Nocturnal 
Professor Hannah Fry went into the Celebrity Traitors castle armed with data and an understanding of voting patterns, hoping her maths skills would help her sniff out the murderers. But long before she was spotting clues at the Round Table, the mathematician was dealing with a far tougher challenge: a cervical cancer diagnosis and a divorce, both before she turned 40.
Fry, now 42, is one of the Faithfuls on the BBC’s Celebrity Traitors, and interest in her personal story has spiked this week as viewers get to know her better on screen, as first reported in detail by The Sun.
From a routine smear test to a radical hysterectomy
Fry was 36 when a routine smear test led doctors to discover she had cervical cancer, according to The Sun. She underwent a radical hysterectomy, having her lymph nodes, womb and cervix removed, which meant she could no longer have children.
At the time she was married to sports writer Phil Lythell and the couple already had two daughters, but Fry had hoped for a third. “I always wanted to have three, because I was one of three,” she has said.
Despite the severity of her illness, Fry has spoken about finding comfort in small moments with her daughters during treatment. “The secret to being happy is repeating to yourself: ‘These are the good days,'” she said, recalling how her parents came to help care for her while she recovered.
There was a point where Fry did not think she would survive the cancer. She has credited a friend’s gift of a keyring reading “Keep f**king going!” with shifting her outlook, telling The Guardian it was “the best advice I’ve ever been given”. The treatment also left her with long-term complications, including chronic lymphoedema, a condition that causes swelling and fluid build-up in soft tissue. In 2022 she fronted a BBC documentary, Making Sense of Cancer, exploring her own diagnosis and how screening works.
The divorce that followed
It was around this period that Fry’s marriage began to break down. Speaking to The Times, she said the split came “about a couple of years” after her diagnosis, though she has been careful not to apportion blame to her ex-husband. “He was amazing, by the way, during that whole experience,” she said. Fry has admitted that being on her own afterwards was “quite difficult”.
Why it matters
Fry’s candour about illness, grief and starting over has resonated with viewers who are only just getting to know her through Celebrity Traitors, where she has leaned into the strategic side of the game. In the first Round Table, singer James Blunt wrongly suggested Fry was the recruited Traitor, when in fact it was comedian James Acaster, as The Tab reported. Blunt later appeared to confirm on Instagram that naming Fry was a deliberate tactic to protect her from being murdered by the real Traitors, replying “Bingo” when a follower suggested as much.
Whether that gambit pays off remains to be seen as the series continues on BBC One. For now, Fry remains in the castle as a Faithful, bringing the same analytical mindset to the game that she has used to make sense of the toughest chapters of her own life.
