There isn’t a single fan of The Traitors who isn’t talking about Fiona right now. From flying under the radar as the first ever Secret Traitor to Thursday night’s kitchen showdown that saw her virtually ‘out’ Rachel, Fiona is lead-character material through and through.
She might come across as a warm, scatterbrained ‘older’ woman who has been swanning around the castle with her perfectly coiffed blow-dry, but Fiona warned us from the start that we shouldn’t underestimate “a woman of a certain age”. And she was right.
But how did she manage to get everyone in that castle to trust her so wholeheartedly? Behavioural Psychologist Jo Hemmings says it is simply down to how society sees women over 50.
“Women of a certain age become invisible. We now equate youth with value, especially in women,” she explained.
“They saw Fiona as a mum-like figure in the castle, which she fully played into. She created a ditzy persona perfectly, and they bought into it. However, under it all, she is very sharp, which slightly threw them all when she showed it briefly.
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“Her tactile nature, the fact she listens and asks questions, and even the fact she wears bright colours all contributed to people trusting her – she’s like a rainbow!”
Jo says that Fiona executed the Traitors game to perfection (well, nearly – not believing Rachel was her downfall): “Fiona played into being like everyone’s mum, and it was very clever. She was relatable to the younger ones with that nurturing role and her warm Welsh accent, but she is also very smart.
“As viewers, we could see that Fiona is sharp as a tack. But they weren’t seeing that in the castle because she was always asking questions or looking for reassurance that she, in reality, didn’t even need.”
Speaking of Fiona’s Thursday-evening outburst in the kitchen that saw her attempt to throw Rachel under the bus, Jo says that while Fiona might have thought it was all part of her game plan, it was likely to have actually been a brief glimpse at her hidden insecurity.
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“Outing Rachel was not Fiona’s finest moment”, Jo says. “That was what I call peacocking. She knew that people had warmed to her and looked upon her affectionately, but she got a bit overconfident and went into dangerous territory.
“It threw everyone that this warm, kind figure in the group came in and accused a younger person, who wasn’t under scrutiny, of lying. Fiona went rogue, and it was all because, deep down, she was feeling insecure that Amanda had shared the information about her being a retired police detective with Rachel and not her. She was masking her true self for so long, but at that moment she couldn’t contain it, and that might have been a big mistake.”
While Fiona spent her time in the castle going under the radar, carefully planting seeds of doubt into conversations and then quietly walking away to let them do their thing, Jo is convinced that this is all part of her going under the radar.
“She was deliberately playing into the invisibility of an older woman that society puts on people of a certain age. But her playing into it, yet being incredibly knowledgeable under it all served her very well. But her confrontation with Rachel meant she blew it.”
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Amanda is another example of a woman of a certain age not being listened to. Okay – we know that her detective skills were way off, especially as the entire nation was shouting at the TV as she confessed her secret job to the one person she trusted the most in the castle, who also happened to be a traitor.
However, while she might have been wrong about the fact that Jade could be a traitor, no one listened to her reasoning. Is that also down to her age? Jo thinks so…
“The same happened with Amanda. She was confident in her belief that Jade was a traitor, but still no one listened to her.
“Women of a certain age being underestimated has always happened. It doesn’t happen so much with men – it is mainly women. We have never really got rid of the idea that older women hold less value and that people don’t realise that we actually get sharper as we get older and we improve with age.”
The Traitors airs on BBC One and BBC iPlayer.
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Claire Crick is a freelance writer.