Siobbhán McSweeney knew The Traitors Ireland was a hit when her own family were watching the series and “really enjoying it”. Her brother doesn’t normally like to watch anything she’s in, she says. “He finds it a bit weird, because he’s just, like, ‘You’re pretending!’“It’s called acting, actually,” says the Derry Girls star, who hosts the RTÉ reality show. “I have a Bafta.”It’s a cool, overcast April day, and McSweeney has been at Slane Castle filming a key episode of The Traitors’ highly anticipated second season, which begins on RTÉ next weekend, and she’s still wearing some of her glamorous on-screen jewellery. Right now, though, she’s shivering in the back room of a nearby hotel.“I’m just out of a mission, and I’m frozen,” she says, referring to one of the challenges set for this year’s participants. “The Irish weather was for us last year, but it’s been very temperamental this time.”At this point in filming, only seven of the 24 original contestants remain in the game of deduction, in which “faithful” players must identify the “traitors” in the group before the traitors eliminate them. The €50,000 prize pot goes to whoever is left standing.Anything could happen, according to McSweeney. “This is the time in the game when contestants, if they are a team, try to branch out.” If, on the other hand, a contestant has been a lone wolf, “they try to come back into the herd. So there’s an awful lot of movement happening. It’s really moving up a gear, and it has to: we’re coming very close to the final.”The final of the first season, last September, was watched by 732,000 viewers – 57 per cent of everyone who was in front of a television in Ireland at the time. The programme prompted memes, merchandise and water-cooler conversations.Its breakout star was Paudie Moloney, a retired prison officer who became so well-known from appearing on The Traitors that he went on to compete on Dancing with the Stars.“He was like the nation’s grandad,” McSweeney says.Paudie Maloney with fellow contestant Christine Duff from The Traitors Ireland 2025 Perhaps unsurprisingly, for this season “we had over 120 prison guards apply to be on the show”, says Darren Smith of Kite Entertainment, the production company that makes the series for RTÉ.“We had some brilliant older guys apply – and in a heartbeat you’d put them in any show, but it just felt like it would be a bit try-hard, like we were looking for another Paudie.”What made Moloney such a hit? “He was a man who didn’t come on board this show to get a celebrity life. And I think that was part of the appeal. He wasn’t somebody who’s coming in to get his influence and his followers.”[ The Paudfather, breakout star of The Traitors, on winning hearts with his Irish-dad energyOpens in new window ]After finding a diamond in the rough in Moloney, what kind of people did Kite look for to take part in the new season?“You get a couple of the fame chasers, and it’s okay to have a couple of them in the mix, so you know that they are represented. We cast 24 people, and within that 24 you want all types,” Smith says. “One of the beauties of this show is there’s no shortage of applications. We had over 1,000 this year, so it’s an embarrassment of riches in terms of what comes in, and then you start deciding case by case.Siobhán McSweeney at Slane Castle: 'It would be lovely if there was even an iota of the same response as we had last year.' Photograph: RTÉ “There’s a lot of background checking going on. There’s a lot of psychological testing. Are they robust enough? There’s a huge amount of duty of care that goes into these things.”Slane Castle, which over the past 45 years has been best known for hosting big outdoor concerts by Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones, Queen, David Bowie, U2 and Madonna, among many others, has also become a star of the show, its James Gandon architecture forming the backdrop to the contestants’ lies, betrayal and challenges.Unlike some other international iterations of The Traitors – the original Dutch programme has spawned about 40 versions around the world – Slane Castle has a room big enough for the round table where contestants gather to say who they believe is a traitor and therefore deserves to be eliminated from the competition.Before they settled on the castle as the home of The Traitors Ireland, Kite had been expecting “to have to build this spiegeltent and put the round room outdoors, and we had weather concerns about that, as you can imagine”, Smith says. He’s delighted with the Co Meath venue. “The estate, the land – I mean, we are the envy of many, many other Traitors locations,” he says, adding that Kite will be filming a third season at Slane in 2027.[ Traitors Ireland refused permission to film new series at ‘archaeologically sensitive’ sites in MeathOpens in new window ]One thing that sets The Traitors Ireland apart from its international counterparts is its incorporation of the Irish language.“We wanted to lean into Irishness in general, but it was also a great mission device, because we knew they couldn’t all speak Irish. So you suddenly had this language that some of them could speak and help uncover stuff.“Apparently, Údarás [na Gaeltachta] wrote to RTÉ to say that this was such a great use of the language,” he says. He admits that its inclusion was less a conscious decision than a fortuitous organic process. “The reaction to the Irish was great, but it was suggesting a level of design and intent on our side that wasn’t there.”McSweeney says she was moved by the response to The Traitors’ use of Irish. “It’s a real evolution of our guilt, and the sort of psychological trauma we have from our colonial past, that we can move on and begin to embrace the language as a sort of neutral language, and a language that is ours without this historical trauma to bring with us.”Viewers can expect more of it in the new season.“This year we’ve really embraced that, and we have contestants who spontaneously bring that to the table every single night. There’s a wonderful thing about the show in that we seem to be reflecting what’s happening in Irish society at the moment – there’s a huge resurgence in the Irish language, which certainly, in my 48 years, is new.”This season’s contestants have slightly different ideas from last year’s about what they’d use the prize money for, McSweeney says.“We have a little fireside talk at the start, where I decide whether they’d be a good traitor or a good faithful, and I’m always asking them, ‘What would you do with the money if you won?’”It’s like an insight to a state of the nation, she says.“Last year there was a house, the house deposit, and of course we have that a lot this year as well.” This time around “we’ve quite a few IVF attempts. We’ve a lot of helping the parents pay off the house, things like that. All incredibly noble, and no doubt designed to make me go, ‘Oh my God’!”[ The Traitors review: Would the BBC’s secret traitor twist work on the Irish version?Opens in new window ]McSweeney says she was a bit nervous “with that second-album feeling” after the success of the first season. “It would be lovely if there was even an iota of the same response as we had last year. It was huge, wasn’t it?“It’s really in the hands of contestants, which is why I think it makes such amazing telly. Because just when you think you’ve got your hand on something, there’s a twist.”The Traitors Ireland, hosted by Siobhán McSweeney, is on RTÉ One and RTÉ Player from Sunday, August 30th; each episode will be followed by The Traitors Ireland Uncloaked, hosted by Kevin McGahern