naughty. Every time I put it on I was like, now I feel evil.”
Harry lied his way to winning almost £100,000. Pic: Studio Lambert/BBC
Harry has been applauded for his Machiavellian game play on the BBC show – but how do his family feel about seeing this side to him?
“My mum calls me the dumbest, smartest person she’s ever met,” he said. “They laugh and joke about not being able to ever trust me again, but they know that I would do anything for them.”
Five contestants – faithfuls Evie, Jaz and Mollie, and traitors Harry and Andrew – made it through to the final. Evie and Andrew were banished – leaving Jaz convinced of Harry’s guilt, but Mollie desperate to believe his innocence.
The dramatic last vote saw Mollie, 21, initially picking Harry as a traitor – a move which would have seen the prize pot split between her and Jaz – before changing her mind at the last minute.
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Viewers saw her swear and storm out of the room after it was revealed she had been lied to by her friend.
“My head was scrambled in that moment,” she said, adding that her friendship with Harry “took over for me and I just couldn’t do it to him”, even though there was a niggling doubt.
Throughout the series, the bond between the pair, who were two of the younger contestants, was evident.
“It hurt in the moment,” she said, addressing his betrayal. “I was upset but it was a game… you know that you’re going to have people that betray you in there, you can’t hold a grudge.”
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The Traitors star: ‘It’s like being knighted’
‘He had me totally fooled’
Despite saying before the final reveal that she would never speak to him again should he turn out to be a traitor, there is “no beef” between Mollie and Harry now.
“Watching it back, you can see what a good game he played. He had me totally fooled. I think he had a lot of people fooled in there.”
Away from family and friends and with so much at stake, emotions are high. “Being away from your support system, you do have to trust someone,” Mollie said. “I obviously chose the wrong person to trust in there.”
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Andrew, who was initially a faithful but found himself recruited to the traitors halfway through the series, found it tough – and worried about “disappointing” his mum.
“I struggled with it,” the 45-year-old said. “I knew it was a game, a very intense game, a different game, but even then I still found it hard… every time I was accusing people and I knew they were telling the truth… my insides were turning like a washing machine.”
He also had to contend with a wardrobe malfunction. “It’s a good quality cloak and I struggled because it is quite long… I kept tripping over it at the start. So getting used to wearing it was quite difficult, the first day or so. I think they actually adjusted it, they got it altered for me then after the first night.”
‘I didn’t know who Agatha Christie was’
Perhaps the only person who had Harry sussed was Jaz, now christened Jazatha Christie on social media thanks to his canny detective work.
“I didn’t know who Agatha Christie was,” he said. “I had to Google that person.”
On Harry’s game play, Jaz added: “He started to get everything right. The guy was making no mistakes and I thought, your card’s marked, I’m coming for you. But when the time is right.”
Sadly, his instincts weren’t enough to secure a faithfuls victory. But Evie says there are no hard feelings towards Harry.
“We love him,” the 29-year-old said. “I’m like equal parts proud and equal parts annoyed. It’s so difficult to watch yourself be played like that but he did amazing. Hats off to him. If I was in his position I would want to play the game like he did.”
Entertainment
A third of daily music uploads are AI-generated and 97% of people can’t tell the difference, says report
Do you care if the music you’re listening to is artificially generated?
That question – once the realm of science fiction – is becoming increasingly urgent.
An AI-generated country track, Walk My Walk, is currently sitting at number one on the US Billboard chart of digital sales and a new report by streaming platform Deezer has revealed the sheer scale of AI production in the music industry.
Deezer’s AI-detection system found that around 50,000 fully AI-generated tracks are now uploaded every day, accounting for 34% of all daily uploads.
File pic: iStock
The true number is most likely higher, as Deezer’s AI-detection system does not catch every AI-generated track. Nor does this figure include partially AI-generated tracks.
In January 2025, Deezer’s system identified 10% of uploaded tracks as fully AI-generated.
Since then, the proportion of AI tracks – made using written prompts such as “country, 1990s style, male singer” – has more than tripled, leading the platform’s chief executive, Alexis Lanternier, to say that AI music is “flooding music streaming”.
‘Siphoning money from royalty pool’
What’s more, when Deezer surveyed 9,000 people in eight countries – the US, Canada, Brazil, UK, France, Netherlands, Germany and Japan – and asked them to detect whether three tracks were real or AI, 97% could not tell the difference.
That’s despite the fact that the motivation behind the surge of AI music is not in the least bit creative, according to Deezer. The company says that roughly 70% of fully AI-generated tracks are what it calls “fraudulent” – that is, designed purely to make money.
“The common denominator is the ambition to boost streams on specific tracks in order to siphon money from the royalty pool,” a Deezer spokesperson told Sky News.
“With AI-generated content, you can easily create massive amounts of tracks that can be used for this purpose.”
