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The Traitors star Alex Gray has admitted that she turned down a spot on Love Island before joining the BBC game show.
The presenter and actor appeared last year on the hit reality series, in which 22 strangers compete to win a shared cash prize while three members of the cast are secretly trying to eliminate the other contestants and grab the money for themselves.
Gray, 27, entered the competition with her boyfriend Tom Elderfield, 24. However, the pair kept their relationship a secret, with Elderfield only revealing it later in the game in a bid to gain the trust of their fellow competitors.
Speaking to SWNS, Gray said that she was attracted to the BBC competition series after saying “no” to appearing on Love Island.
“That kind of genre of reality show where it is more about prancing around in a bikini and falling in love with other contestants, that wasn’t for me,” she said.
“I’d always kind of shunned it and turned away from doing reality until I saw that the BBC were doing their first ever proper reality show.”
Gray continued: “I liked the fact that it was with the BBC and the idea that it wasn’t about looks, it wasn’t about falling in love – these kinds of boring formats have been done over and over again.
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“This was something new – something exciting. Before I knew it, I sent off my application almost in vain thinking nothing was going to happen. Then, before I know, I’m kind of being buried alive by Claudia Winkleman in the Scottish Highlands.”
The Traitors concluded in December, with Aaron Evans, Hannah Byczkowski and Meryl Williams managing to weed out final traitor Wilfred Webster to win the game. They shared the £101,050 prize between them.
Additional reporting by SWNS