Kate Chastain is no traitor. Her fellow contestants on The Traitors eventually realized this, though it took them late in the game to do so and long after she’d already stolen the show thanks to her biting one-liners and controversial strategy.
The Below Deck alum returned with a force to the reality TV life she’s so good at in the new competition series The Traitors, which dropped in full on Peacock earlier this month. Based on the Dutch series De Verraders, the game show follows the players, collectively known as “the faithfuls,” as they try to identify and vote out three traitors hiding in their group in order to win a shared $250,000. The traitors, who secretly banish faithfuls throughout the game, win the money if they can avoid getting voted off.
Peacock compiled an Avengers-like assembly of reality TV greats and other celebrities (alongside other contestants) to compete in a variety of team challenges. The Bachelor’s Arie Luyendyk is there. So are Survivor legends Cirie Fields and Stephenie LaGrossa, as well as Big Brother alumni Rachel Reilly and Cody Calafiore. Even storied Olympic swimmer Ryan Lochte is partaking in some Knives Out–style scheming. Alan Cumming is there too as the tartan-wearing host of the campy series set on a lavish Scottish estate.
In the end, Fields took home the prize pot as the only traitor to survive. It was a triumphant win for the reality TV veteran who is often considered one of the best Survivor players to have never won the CBS series. Her fellow original defectors on The Traitors (Calafiore and Christian de la Torre, an LA-based content creator) were voted out. Luyendyk, who became a traitor later in the game, took himself out in the final episode.
Chastain finished fifth after largely being sidelined for most of the game, which was in part a result of her self-ostracization. Below, Chastain opens up about her experience on The Traitors, explaining what she thought of Fields’s win, what she’d change in a second season, Oh, why exactly she signed on in the first place.
“I wanted to do it until I realized [that] I’m never going to win this and everybody’s against me,” she told BuzzFeed News. “So rather than just accept defeat, I decided, ‘Let’s make the best of it and have some fun along the way.’”
