Great British Baking Show Alum Claims Producers Would ‘Bait’ Contestants

Great British Baking Show alum Ruby Tandoh is sharing what it’s like to compete on the hit series.

Tandoh, who starred in the show’s fourth season in 2013, wrote about her aspirations for joining the show and her experiences in a new essay for The New Yorker, published on Aug. 25. The series is known as The Great British Bake Off in the U.K., where it now airs on Channel 4.

After writing about her trajectory and training, she shared how contestants would spend their time outside the competition.

“In the listless couple of hours between challenges, we’d sit in a sofa-crowded snug in the east wing of the house, talking s— and selectively sharing baking tips,” she wrote.

However, she claims that executive producer Kieran Smith said the contestants’ camaraderie is one reason why the series is sometimes criticized as boring.

“‘The boring thing that everyone talks about is that [‘Bake Off ’] is kind,” she claims Smith once said. “We didn’t start off by going, ‘We want to make a really kind, warm show.’ Bakers are quite unusual television characters. It came from them.”

Despite the theme of kindness, Tandoh claimed that contestants were still treated like reality TV competition contestants. 

She explained that during their moments away from the competition tent, she and fellow contestant Glenn Cosby would often smoke cigarettes with one another, where they “moaned about the challenges and the ambushes from producers.”

“Their overeager commiserations, the way they’d bait you into narrating your downfall in real time,” she claimed. “We took slow drags, discussing the merits of poaching meringue in custard as producers scurried across the lawn with ingredients veiled under gingham.”

She also claimed that while in the midst of the competition, she “could imagine how the footage would be metabolized in the edit.” 

“There would be longer clips of the front-runners and the people at risk of going home; the rest of us would serve as the rhythm section, reading the recipes, putting things into the oven and taking them out, hitting the major beats of any particular challenge,” she details. “Somebody would be set up as a dark horse. Somebody else would be tripped up by their pride.”

The hit series debuted in 2010 and has since become a global fan favorite. Thousands of hopefuls apply each year, but only 12 are chosen to compete in the 10-week contest.

The amateur British bakers face weekly challenges, with one eliminated each round until a champion is crowned. However, oven temperatures and measurements aren’t the only details competitors have to keep in mind as they work under pressure to impress the judges and be crowned the U.K.’s Best Amateur Baker.

PEOPLE has reached out to Love Productions, the studio behind the series, for comment.

The former contestant’s revelations come weeks before she releases her fifth book, All Consuming: Why We Eat the Way We Eat Now. Her latest book will hit shelves on Tuesday, Sept. 9.

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The Great British Baking Show collection 13 airs on Sept. 5 with new episodes dropping every Friday on Netflix.