Saturday Night Live UK is faithful to The Traitors.
Hosted by Riz Ahmed, SNL UK sent up the biggest series on British television with a sketch confronting claims that The Traitors contestants display unconscious racial bias by voting out people of color.
Side-stepping copyright concerns, SNL‘s sketch showed contestants trying to root out a “great big crab man” in their ranks, at a round table featuring George Fouracres in a great big crab costume.
Except none of the contestants could see the crustacean, as they deliberated under the watchful eye of Celeste Dring’s dark-fringed Claudia Winkleman. Instead, they focused their suspicion on Ahmed’s character.
“I’d like to start,” piped up one contestant at the round table. “This experience has been amazing, but at the end of the day, we need to find the great big crab man. But there’s someone here I just don’t trust, and that person is yourself, Imran.”
Ahmed’s Imran chimed in: “Okay, I’m just gonna come out and say: Why is nobody looking at Sebastian?” Cut to a red-faced Fouracres. Imran’s protestations were not enough, and he was voted off by his fellow contestants — all of whom proceeded to spell his name wrong on their chalkboards.
Delivering his valedictory speech, Imran said: “I’ve had an amazing time. It’s been an incredible journey, and I’ve made friends for life, but there’s something weighing on my heart that I’ve got to come out and say: I’m obviously not a great big crab man.”
The sketch was a clear comment on the suspicion that people of color encounter unconscious bias on The Traitors, with a number of Black contestants leaving in early rounds. “Black people are treated differently, and examples of this on reality TV are constant,” Athena Kugblenu wrote in The Guardian of The Traitors earlier this year. “We’re not very ‘woke’ if we’re still surprised when Black people are kicked out of reality TV shows first.”
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