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When I catch up with Nick Mohammed, he is on the set of War, a new HBO series. Full of legal eagles, tech-bro hot shots and ugly divorces, it’s a punchy, slick enterprise, nothing at all like The Celebrity Traitors – except for the high drama, unbearable tension and the fact that Mohammed is reunited with Celia Imrie. Traitors was filmed in April and May and this started in September, so they both knew exactly what had happened in the castle, but were still in their chamber of deadly secrecy. Mainly, Mohammed was happy just to kick about with Imrie again. “She’s wonderful,” he says. “Everything you think she might be, she absolutely is – she’s just brilliant.”
Which brings us to the root of the problem, the answer to the question: “What the hell happened, Nick?” Spoiler alert: we intend to talk about exactly what went down in the most infuriating Traitors final since, well, the last non-celebrity Traitors. If Joe Marler had had his way, he and Nick would have sauntered to victory, Alan Carr’s magisterial fibbing finally unmasked. Instead, Nick’s niggling doubts brought down the ship.
Mohammed defends himself stoutly: “I think I was relatively astute during it,” he says. “But when it came to Joe, during those last two or three days, I became convinced I was being played. All of him saying, ‘I want it to be just you and me in the final’ – maybe that was him trying to string me along because he was a traitor and he wanted to win. And then everything becomes confirmation bias.” Whatever the reason, he’s such a lovely guy that I’m just amazed he didn’t try voting himself out rather than upsetting anyone else.
Mohammed and Marler have just had a post-Traitors reunion on the Gogglebox Stand Up to Cancer episode, which must surely have been a tiny bit awkward, what with the betrayal of the year hanging in the air. “No, he definitely wasn’t annoyed. You know what he’s like …” (Weirdly, we actually do – few of the faithful could have felt more authentically themselves than Joe Marler.) “He said, ‘It’s just a game, innit?’ Obviously he was shocked at the time, but within minutes, as soon as I got outside the castle and we had a drink together, it was all fine.”
Before this year, Nick Mohammed had never been on TV as himself before. “I’ve done Taskmaster, but even that was dressed as Dracula. I always have to hide behind something.” That was partly because he wants to act, so has to think about preserving the mystery, “without sounding too pretentious”.
But he adored regular Traitors so much that when the call came, he said a hard yes. Stephen Fry had already agreed, “and if he was doing it, who was I to say no?” Plus: “When else would you get that opportunity to orienteer in the Highlands of Scotland with all those people?” Huh. Orienteering. Interesting reason – though not as unusual as I thought. Tom Daley also reckoned he would smash the outdoor stuff, but was murdered too soon to prove it. “I like a good puzzle and a good outdoor activity. Who doesn’t?” says Nick, with fathomless wholesomeness.
His career began nearly 30 years ago when he was 16 (he’s now 45). “As soon as I could start working, I was doing hotels and weddings as a closeup magician. I did it till I was 30, to pay my way through university, but as I started to get more and more telly work, it became a little bit odd. People would look at me, like, ‘Why are you here? What’s going on?’ So now I’d say I’m a hobbyist. I adore magic – I still do it every day, I read about it every day. I love going to conventions and talking to other magicians. But unless Mr Swallow does it, it’s not something I readily perform.”
Ah, Mr Swallow, the persona that built his profile: “It’s camp, it’s northern, it’s quite mainstream, it’s physical, it’s quite clowny. Even though it’s certainly not for kids, there’s nothing really offensive in there.” The power-hungry magician character is based on an English teacher he had at school in Leeds, and is shot through with surreal affection. “Don’t get me wrong: I can be snarky and cynical. I enjoy comedians who have that as their shtick – but it’s not mine.”
So it was quite tangential, inspired casting that put him in Ted Lasso, as Nate Shelley, who goes from sidekick to (another spoiler, soz) villain, and gave Mohammed the urge to act. “That was the first time I was trusted with a role that took a darker turn. I suddenly got really bitten by that, being afforded that licence to stretch myself.”
That track delivered Mohammed to the fifth season of Slow Horses, in which he played the mayor of London. “The mayor was a person of colour and that does come into it. But I wanted to be really clear: this is not me impersonating Sadiq Khan.” That season was based on the Mick Herron volume that came out in 2017: “It’s not quite as on-the-pulse as you’d think. That’s sadly a reflection of the fact that there are lots of racial tensions, in the UK and in America, and they’re not going anywhere.”
April 2026 is the next leg of Show Pony, his tenth Mr Swallow show. Has his role on Traitors brought him a whole new audience?
“I remember first noticing this when Ted Lasso went really big, gigging in rooms that were a lot bigger than I was used to. A good 40% of the audience would never have seen Mr Swallow, and you could almost see them going: ‘Christ, what is this?’ But I like that, I like having to win people over.”
It feels as though the more salient question is: can he make us forgive him? Because we still, bitterly, hold him responsible for the fact that he and Joe Marler didn’t win. All that being said, in losing the game, he did win our hearts.
