The Traitors won’t mark the first time we’ve seen Brandi Glanville and Arie Luyeyndyk Jr. playing games, but this may be them at their most deductive... or devious.
The Traitors is based on the hit Dutch series of the same name. It’s a social game of deduction in which “the faithful” compete in a series of challenges to win a $250,000 prize. But complicating their game are the titular “traitors,” a secret cabal within the group who only win by picking off the contestants at night while they sleep. If the faithful hope to have a chance at bringing home that sweet, sweet prize money, it’s up to them to unmask the traitors’ identities and banish them before it’s too late. The whole thing is presided over by a very camp and devious Alan Cumming.
Needless to say, the side-eyeing and suspicion run high.
For Glanville, who’s best known for being a cast member of the long-running reality series The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills where backstabbing often runs rampant, she saw The Traitors as a nice change of pace. “I love a game. I love board games, even though I’d been banned by all my friends to play with them,” Glanville tells PRIDE. “I like to win and I don’t like to cheat. So I just love a game and... I thought there would be a lot less pressure on it being a game, but it turns out I was wrong.”
For The Bachelor’s Luyendyk, joining the cast was an easy decision as he was already very familiar with the premise. “I’m from Holland. And I have a friend that had watched the original Traitors, the Dutch version. So I watched it, and I was like, This is amazing. This is gonna be really cool,” he tells PRIDE. “I hopped on the opportunity.”
As with Glanville, the game offered Luyendyk an opportunity to branch out and do something new in the reality television arena. “I wanted to do something different. Obviously The Bachelor and Bachelorette [are] very intense in a different way, a more personal way. So I thought this would be fun to play a game. Maybe win some money,” he says.
“[And] you don’t have to marry us at the end,” jokes Glanville.
Courtesy of Peacock
While their previous television history offered both of the reality stars some advantages, like feeling comfortable around the cameras, it also meant that they had some serious disadvantages when it came to playing the game itself. “We had to be exactly who people knew us to be. We could show a different side of our personality, but we are still, you know, Arie from The Bachelor and Brandi from Housewives. Whereas they could make up an identity and be whoever they wanted,” explains Glanville.
Luyendyk agrees. “Ten of us were from a reality TV background. And [there were] people who had never been on TV before. So for us, we are comfortable in front of the camera. For us, it was hard to decipher individuals that are now with us in this game. Are they nervous about being on camera? Are they just nervous? Because they’re not trustworthy? Because [that makes them] very hard to sort out,” he says.
Courtesy of Peacock
That’s not to say that a reality star couldn’t take home the prize. In fact, both Glanville and Luyendyk had theories about which of their former costars would kill the game as traitors.
“Bethenny Frankel,” offers Glanville. “She’s so smart. She’s very hardworking. She likes to win no matter what. So I think that she would be a very good pawn in this game. I think she’d be a great traitor.”
For his part, Luyendyk thinks a Bachelorette would make the ultimate traitor. “I would say a Bachelorette,” he shares. “And I would probably say JoJo [Fletcher] because she’s so unsuspecting and sweet. I feel like she’d be a great traitor.”
