Photo: @thetraitorsukofficial via Instagram

There are few days more cruel than the early days on The Traitors. U.S. version, U.K. version, Australian, Polish, celebrity, non-celebrity, whatever: With little evidence and a pool of Faithfuls too big to manage, the investigations are frantic and sloppy, with the masses looking for evidence in any place they can find it and many an innocent player sent home. On the October 8 episode of Celebrity Traitors UK, the Faithful sent home one of their own, Myha’la, based mostly on the evidence of a wink she gave Traitor Richard E. Grant before voting for him at the previous night’s roundtable. It was a harrowing moment of HBO-on-HBO violence with the charge led by The Last of Us (and Game of Thrones) alum Bella Ramsay, who rallied fellow Faithfuls against a teary-eyed Myha’la. The Industry star had little in the way of self-defense when it came to justifying her sly, platonic wink as anything other than what it was.

In the aftermath of her elimination, however, Myha’la defended her fellow Faithfuls in the Instagram comments section of her post commemorating her time on the show after fans suggested that her elimination was, in fact, proof of the series’ inherent bias and racism, with one commenter writing, “Unfortunately you were banished because you are BLACK.” “I had this fear coming into the game, as I am a BIG fan and also clocked right away how prevalent this is in this game,” Myha’la explained in her response. Black contestants are often eliminated in early rounds, as was the case in the first season of Celebrity Traitors UK as well as the currently airing season of The Traitors: New Blood. “I’m not saying it’s right, I’m not saying racism doesn’t exist,” Myha’la continued, “but I do have to defend my dear friends on this show who in no way consciously put bias on me because of my race. That’s not a fair or complete assessment of what really happened in my case.”

Part of what Myha’la’s wink signifies is how much Celebrity Traitors UK is about, well, being a celebrity. This is a part of the American celebrity version, to some degree, but part of why Grant’s Traitor confession threw the castle into such chaos was because it forced everyone to reckon with Grant’s status as a celebrity. Would someone like Grant — esteemed, established, and Oscar-nominated as he is — really be so blatant as to just say that he’s a Traitor? Surely it’s a double bluff? Or a triple bluff? Or maybe he’s just a dotty old man, whimsical and kooky but not deceitful, as has been his persona onscreen. That’s part of what Myha’la (as well as Joanna Page and others in the castle) fell for, and why she lent him the wink even as she voted for him. That kind of preexisting knowledge of a celebrity’s persona and body of work outside the castle can actually kind of doom a player in the castle. She thought she was saying good-bye to a friend, but to everyone else, it looked like an admission of guilt. (Though per fellow Celebrity Traitors UK contestant Dr. Hannah Fry, the social game is rarely indicative of much given both Faithful and Traitor alike “behave weird.”)

A wink could just be a gentle gesture between newfound friends, or it could be a passing of the torch from devious Traitor to plotting protégé. Regardless, it sealed Myha’la’s fate and all but guaranteed no one on this show is ever going to wink at someone else ever again.

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