Harry Clarke and Claudia Winkleman Photo: Paul Chappells/BBC
In a magnificent castle in the Scottish Highlands, surrounded by all the elements – fire, air, water and Claudia Winkleman – Traitors pantomime villain Harry Clarke stormed to victory in a nerve-wracking finale on Friday night. However, that victory came at a price at the end of the second series of the treacherous BBC blockbuster. Clarke walked away with £95,150, but only after mercilessly betraying fellow contestant and friend Molly Pearce. She was convinced that Clark was one of the good guys. When it was revealed that he was the last remaining Traitor, she burst into tears and walked out, whispering, “Oh, my damn God.” It was the most exciting knife in the ribs on television since Game of Thrones and the Red Wedding.
“She spoke to me straight after,” Clarke, 23, tells The Telegraph the day after the tense finale. “To be honest, I definitely felt guilty. For someone to be so close to the prize money and have it taken away – and it's because of me. It's hard not to feel guilty.”
Guilty – but not to the point of not jumping out of the castle and performing a jig reminiscent of Barry Keoghan's at the end of Saltburn. However, his next instinct was to see Pierce and clear the air. He convinced her that he was the only person in the Traitors whom she could completely trust as one of the Faithful. In reality, he was with the bad guys the entire time, remaining undercover while fellow traitors like Paul and Ross were exposed and eliminated.
“I said to Claudia, 'I want to see [Pierce] right away and talk about it.' But I knew she probably wouldn't do it. I left it anyway. Right after that, the producer came to me, grabbed me and said, “Molly wants to talk to you.” I was like, “Oh my god, she’s going to hit me with a right hook as soon as I come in.” The first thing she did. hugged me tightly and said: “I love and hate you at the same time.” She appreciated the way I played the game. And he told me that I deserved it. To give her credit, she didn’t have to do that to me at all.”
Jazz Singh was unable to convince Molly Pierce to sacrifice Harry Clarke. Photo: Paul Chappells/BBC
Clark was a traitor from the very beginning. Until the end he maintained an air of holiness that deceived everyone, especially poor Pierce. But during Friday's big decision, his best-laid plans nearly fell apart when regular colleague Jazz Singh saw something fishy behind Clarke's beatific smile and tried to convince Pierce to help throw her best friend into the fire.
If she had done this, she and Singh would have won and shared the prize money. But Pierce couldn't bring herself to believe that Clarke had deceived her, and sacrificed Singh instead. As all this happened, Clark's face shimmered with emotion: he almost maintained his composure, but you could see the growing tension in his eyes.
“It's so real. None of this is in the script,” he says. “My emotions, especially there, spread throughout the workshop. I was happy and sad, but I felt relieved. Happy that I made it to the finals and was close to winning the money. I was proud of myself and the way I played. At the same time, I was sad. I had yet another betrayal to commit. And to do this, you had to be brave. I can’t even explain the emotions that go through my head, let alone everyone else’s.”
Clarke has been following the reaction to the finale, filmed last year, on social media and is well aware that on screen he is portrayed as the villain who led poor sweet Pierce into a merry dance. But he went on the show knowing it was a competition. Moreover, he did not volunteer to be a traitor. This choice was made by the producers.
“Because of the nature of the show, I was always concerned about how I might appear on it. To people who say that I'm two-dimensional or anything like that, I would say: you don't really know me as a person. When I played the game, I was 100 percent myself, like an open book… I only had one little lie that I needed to keep.”
Clark tricked Faithful Molly Pierce. Photo: Paul Chappells/BBC
Social media users are convinced Piers couldn't see Clarke's truth. nature because she was romantically attracted to him. “Nothing could be further from the truth,” Clark says. They both have a strong relationship and are close as friends (Clark's friend Anna Maynard is a CBBC presenter). He's right: their connection was sweet and healthy.
He says that they talked about their partners from the very beginning of filming Traitors. These conversations weren't always shown on screen, but they made it clear to each other that they were already a happy couple.
“When we were getting to know each other, I knew more about her boyfriend than I knew about her,” Clark says. “And probably the same thing happens to me and my other half. All we could talk about together was double dates. When we became friends, that's why we developed such a close bond. We had the same interests. When I see all this, that I liked her, I have no chance. She loves her boyfriend more than anything in the world. He's an amazing guy. I'm just very good friends with her. Why can’t two young people be close friends at all?”
Clark grew up in Slough in Berkshire, one of six children, and served in the army as a lance corporal. His maternal grandfather served in the Parachute Regiment and was the “driving force” behind his decision to enlist. At 16 he attended the Army Foundation College at Harrogate in Yorkshire and trained as an aeronautical technician at the Royal School of Electrical Engineers (REME). Last year it received “wings,” meaning it can carry out essential maintenance on everything from helicopters to drones.
But far from endorsing Clark's on-screen tactics, the Army issued a press release celebrating his achievement, calling Clark “100 percent traitor, 100 percent soldier.”
“At the age of 16, all my abilities and emotions were in disarray. Joining the military brought it all together and made me the guy I was,” he says. “Being confident – in matches it’s all about teamwork. My mental mind works as if I turn off my emotions and treat them as a game. The Army deals with these emotions and these traits as individuals. The Army [taught] me how to put it all together. This helped a lot when working in difficult situations.”
He has previously been deployed abroad, although he would prefer not to say where. But he believes life in the military prepared him for what he'll go through in Traitors. “The responsibility for getting things done was the same as [in the series]. I saw it as a job and knew I had to do what I needed to do to get the job done. I was ready for anything. Going abroad always comes with a certain level of danger in itself. I've been abroad several times. It's always dangerous, isn't it?
The day after the final was a very stressful one for Clark and the finalists; they have already appeared on Winkleman's Radio 2 and BBC Breakfast shows, and have spoken to countless news outlets. One question that must be asked, however, is how he felt when fellow traitor Andrew Jenkins suddenly attacked him in the finale and tried to throw him to the wolves. Figuring that he had nothing to lose, Jenkins went too far. It was one of the few times Clark's composure wavered all season – although, as with Pierce, the two have kept in touch ever since and consider each other friends.
“It stunned me. It baffled me,” he says. “Somehow I had to pull myself together, gather my strength again and act calm. I don’t want to give anything away… But it’s called “Traitors”. He has every right to attack me, just as I came after him. It's just a shock that it overwhelmed me. When you don’t expect something and it happens – and this is an emotional environment – it’s just mental.”
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