SPOILER ALERT: If you haven’t watched last night’s episode, go and do that now and come back, because we’ve got all the hot goss from the winner.
'The Traitors NZ' has taken over the hearts and minds of Kiwi reality TV fans for the last month, and it all wrapped up with the grand final last night, crowning the winner(s) with $59,100.
After a seemingly smooth run through the show, comedian Sam Smith found himself stuck with the deciding vote in yesterday’s finale.
With the big decision looming, Sam needed to choose the right person to eliminate, and he bloody well did it!
“One person has Traitor written all over them,” Sam uttered in a confessional before successfully eliminating the last Traitor and winning alongside fellow Faithful, Anna Reeve.
The question I so badly needed the answer to, was what clicked at that moment for him to eliminate Traitor Brooke Howard-Smith from the game?
“I was like, it's got to be Anna. She has got to be a Traitor. Then I looked over at Brooke and he was shifting his weight around every couple of seconds. That made me suspicious,” Sam said.
“In that last moment, it was hard because it was the two people I trusted most in the entire game, the two people I had sided with. So, it really just came down to that [body language],” he added.
Despite voting out Brooke, Sam had to give him props for being the ultimate Traitor.
“HE'S INCREDIBLE. WHAT HE DID REALLY WELL IS HE STAYED CONSISTENT. HE CONSISTENTLY WAS SORT OF THE DAD OF THE GROUP.”
The purpose of the show is all about weeding out the deceiving and manipulating Traitors. Sam, despite his loveable personality and kindness to others, had done all his prep leading up to the show to be on the dark side.
Sam explained: “I prepared so much, I knew that I was going to go under the radar if I was a Traitor. So when I wasn’t a Traitor, I was like ‘huh, I could’ve avoided all this prep to be one’.”
He went on to add that his smart play in the first episode of successfully getting Loryn Reynolds voted out created a level of trust for him among the other players.
However, he was afraid that flying under the radar as a ‘nice guy’ through the game would turn on him towards the end.
“I was nervous it would happen. Colin [Mathura-Jeffree] is the only person who ever turned on me. And it was in the final episode. Even from the green vile challenge in the first episode, I thought Colin was the person I was most concerned about,” Sam said.
He added: “So we had this little thing going on throughout the whole show. It was just my luck he turned into a Traitor and ended up being voted out. It’s a very luck-based show.”
Colin wasn’t the only Faithful-turned-Traitor. Sam said he was also shocked when he found out Robbie Bell wasn’t a Traitor.
“THAT BLEW MY MIND! WHEN SHE WAS VOTED OFF, SHE SWITCHED FROM BEING THIS SORT OF FLUSTERING TRYING-TO-TREAD WATER PERSON TO THIS JUST MANIACAL EVIL GENIUS. THAT CHANGED EVERYTHING. SO THROUGHOUT THE GAME, I THOUGHT SHE'D BEEN A TRAITOR FROM DAY ONE.”
While the game could be overwhelming Sam said the cast were “so well looked after and supported before, during and after the show".
"There’s also 18 other people on the show with me that I can talk to about it, so it is great having that support system," he added, revealing he's in a huge group chat with the other celebs from the show where they all react to watching the episodes at home.
As for advice for the next round of Traitors and Faithfuls, should there be a season two? Sam says it's all about building connections and friendships.
"I THINK THAT'S SOMETHING THAT ALL OF THE PEOPLE AT THE END DID WELL. EITHER THAT OR GET INTO A RIVALRY WITH SOMEONE, BECAUSE IF YOU ARE FAITHFUL IN A RIVALRY WITH ANOTHER FAITHFUL, THE TRAITORS ARE GOING TO WANT YOU TO STAY IN THE GAME.”
Sam is a lot of things: Smart, kind, strategic and most of all loveable (told you I was a fan) - which makes him the perfect winner.
He did mention his share of the prize money was used to pay off his student loan and build an office space in his house, so I guess celebs are just like us!
It was a well-deserved win for Sam, and we look forward to seeing what Sam does in the future.
