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\n Photo: Euan Cherry\/PEACOCK\n <\/p>\n
Eric Nam has no hard feelings. When I tell him I\u2019m heartbroken, referring, of course, to his 11th-hour loss in The Traitors\u2019s fourth-season finale, he goes, \u201cWhy?\u201d and then laughs before remembering: \u201cOh, right.\u201d Nam didn\u2019t come into The Traitors as a canonical gamer \u2014 i.e., an alum of a competitive reality show like Survivor or Big Brother \u2014 but he tried to play the game like one. He looked for evidence, built alliances, and followed his hunches, and his strategy worked until Rob Rausch, Traitor extraordinaire<\/a>, recruited him<\/a> to the turret and threw his whole game out of whack. Eric, who never had any suspicion on him before, was suddenly facing interrogations from onetime allies like Kristen Kish and even Maura Higgins<\/a>. When Eric, Rob, and Maura made it to the final roundtable, Rob turned on Eric, voting alongside Maura to get him out and robbing Eric of the opportunity to split the pot with his fellow Traitor.<\/p>\n To be clear, Eric\u2019s not thrilled about what went down, but he\u2019s chill about it now. His memories of being on The Traitors were that of sleep deprivation and mass confusion, but he\u2019s proud of the way he played the game. \u201cI know there\u2019s the world of Traitors fans who are like, \u2018You are the worst Traitor and such a bad player.\u2019 I\u2019m also just normal, you guys!\u201d he insists. \u201cThere was a part of me that was looking back thinking: Should I have been really cutthroat? Should I have played a different game? I played as true to myself as I possibly could.\u201d<\/p>\n Rob said he picked you because you\u2019d been playing as a smart Faithful. Did you even have time to consider what kind of Traitor you\u2019d want to be?<\/strong> Going back to your question, I remember being like, I want to be the nicest, most benevolent Traitor ever. Doing this show was a big risk for me because you have no idea how you\u2019re going to come off on reality TV. I didn\u2019t want my introduction to the majority of America to be a conniving, backstabbing Traitor, even though that is the name of the game. [Laughs.]<\/p>\n Has your reaction to you being recruited changed between that night and now? I feel like being recruited to be a Traitor because you\u2019re smart would initially feel like an honor, but that late in the game it could be more like, \u201cThis sucks.\u201d<\/strong> I\u2019m not sure if you\u2019ve seen the <\/strong>U.K. Celebrity season<\/strong><\/a> that aired last year, but they\u2019re all analyzing it based on the context in which they know each other \u2014 \u201cYou usually occupy this place in the world of celebrity, is that what you\u2019re doing here?\u201d\u00a0<\/strong> Do you think you would have made it all the way to the end if you had stayed a Faithful? It felt like you were kind of the Rob of Faithfuls, where you were playing relatively under the radar but in a smart way.<\/strong> Did working with Rob and seeing his thought process as a Traitor give you any indication as to how things would go down at the final roundtable when he wrote your name down?<\/strong>
I wound up being a Traitor for three days. After 20-something days of being best friends with everyone, suddenly I have to go lie to everybody. It\u2019s kind of an impossible situation to be in so late in the game. But Rob was smart. This didn\u2019t make it to air, but when he recruited me he was like, \u201cHey, has anyone been talking about me?\u201d And I was like, \u201cYeah, me!\u201d In my head I was like, Colton, Natalie, Stephen, and Rob were always the leaders during the challenges. So subconsciously, once a day, every day, we were all looking to one of those four people to put our faith in. As the numbers dwindled, I started to feel like it was probably Rob, but I never had any hard evidence.<\/p>\n
When I thought the Traitor was Johnny, I was like, I don\u2019t think I can do this, because I thought Johnny was gonna die immediately. If it was just me left, what was I gonna do? I don\u2019t know shit. When I saw Rob, I was like, This is going to be fun. He\u2019s so under the radar and I think we can make a great team. Which, well, I thought we did. I was honored! If I were to ever do this again, I think I would be like, Okay, I want to be a Traitor from the get-go. I would play a completely different game. I don\u2019t know if you ever played Mafia with your friends. My favorite rounds are round three or four because everybody has a sense of how people play and then you start to read into people\u2019s personalities a little more and it becomes a real game of who can lie, who can act, and who\u2019s treacherous. If I was making The Traitors, I\u2019d keep bringing people back because people would play it differently every time.<\/p>\n
I haven\u2019t. What\u2019s interesting about their game is they play for charity, which is great because then they can leave everything in the game. With our version, some people are doing it for the money, some people are not. When everybody\u2019s on the same page with the same stakes, it makes the gameplay more interesting.<\/p>\n
Nobody had ever voted for me or brought my name up at the table until the very end. You only win as a Faithful if you can outlast. For me, it came down to being quiet, putting my head down, and searching for clues. I do think I could have made it to the end as a Faithful. Would I have won? I don\u2019t know. Our Faithful brethren and sisters were, uh \u2026 not the best. [Laughs.]<\/p>\n
No, to be frank, by that point in the game \u2014 you see it in both of our faces \u2014 we look exhausted. Emotionally, physically, and psychologically, I was so tired. By episode six or seven, I was like, Somebody kill me. Some people were literally sitting in their rooms all night writing down notes. Michael brought a notebook that he was scribbling in to the reunion. People were crying off-camera a lot. I was not willing to let this game do that to me, so I\u2019m going to take my alliances at face value. Rob says this; I\u2019m just going to trust him. I didn\u2019t realize that he would do that to me, and I genuinely still don\u2019t know what to say about why he voted me out, but \u2026 whatever.<\/p>\n