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LAST UPDATE | 22 Sep 2025
*WARNING: This article contains spoilers for last night’s episode of The Traitors on RTÉ.*
IT’S NOT UNUSUAL for an episode of The Traitors to go through emotional highs and lows, but last night’s episode was particularly heavy when one player made clear she felt let down by several others in the game.
Traitors Nick and Ben stayed largely quiet and left it to the faithfuls – Faye, Joanna, Kelley, Oyin, Vanessa and Wilkin – to size each other up and throw each other’s names around.
A series of miscommunications and mis-rememberings led to Joanna, a 39-year-old logistics specialist from Kildare, being wrongly accused of being a traitor.
As she was banished at the roundtable, a tearful Joanna said that she hoped one of the boys would go on to win the game because she felt the others were “mean girls”.
Her words left the remaining contestants reeling.
There’s been normal debate among viewers about how the episode played out, but there have also been abusive comments levied against some of the contestants, both against Joanna herself and against the players she accused of being mean.
In an interview with media today, including The Journal, Joanna said that she is concerned about the hate being sent to others on social media, and that while emotions were intense at the time, she feels all of the remaining players are “wonderful people”.
“It’s very real in the moment when you’re there and hearing something that you’re not expecting because it’s so against you and your beliefs, that hurts,” she said. “But those are all wonderful people who who are remaining there. Everybody is lovely.”
Asked about her departing remarks, Joanna said that she hopes they didn’t cause anyone hurt and that she is “devastated” to see commentary on social media attacking some of the other contestants in the wake of last night’s episode.
“I’d love everybody to remember that it’s a TV show but there are also real people that have real feelings,” she said.
“I’m absolutely devastated seeing all the comments online today and I’m heartbroken because I didn’t think that something that I said I felt at the moment would have such an impact.
“I can’t even imagine how all of the girls are feeling, because even I’m getting so many messages and horrible comments, so I can’t even imagine what they going through. But again, when you’re there, you’re just thinking about the present moment that you’re in.”
Joanna said that she is “concerned about others probably more than myself, because I know I can deal with it and I can distance myself from opinions about me”.
However, she said that the comments about herself that she has found most hurtful have been ones remarking about her English, which isn’t her first language. “That hurts a bit more, because that’s something I am concerned about,” she said.
Similarly, Amy, the latest player to be murdered by the traitors, said that she has also received hateful “quips”, which she said she can deal with, but that it’s “really hurtful seeing the really, really hateful comments against people that I care about”.
She said that some of the comments she has seen are “really, really shocking”.
“I do consider myself lucky to not be on the receiving end of them but as someone that’s quite empathetic, to see my friends going through that that is really, really awful, and I’m even struggling with that, so I can’t imagine how it will fail to be the person that those comments are directed to,” Amy said.
Joanna had said on several occasions during the game that she wouldn’t get emotional about how events played out, but she did end up becoming visibly emotional during her banishment, which took her by surprise.
“I’m a very grounded person. I am very black and white. I know exactly who I am, and I did not expect to get emotional. I was the person who was always saying, you’re not going to see tears from me, because it’s just not who I am,” she said.
“But in the moment, I felt like my character was being attacked. That’s where the tears came from.
“For me, the one thing that I do in life – since I came out to myself and to the world and living as a queer woman who wants to be true to herself – I said, I will never lie,” she said, adding that she often tells her daughters not to lie also.
Being accused of lying in the game “felt like I was being attacked”, she said, and “that’s where all the emotion came out”.
Joanna said that she does not regret her decision to give away the shield that she earned in the challenge to Kelley, even though Kelley later voted to banish her at the roundtable.
“I wouldn’t change that decision. Kelly really needed the shield. She was so stressed and so upset, that whole day was absolutely horrible for her,” Joanna said.
“My mindset was that I needed to protect her… She’s close in age to my daughter.”
The two players reflected on their strategies and whether they could have done anything differently.
Amy said she probably was too vocal about feeling that she’d be able to easily deduce the status of players who were recruited as traitors midway through the game.
“I went around that castle, and I was like, lads, don’t be worrying, we just need to focus on the original ones. The new ones, they’ll reveal themselves the next few days. Don’t worry, I got this,” she recalled.
She believed she “would notice the changes in behaviors, especially to people that [she] was close to” that might reveal they had been recruited as a traitor, but that line of thinking didn’t go to plan.
“I think I kind of signed my own death certificate because I was, like, quite mouthy about feeling that I would. figure out. So, yeah, c’est la vie!”
Joanna said that her strategy had been to be honest and upfront about things she had seen and heard, thinking that could shield her from accusations of being a dishonest traitor.
“But unfortunately, the words could be misconstructed and changed and people could deny saying certain things,” she said.
“At some stage, there’s just no reasons for trying to go and prove something, [because people go] to the roundtable with their mind set and it doesn’t matter what you’re going to say, it doesn’t matter how good your speech is going to be.”
Amy said she enjoyed watching last night’s episode from the perspective of a spectator instead of a contestant. “It was like there was no stress. It was an instant relief,” she said.
Joanna agreed. “I can’t wait to see the next three episodes,” she said, adding: “It’ll be nice to see it and not have to be stressing about like, how am I gonna look? Am I speaking correct English?”
There are now only two episodes left to go, with the final due to air tomorrow night.
It’s coming down to the wire whether the faithfuls will catch out the traitors or if either (or both) of the traitors will get away with it and seize the prize pot for themselves.
“I think that the boys are playing a very smart game in the sense that no one suspects them because they’re so loved in there, and because they were originally faithfuls and the ‘traitor hunters’ – they have really cemented that,” Amy said.
“I’m hoping that the girls sniff them out but it’s hard to see what avenue they would have to go down in order for that to happen,” she said. “I’m remaining hopeful. Things can turn on a dime in there.”
If by tomorrow night your Traitors needs are not fulfilled, never fear – the BBC has just released the trailer for its latest hooded offering: The Celebrity Traitors.
Hosted by Claudia Winkleman, the participants include Joe Wilkinson, Alan Carr, Johnathon Ross, Stephen Fry, Tom Daley, and Paloma Faith.
It will begin airing on 8 October.
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