File pic: Reuters
The tracks themselves are not actually fraudulent, Deezer says, but the behaviour around them is. Someone will upload an AI track then use an automated system – a bot – to listen to a song over and over again to make royalties from it.
Even though the total number of streams for each individual track is very low – Deezer estimates that together they account for 0.5% of all streams – the work needed to make an AI track is so tiny that the rewards justify the effort.
Are fully-AI tracks being removed?
Deezer is investing in AI-detection software and has filed two patents for systems that spot AI music. But it is not taking down the tracks it marks as fully-AI.
Instead it removes them from algorithmic recommendations and editorial playlists, a measure designed to stop the tracks getting streams and therefore generating royalties, and marks the tracks as “AI-generated content”.
“If people want to listen to an AI-generated track however, they can and we are not stopping them from doing so – we just want to make sure they are making a conscious decision,” the Deezer spokesperson says.
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Deezer’s survey found that more than half (52%) of respondents felt uncomfortable with not being able to tell the difference between AI and human-made music.
“The survey results clearly show that people care about music and want to know if they’re listening to AI or human-made tracks or not,” said the company’s boss Alexis Lanternier.
“There’s also no doubt that there are concerns about how AI-generated music will affect the livelihood of artists.”
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Musicians protests AI copyright plans
Earlier this year, more than 1,000 musicians – including Annie Lennox, Damon Albarn and Kate Bush – released a silent album to protest plans by the UK government to let artificial intelligence companies use copyright-protected work without permission.
A recent study commissioned by the International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers suggested that generative AI music could be worth £146bn a year in 2028 and account for around 60% of music libraries’ revenues.
By this metric, the authors concluded, 25% of creators’ revenues are at risk by 2028, a sum of £3.5bn.
Entertainment
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Saturday Night Live UK has announced its top creative team ahead of the series launching next year.
An American pop culture institution, SNL launched the careers of stars including Bill Murray, Tina Fey, Eddie Murphy, Kristen Wiig and Will Ferrell – and now a “new generation” of British comedians is set to be cast in the first UK spin-off on Sky.
While the show’s stars are yet to be revealed, details of the creative team behind it have now been announced.
Kim Kardashian hosted the show in 2021. Pic: Sky UK/NBC
Two-time Emmy winner James Longman will serve as lead producer, BAFTA winner and live broadcast specialist Liz Clare will direct the series, while writer, comedian and composer Daran Jonno Johnson takes on the role of head writer.
Longman’s credits include The Late Late Show With James Corden, for which he produced famous sketches with stars and notable figures including Sir Paul McCartney, Oprah Winfrey, Tom Cruise and then president Joe Biden.
He also worked on the Friends reunion special in 2021 and hit UK shows such as Never Mind The Buzzcocks, Alan Carr: Chatty Man, The F Word and The Friday Night Project.
L-R: James Longman, Liz Clare, Daran Jonno Johnson. Pic: Sky UK
Clare’s directing credits include An Audience With Adele, The Brits and MTV awards ceremonies, Glastonbury, the BAFTAs and shows such as The Voice UK and Britain’s Got Talent, while Johnson, who is part of the acclaimed sketch group SHEEPS, has written for shows including Wedding Season for Disney+, Siblings for the BBC and Rose d’Or winner Parlement for France.TV.
Saturday Night Live UK marks the first time the US producers have adapted the show, which celebrated 50 years on air earlier this year, for a British audience.
Channel 4 ran several series of a similar programme on Saturday and Friday nights in the 1980s, featuring comedians like Ben Elton and Harry Enfield, but it was domestically produced.
‘A lot of big US comedy is stolen from the UK’
Pete Davidson at SNL’s 50th anniversary celebrations. Pic: Janet Mayer/INSTARimages/Cover Images/AP Feb 2025
Comedian Pete Davidson, another SNL star, told Sky News he’s excited about the UK version – and that it is about time the UK is able to take from US comedy, rather than the other way round.
Speaking in the summer during promotion for The Pickup, Davidson said: “I think it’s a smart idea to have SNL over there because… not that it’s a different brand of comedy, but it is a little bit.
“A lot of the biggest stuff that’s in the States is stuff that we stole from you guys, like The Office or literally anything Ricky Gervais does… there’s just tonnes of great comedy over there. Jimmy Carr is a great stand-up.”
Also highlighting Jack Whitehall, he continued: “I think anything that’s great over there, we just kind of steal… and it doesn’t seem like the other way around. This is the first time I’ve ever heard anything American going to the UK, so I think it’s great.”
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Producers say the UK series will follow the same format as the original, featuring “a new generation of comedy players in the core cast, alongside guest hosts and musical performances”.
The UK show will be overseen by US producer Lorne Michaels. Along with his production company Broadway Video, which has made The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon and 30 Rock, the show will be led by UK production team Universal Television Alternative Studio.
Saturday Night Live UK will be broadcast on Sky Max and streaming service NOW in 2026.
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