'The Traitors' Cast Member Reveals Collapsed Lung Hospitalization

The Traitors star Paul Gorton is opening up about a life-threatening injury. Although Gorton has cemented himself in TV villain history on the BBC One competition, he nearly didn't make it on the show after he suffered a collapsed lung and was hospitalized just weeks before filming began.

"My lung collapsed four weeks before going on the show. I was recovered in time for the show but it was from a football injury, someone banged into me," Gorton, a 36-year-old business manager, told OK! Magazine. "My lung collapsed. I was outside A&E, screaming and crying, and I was on morphine and CAT scans and all that type of stuff. 'I nearly had an emergency operation to re-inflate my lung because it had depressed so much, and yeah, it was chaos."

According to Gorton, due to the way certain painkillers affected him, doctors "couldn't give me the painkillers that I needed...So I went through all this type of stuff, and then in the back of my brain, I was going, 'Oh my God, in four weeks I'm actually going on The Traitors.'" Gorton went on to share that the recovery period was "tough," giving a shoutout to his partner, Kate, who he shares son Charlie, 21 months, with. While the TV star said he is "a really hands on dad," due to his injury, "Kate had to do an awful lot of stuff because I couldn't pick Charlie up for a good chunk of time... being injured at home and not being hands on and stuff like that was so tough."

Amid his injury and recovery, Gorton had another pressing matter on his mind: The Traitors. The BBC One competition series, which sees 22 contestants move into a castle in the Scottish Highlands to complete a series of challenges and missions together as a team, was set to begin filming in Scotland just four weeks after Gorton was hospitalized. Gorton told OK!, "I would have regretted it if I had pulled out" of the series.

Despite his injury, Gorton moved forward with the show, which sees contestants take part in a series of physical team building challenges, including swimming across a lake to building, building a catapult, and more. Gorton admitted that he was nervous his lung would collapse again during the competition.

"It was the most strenuous exercise I had done since the injury, and I was thinking, 'Oh, my God, am I gonna be able to do this? Is it gonna collapse again?' because it can just collapse again on its own," he recalled. "I didn't want to tell anyone on the show because it felt a bit like sympathy story, sob story."

Gorton quickly became a fan-favorite on the show, many viewers applauding his "Oscar-worthy" acting skills. He became the player that fans loved to hate. His time on The Traitors came to an end on the Thursday, Jan. 18 episode, when Gorton was banished from the show after his fellow Traitor Harry unexpectedly turned on him. Reflecting on his time on The Traitors as the series wrapped its current season, Gorton wrote on Instagram, "What an amazing show this has been, absolute privilege to have been involved and we've all made friends for life. Regardless of what happens I feel like 22 of us won."