Across three seasons of “The Traitors,” the Peacock murder mystery competition series has poached 13 fan-favorites from CBS’s reality TV trifecta — and yet, only one of those contestants has been a one-time, non-winning player: Season 3 Traitor, Carolyn Wiger.
That’s part of the reason as to why the “Survivor 44” star experienced some slight “imposter syndrome” when she entered Alan Cumming’s Scottish castle, only to find herself thrown even more as a Traitor alongside “Big Brother” finalist Danielle Reyes, “RuPaul’s Drag Race” winner Bob the Drag Queen and fellow “Survivor” icon Boston Rob Mariano.
“I couldn’t believe it, first and foremost. I just truly never expected this. Like, I’m a huge fan of the show. I would wear my Parvati [Shallow] headband, I would watch in my cloak. I love the show. I love Alan. So when people would say, like, ‘You’d be great on ‘The Traitors,’ I was like, yeah, right, it’s not happening,” Wiger told TheWrap of her casting. “Because, again, the previous players, to me, they’re like… I’m not in that category. I’m just not. So again, I’m not an idiot. It’s not that I don’t think that I’m wonderful and great, it’s that I have not played ‘Survivor’ multiple times. I have not won. So it’s those types of people that typically are on, so I was shocked.”
And after a dramatic Episode 9 roundtable that saw Wiger get banished in a 4-2-1-1 vote, she admitted she wouldn’t really do anything differently if given a second chance — and, perhaps more importantly, if she’d ever work with any of her fellow Traitors again in the future.
“So for Bob, I didn’t get enough time to really even get to know Bob the Drag Queen. I had heard of him, knew who he was, but other than that, I did not get enough time to get to know him,” she said. “Danielle, I’m just going to politely say no. And Boston Rob, I truly do think he’s such a great person. I was scared and I was intimidated of him, and he is at the core a good human.”
“We just, we were not there. There wasn’t the time to get alone and have those discussions. It was so fast, like the whole, ‘OK, Danielle turns on me,’ and because I had been, like, throwing his name out, by that point, like, he was already a cat on, like, his 20th life,” Wiger continued. “So it was like, what am I supposed to do here? And especially right before that roundtable, we had no time. There just truly wasn’t enough time. It’s like, back-to-back-to-back-to-back stuff. So that’s what sucked. We weren’t able to get on the same page. But I truly, truly did want to work with him.”
“I’m so grateful for everything and I’m so grateful for the experience,” she added. “[Danielle] got me out, it is what it is.”
So who did Wiger enjoy playing the game with, even if it was her job to deceive and kill the unsuspecting Faithfuls?
“Look, I love Gabby. She was my fun. Because, sorry, I’m thinking in my head, like, when are we going to have fun here and, like, just goof around? I wanted to laugh and just skip. That was Gabby. Gabby was amazing,” she shared. “She’s really intelligent, more than anyone might give her credit for. She’s hilarious, she’s smart, she’s really the full package … I just felt really, like, protective over her. I really do genuinely like her as a human.”
“[With Dylan Efron], we had so many, like, heart to hearts about people, like, underestimating me or just about how people treated me. I had opened up to him about that since he had seen my season,” Wiger added. “So actually, my argument, my whole point of saying that this is actually who I am — it may be, like, a strategy that is going to help me in these games, but it truly is who I am at the core.”
“So when [Danielle’s] saying, you know, ‘You’re playing dumb.’ Like no, this is actually who I am. And that’s kind of insulting, because this is who I truly am. Does it benefit me in the games? Of course it does. But that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t hurt to hear those comments. And so coming from someone like Dylan, we did have so many heart to hearts about this Day 1 coming in,” she explained. “There were other people who recognized me, but it’s not like we were talking about game. Like, I wasn’t going up to Britney Haynes and saying, ‘Hey, did you see my season?’ We didn’t have those conversations. I had never seen any of Britney’s seasons, I didn’t know who Danielle Reyes was. So for him, though, Dylan’s a huge ‘Survivor’ fan and I truly just thought he would have my back.”
Plus, as a “Survivor” fan herself, Wiger revealed what she thinks about Jeff Probst inviting fans to influence the show ahead of Season 50 with game-changing votes.
“Girl, this is embarrassing: My brain isn’t there yet because I’m still in ‘Traitors,’ I’m still in Scotland. So it’s like, one thing at a time and that’s really how I do have to go,” she concluded. “I think it would be cool to have a game with nothing.”
“The Traitors” Season 3 airs Thursdays at 9 p.m. ET/6 p.m. PT on Peacock.
