Traitors star Harriet explains going after Rachel with little evidence and why she asked to be voted out

We might be gearing up for a new episode of The Traitors tonight (15 January), but the madness of last night’s antics still has us quaking.

I mean, the roundtable alone – how often do we see a complete Faithful telling their fellow contestants, with such conviction, to vote them out on the show? Especially after being so accurate with their accusations.

Harriet certainly had quite the arc as she went from going after Rachel with such Coleen Rooney-level determination to almost surrendering herself to banishment.

And it’s left so many viewers wondering why on Earth she decided to do that, especially considering she was so successful in catching out three Traitors back-to-back.

But the former barrister and psychological thriller writer admits to LADbible she ‘needed to be banished’ from the hit BBC show the more that the roundtable unfolded.

Harriet says simply that despite what it may have looked like, it ‘wasn’t a strategic move’.

You said that with some determination. (BBC)

“I really didn't want to win that vote,” she stresses, with part of her just ready to go after the confrontation with the Traitors took ‘just about everything out of me in terms of courage’.

“It was so real,” Harriet says. “Walking through the dark, walking through the flames, knowing that they were in there - these people who were planning to murder us - that was a lot. It had also come too soon for me because I hadn't been able to build up the solid evidence.”

While she might have been so firm on Rachel being a Traitor, she just hadn’t been ‘able really to put together what I might need to go for [her]’.

However, she realised she didn’t really have much of a choice – she was totally immersed in the game.

“It was like a Hail Mary moment,” Harriet adds, “it was an epiphany.”

It might have been her initial plan to go into the roundtable all guns blazing on banishing Rachel, but it became clear to her it was time to leave.

Harriet asked the others to vote for her. (BBC)

“Halfway through defending myself, I could feel the cogs turning because I realised then that not only was I at significant risk of murder within the next couple of nights, I was also very, very much at risk of constant banishment,” she explains.

“And I didn't think that people would vote me out at that round able, because there were lots of people who needed to be persuaded to do it. But it would only have happened again and again and again, and it would have been death by 1000 cuts.”

Faced with the prospect of either banishment or murder, Harriet ‘didn’t want either’. So, in the end, she was ‘grateful’ for the opportunity.

“I know that sounds daft, but I could just feel all the tension drain out of me,” she adds. “Some of that comes across when you see the episode, we are actually all laughing because it did become kind of ridiculous because no one’s done it – it’s not how you behave.”

It was an explosive episode (BBC)

But with how Harriet had decided to so magnificently use the confessional with the Traitors, she says it ‘was go big and go home’.

“I did that and then to be able to leave on my own terms, when I really thought that it would be because of someone else's dictation, was an opportunity I was not prepared to miss,” she says. “I needed to go at that point.”

While she was happy to have left on her terms, she does however regret one particular moment of that fiery last day in the castle - that pesky 'cat amongst the pigeons'. Never forget.

Harriet explains: "The one thing I have regrets about is losing my temper at breakfast. I really wish that hadn't happened because it's not how I like to behave. It's not nice to watch it back but I've apologised to Roxy. I think we're good."

Pointing out that she's more of an 'emotional' person and had become fully 'hooked onto the immersive nature' of The Traitors, she adds that 'things happen when you're deep in the game' - but she does regret the outburst.

The Traitors continues tonight at 8pm on BBC One.