Harriet Tyce has published four bestselling novels and spent a decade working as a criminal defence barrister but neither were as stressful as watching herself on The Traitors. Tyce, a psychological thriller author from north London, was eliminated from the fourth series in one of the most dramatic episodes since the show began.
“It was awful watching it, I lost my temper and it’s not nice to see that,” said Tyce. “None of us want to see our emotional loss of control on camera.”
Tyce, a faithful, found herself at the centre of a theatrical twist. She had won the chance to speak to the traitors, Rachel Duffy and Stephen Libby, from behind a church-style confessional booth. Viewers had praised her calm game play but, in an emotionally charged outburst, Tyce, 53, who had kept her writing and former legal career a secret, revealed her true identity and directly accused Duffy of being a traitor. It was the hardest part of her entire time on the show.
“It was so intense, the pressure just got to me. I followed my gut but immediately afterwards I had a real moment of ‘oh god, what have I done?’” she said. “I could have made myself a complete laughing stock if I’d got it wrong.”
The next morning at the breakfast table, things escalated further. Tyce, visibly irate, shouted at her fellow faithful Roxy in front of the group. It is something she regrets. “That was insane behaviour, I’d never normally shout at someone I only met two weeks ago over breakfast,” she said. “I wish I had been the calm strategic genius everyone thought I was but I only ever played on gut and instinct.”
At the breakfast table, Harriet was gunning for Rachel Duffy, left
BBC/STUDIO LAMBERT/PA
Back home with her golden retriever Isla and labradoodles Cooper and Coco, right
VICKI COUCHMAN FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES
Being on The Traitors is not the first time that Tyce has had to confront such outbursts. It is partly why, after having her children, Freddie, 21, and Eloise, 17, with husband Nathaniel, a multimillionaire City trader, she quit her career as a criminal barrister, aged 32. “I was terrible at keeping my cool, I found it a deeply emotional environment,” she said. “There’s a lot of aggression and you have to be able to cope with that. If something seems to be wrong, or if somebody’s lying, I get quite worked up.”
In Wednesday night’s episode, she had felt angry with the situation. “There were a lot of things I felt angry with,” she said. At the round table, she offered herself up for sacrifice, telling her team-mates to vote her off to prove that she had honest intentions when accusing Duffy. Did she mean it? “Yes. I think once you’ve thrown a hand grenade, the best thing you can do is walk away.”
Anger is also why, after years of binge drinking, she gave up alcohol in 2022. “The reason I dislike myself when I am drunk is precisely because I lose control. I get angry. I shout at people. I send that text message at 3am settling the score. There’s nothing wrong with anger but there’s much better ways of managing it,” she said. Since leaving alcohol behind, “I have become a truer version of myself by getting rid of all of the layers because one can use alcohol as a shield. You hide behind it rather than actually dealing with emotion. I really wouldn’t have been equipped to do this before.”
Before she appeared on the show, Tyce was an avid viewer. “It’s a truly immersive murder mystery and I write psychological thrillers. It’s a unique opportunity to be in something that’s like a real play, where you forget you’re in the role,” she said. Her book-writing influenced her game play: “I suspected everyone and wove narratives together. My intuition was right but I think if I’d been a better barrister, perhaps I could have kept my temper and stayed to the end.”
The series was filmed last summer, so waiting for it to air gave her “a high level of anxiety about how parts of it would land, because they don’t land well with me”. She said: “Viewers thought I was a strategic genius, people were saying I was going to be the next prime minister. That pedestal was way too high. I’m only human.”
She is not worried about the public perception of her, but “I don’t like it that I had it in me to be angry like that”, she said of her behaviour at the breakfast table. “It was a pressurised environment and that’s how I handled the stress. I certainly won’t judge anyone on reality TV any more. I would defy anybody not to find that an unbelievably pressured emotional situation.”
For now, Tyce’s focus is back on writing. Her new novel, Witch Trial, will be released next month and two more books are in the works, though she is unsure whether The Traitors will inspire a new story. If it does, “it won’t be some sort of murder mystery where people get picked off a round table one by one”, she said. “I don’t think the world needs another of those books. We’ve got quite enough of them.”