Myha'la Herrold says unconscious bias is part of The Traitors format

Myha'la Herrold says unconscious racial and cultural bias is part of The Traitors format.

The Industry star made the comment after her banishment last week from Series 2 of The Celebrity Traitors. She reflected on her time in the game in an Instagram post, reported by Deadline on 13 October. Banishment means being voted out by fellow players at the Round Table.

Herrold said she sealed her own fate. That included winking at Richard E. Grant before he was exposed and banished as a traitor. Grant left in a landslide vote, according to BBC News. Herrold takes the blame for that moment. She does not blame the people who voted for her.

She said her fellow participants did not consciously target her because of her race. The bias she described was unconscious. It was cultural as well as racial, she said, and sat in the way the format works rather than in deliberate decisions.

Part of her point was about standing out. She entered the game as one of only two Americans, alongside Jerry Hall. In a castle full of British voices and references, difference is easy to spot. Suspicion can follow quickly.

Herrold played as a Faithful, meaning one of the players trying to find the hidden Traitors. She was the second contestant banished at the Round Table in Series 2, according to the BBC Media Centre. After her exit, Ed Gamble interviewed her on The Celebrity Traitors: Uncloaked, the companion show that unpacks each banishment and murder.

Before the series started, Herrold described herself as a "kill them with kindness kind of girl", very different from her ruthless character in Industry, in an interview with the BBC. A day before the Deadline report, Radio Times reported she had defended her co-stars against claims they removed her through unconscious bias.

What makes this stand out is the line she draws. The players were fair, she says. The game is not neutral. For viewers, that is a sharper conversation than a row over one vote.