The Traitors: 'I was out of my depth' says banished player
2025-01-03
Category: entertainment

Warning: This article contains spoilers for The Traitors Think you've got what it takes to win The Traitors?So did the latest player to be banished from the series' famous Scottish castle.The BBC One show challenges contestants, known as "faithfuls", with identifying a  group of imposters within their ranks. Those traitors attempt to secretly pick off the others while remaining undetected and directing suspicion elsewhere.It might sound simple, but the latest player to be eliminated tells BBC Newsbeat: "I was way out of my depth". 
"I was too emotional," says 24-year-old Elen Wyn, speaking the morning after viewers saw her get eliminated in episode two.The translator, from north Wales, was banished during Thursday's episode after whispers among other contestants pegged her as a suspected traitor. "Once your name is out there, it's really tough to save yourself," says Elen.
Elen, whose first language is Welsh, thinks suspicions were raised because she found it more challenging to communicate in English. "I grew up in a very rural area in north Wales, my whole family's Welsh, I was taught all my subjects at school in Welsh, I was taught English in Welsh," she says."It's all I really knew before I moved to Cardiff, where I had to speak English."It's kind of made me less confident communicating in English and I feel like that's one of the reasons I was out of my depth in the castle."Elen says she thinks in Welsh and, outside the castle, she believes English-speaking people can underestimate her or even think she's "dumb".But she says she was able to correctly identify most of the traitors after leaving and had predicted at least one would be a "strong female".One thing she did miss, though, was fellow faithful Charlotte's game plan.The businesswoman has adopted a fake Welsh accent inside the castle, believing it makes her seem more trustworthy than her authentic London tones."It's something you would never even question," says Elen, who didn't realise Charlotte was faking until she watched the episodes back. "It's so random."And after questions were raised about whether Charlotte was a traitor, Elen wonders if the accent sounds as trustworthy as she'd hoped. "It didn't work for me," she says. "People didn't trust me at all despite me being Welsh."
Elen was determined to use her platform to highlight the Welsh language, even declaring in Welsh she was a faithful when she was eliminated from the show. "It was a really emotional experience," she says. "It was kind of my last thing for Wales."It was what I most wanted to do on the show, to promote the language and promote the fact that I'm Welsh. "A part of me thought I might have let Wales down by being banished so soon but the fact is I've been able to promote the language to the best of my ability and the support and love has been overwhelming."Elen's not the first Welsh-speaker to celebrate their language on TV recently - last year drag queen Actavia appeared on Drag Race UK where she spoke in Welsh. "I'm really pleased," she says. "I think people are embracing it more."I think bigger platforms like the BBC should continue to approach Welsh-speaking people to promote it, because it doesn't happen that often."
Listen to Newsbeat live at 12:45 and 17:45 weekdays - or listen back here.