Celebrity Traitors star Nick Mohammed on the moment that shocked Britain: ‘I have no regrets’

Nick Mohammed was the man in the middle of the biggest moment in Britain in 2025. Bigger than Oasis, bigger than Scotland qualifying for the World Cup (for some). With 11 million of us watching the final of The Celebrity Traitors live on BBC One, he handed victory to Traitor Alan Carr – completing one of the most compelling narratives of recent times as Carr somehow outfoxed the Faithful, despite having the guiltiest face since records began. 

So, Nick Mohammed, how did it feel to be at the heart of the drama? 

“With the benefit of hindsight, it made for great telly,” the 45-year-old actor and comedian tells
Big Issue. 

“We filmed it back in April or May, so I was sitting on that secret, knowing exactly how it played out, for months. But you aren’t privy to anyone else’s journey through the game. And you don’t know how it’s going to be put together – not that anything is edited to create a fake narrative.  

“But halfway through the series going out, I was thinking, oh goodness, the finale is going to get a LOT of attention.” 

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And so it did. Millions of us were shaken to the core when Mohammed, who was seemingly cruising to victory alongside rugby star Joe Marler, indulged in a spot of overthinking. He decided that perhaps his Faithful friend Joe had been manipulating proceedings all along and promptly voted him out. 

Carr couldn’t believe his luck. Marler couldn’t believe the treachery. TV historian David Olusoga and Mohammed believed they would get a three-way share of the prize pot… until Carr revealed he was
a Traitor and scooped the lot. 

The finest screenwriters in the country could not have created a more dramatic denouement.  

“I love that Alan won. I just love it,” grins Mohammed. “Not that I planned it that way.  

“But what an amazing story for Alan to have gone on that journey. Seeing how it played out, with Alan seemingly so hopeless, then going on that wild ride and being crowned at the end of it. I kind of love that. To reiterate, I obviously didn’t love it in the moment.  

“I was so sure I’d got it right about Joe. I thought we’d nailed it. And I was so certain of David being a Faithful. If I’d had any whiff of Alan being a Traitor I would have voted to banish again. But at that point I also felt it would be a shame for Alan’s charity if we voted him out.” 

Read more:

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If Mohammed is tired of analysing the final moments of The Celebrity Traitors, he shows no sign of it. “I actually haven’t talked about it that much,” he says.  

He walks us through his journey of suspicions – suspecting Lucy Beaumont, jumping on the Mark Bonnar bandwagon, wondering whether Joe’s campaign against Jonathan Ross was a double bluff. Was he overthinking, looking for double, triple, quadruple bluffs everywhere, by the end? 

“Yes. To answer it quite quickly, that’s exactly what it was,” he says. 

“It’s all confirmation bias. Suddenly everything clicks into place. Joe apologising to Cat [Burns, singer-songwriter] just before she went, I was like, that’s surely an admission that this is Traitor banishing Traitor. Of course, I was completely wrong. But I have no regrets. I can’t. Partly because me and Joe are good mates. And partly because I would do it all again.  

“For Alan to win was the icing on the cake. It made for such an unpredictable finale.” 

He was not alone in getting it wrong. He was, in fairness, one of the better players. 

“We were particularly bad as a group of Faithfuls,” he laughs. “Everyone who took part in that show did it because we’re massive, massive fans of The Traitors.  

“We knew people would watch, but felt maybe it was going to be a little bit like ‘The Traitors on Holiday’, where because it was for charity rather than our own personal finances, the stakes might feel a bit lower.

“But maybe because people recognised a lot of our faces from the telly, it heightened the whole thing and gave people who’d not watched before an entry point. 

“I’ve been in TV shows where lots of people watched – Ted Lasso, particularly, did very well. But because Traitors was a live experience, it felt like I was in a sports match. So, by the time we got to the final, it felt like I was playing for England. And I’d made the World Cup final. Then, of course, betraying Joe Marler, it felt like I’d missed a penalty!” 

