Banished Traitors star praised for exit speech âleft with a smileâ
Warning: This article contains spoilers for series three of The Traitors.
A banished Traitors contestant whose parting words have been called âiconicâ by fans says they wanted to leave the show âwith a smileâ.
The BBC One show challenges contestants, known as âfaithfulsâ, with identifying a group of imposters within their ranks.
Those traitors attempt to secretly pick off the others while remaining undetected and directing suspicion elsewhere.
The latest faithful to be banished from the Scottish castle where the show is filmed says that a traitor kicked out previously âmessed everything upâ for him.
Dr Kasim âKasâ Ahmed tells BBC Asian Network News that Armani, who was unmasked in the previous episode as a traitor, had defended him with âthe best of intentionsâ.
But he thinks she ended up sealing his fate instead.
âAfter Armani went, everything seemed to fall on me, and it didnât matter what I did,â he says.
âEveryone had just decided that I was a traitor.â
Kas, who has returned to shifts in the A&E department since filming the show, says that being a doctor could have worked against him once the game got under way.
âI work in hospital. Iâm used to things being a mess,â he says.
âIâm used to being in high-pressure situations and just being able to be myself, because you learn how to develop yourself and how to maintain your composure.
âBut everyone else wasnât used to dealing with it.â
Kas does agree, though, that some of the accusations thrown at him during the roundtable scene â where contestants must choose who to banish â were âridiculousâ.
He says his parting line â where he made others think he was about to admit to being a traitor before pivoting to the truth â was planned, but he did experience some last-minute nerves.
âWhen it came to it I was like, âOh, God, I donât know if I can do this,â he says.
Kas says he focused on host Claudia Winkleman, and when he noticed a smirk from underneath her trademark fringe, he plucked up the courage to drop his bombshell final words.
âI was like, âOkay, Claudiaâs got my back here,â he says.
ââJust look straight ahead and just say what you were going to sayâ.â
Fans of the show have criticised other contestants for isolating Kas from the group.
In one scene he is shown walking into a room to eat lunch, before realising all of the contestants inside are talking to him.
The moment he turns around to leave and is forced to eat alone has been described as âheartbreakingâ by viewers.
Kas says fellow contestant Fozia, who sacrificed herself in an episode one elimination task, was an âallyâ during their short time together.
He says there are no hard feelings towards the rest of the cast but he admits he did feel isolated during those moments.
But he hopes strong words from Fozia about their treatment of him will land in the remaining episodes.
âI think hopefully that will trigger something in peopleâs minds to make them think, âwell actually what we did here wasnât really appropriate and shouldnât have happened in the slightest,â he says.
âI would get that feeling from watching what happens after the next couple of episodes, that peopleâs mindsets change slightly with regards to how theyâre respecting each other.â
Listen to Ankur Desaiâs show on BBC Asian Network live from 15:00-18:00 Monday to Thursday â or listen back here.