The Traitors is back!
Season 4 of the dramatic and scheme-filled reality series features Donna Kelce, beloved mother of athletes Jason and Travis Kelce.
Putting Taylor Swift’s future mother-in-law in a den of vipers means extra high stakes — for them, not for her.
Everyone wants to win. No one wants to face the wrath of Swifties.
‘The Traitors’ is back!
Ahead of the Season 4 premiere of The Traitors on Thursday, January 8, host Alan Cumming made the rounds to promote the season.
The beloved actor appeared on the January 7 episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live! where he admitted that Donna Kelce is a complicated addition to a cast where people normally conspire to vote people out.
“The contestants, the players, talk about it quite a lot,” he told the late night host.
“[They were like] ‘I’m a bit worried about the Swifties. What they’ll do if we…’” Cumming explained.
That is a very understandable concern!
If you are not aware, Swifties do not have a reputation for being a chill crowd. Less evil than the Barbz, sure, but quick to frenzy.
And there’s no reason to believe that a reality competition would be exempt from their collective wrath.
However, to Cumming, the coupling of Kelce’s kind demeanor and the Sword of Damocles effect that the Swifties had was “quite fun” for the show.
“It’s another added layer of menace,” he explained.
If you haven’t watched The Traitors or even just seen the trailers, the vibe is very much “campy horror film.” People play mind games with each other.
Everyone loves Travis’ mom. How could you not?
When it comes to Taylor Swift’s future mother-in-law, Alan Cumming has nothing but praise.
“Donna, she’s hilarious,” he commented.
“She’s such a sweet lady,” Cumming praised. “I really liked her.”
He recalled: “There’s a really cute moment in the first episode when I sort of interviewed them.”
Cumming recounted: “I said, ‘How are you feeling, Donna?’ and she went, ‘A little weird.’ It’s so cute.”
Donna Kelce is only one of 23 contestants on The Traitors Season 4.
As usual, there are plenty of Real Housewives stars — like Candiace Dillard Bassett, Caroline Stanbury, Dorinda Medley, Lisa Rinna, and Porsha Williams.
(NBCUniversal owns Peacock, on which The Traitors airs, and also own Bravo. It’s like how there are constantly people from the Bachelor Nation on Dancing With The Stars)
Speaking of The Bachelor, Colton Underwood is also a contestant. So is the phenomenal Monét X Change.
We’re sure that all of the contestants were keeping track of the potential fallout from voting people off. Fallout on the show — and after they leave.
‘The Traitors’ is still trying to recover from a nasty Season 2 incident
In fact, the second season of The Traitors (in the US, we mean) ran into a bit of a hurdle along these lines.
Many people believe that the vote to eliminate Peppermint was motivated by transphobia. Even extremely offline viewers recoiled from what appeared to be outright bigotry.
There are people who did not watch Season 3 and will not watch Season 4 because of what went down with Peppermint. And that’s understandable.
Alan Cumming and the show’s production can’t control what contestants do — but hopefully they’ve taken steps to reduce the chances of future eliminations like that harming the show.
Similarly, we’re sure that everyone on Season 4 was keenly aware of the looming specter of Swifties when it came to Donna Kelce. But honestly? It should be easy to be nice to her, anyway. She’s a sweetheart.