Still, like a doomed World Cup campaign, at least it brought the country together. And that is a rare thing these days. 

“It was really refreshing, wasn’t it? Apart from sport, people don’t gather around the telly the second that something is airing,” he says. “Certainly not as much as they used to, because of catch-up and streaming and so much more choice.  

“Traitors is a multi-generational show. And that was the big thing I realised. People were getting together with friends and family to watch together. That really felt like the olden days, like we were watching The Paul Daniels Magic Show on a Saturday night in 1991!  

“The other thing was that it stopped Gen Z going online, because you couldn’t avoid spoilers. So they had to come off their devices and avoid spoilers. So it meant that people had to just watch it on telly live. And that was a great thing.”  

Mohammed’s journey to household name was a long-time coming. His flair for performance first made itself known in Leeds during childhood, as a keen magician and devoted member of the Northern Magic Circle. But it wasn’t until he joined the Cambridge Footlights – alongside Inbetweeners stars Simon Bird and Joe Thomas – during his (unfinished) PhD in seismology and geophysics that comedy became his thing.  

He worked consistently, with roles in the 2010 Reggie Perrin revival, Bridget Jones’s Baby, Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie and appearances in a whole range of British TV comedies, until a major breakthrough in 2020 with the Sky One comedy Intelligence, which he created and starred in alongside David Schwimmer and, biggest of all, in popular soccer comedy (not words usually put together) Ted Lasso.  

As if Traitors was not enough, this year, Mohammed also had a key role in one of British television’s most loved, and talked about, dramas.  

“This has been a special year,” says Mohammed. “I loved Slow Horses before I even auditioned, so that felt great. I did my first lead role in a feature film called Deep Cover as well. And I’m really proud of the Show Pony Tour.  

“It was the weirdest thing that Slow Horses and Traitors were going out at the same time. Because they are so different but similar in that people want to come and talk to you about them. It’s always flattering. And that has been evident from Ted Lasso onwards. Taskmaster is the same. Fans of those shows are, like, real fans. They are hardcore.”  

By the time The Celebrity Traitors aired, Mohammed was back at work.  

“I was filming this new HBO series called War in the daytime and was doing the second leg of my Show Pony Tour as well,” he recalls. “So it was this weird thing. Even though it was going a little bit crazy, I had a day job and I had to crack on and not get too whipped up in the frenzy.  

“Doing the school drop-off when Traitors was going out was a mad, mad thing. The day of the final I remember we said, ‘guys, you know what, you don’t have to go to school if you don’t want to tomorrow!’ Then it got to Friday morning and we were like, actually, that’s not a valid excuse to miss a day of school.

“And I was honestly gigging the night before the final. And maybe even the day after as well. Some of those shows were quite raucous, because I actually do material about The Traitors, which I’d written way before I knew I was going to be on it. On the next leg (tickets on sale now!), it would be a shame not to talk about being on it – even though I’ll be in character as Mr Swallow, and he technically wasn’t on Traitors.”

Though he missed out on the £30,000 Traitors prize money for his chosen charity, Blood Cancer UK, Mohammed has a plan to raise funds.  

“I run an annual benefit for Blood Cancer UK called Laugh for Leukaemia,” he says. “It’s on 3 July 2026 at the Bloomsbury Theatre. I have run it with friends for, gosh, 12 or 13 years now. I might see if I can convince Lucy [Beaumont], Joe [Wilkinson] and Alan [Carr] to perform in it and make it a Traitors special. 

“But I’m sure all the charities will benefit some way.” And Mohammed has one further win he’d like off the back of his Traitors adventure. 

“To be cynical about it, because it ended up being a popular show, I’d love for that to translate into me getting a BBC sitcom. I’ve been actively trying to get something like that off the ground for ages.”

Will the BBC see him as a Faithful worth selecting?

Nick Mohammed is touring Show Pony across the UK from April 2026. Tickets are available now.

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