Desperately gunning for fellow Faithful Teresa, Matt’s chaotic approach to the game began to put a unique target on his back — not one that made others suspicious he was a Traitor, but that the noise he was making was distracting others from being able to focus on the true task at hand.
On Sunday night, after Kate won safety in the form of a shield, all eyes were on Dirk to be the next contestant to be banished. But after scrambling to get momentum on Teresa once again, Matt’s gameplay blew up in his face and a near-unanimous vote saw him banished from the game.
Speaking to 10 Play, Matt admitted that in his final days of the game he had started to feel a little bit lost. “I was scrambling, trying to find my feet,” he added. But despite the way his game ended, Matt loved getting the chance to get involved in the social experiment.
“Because I’m involved in real estate I’m involved with people all day and understanding psychology and everything like that,” he said, ”so it was a really good experience for me, I thoroughly enjoyed it.”
Unwavering in his quest to banish Teresa, Matt explained, “Despite being told I was wrong I wanted to stay true to myself. That’s kind of my character, if I believe in something, if I’m wrong or right I just take a risk and if it pays off great. If it doesn’t, I learn from it.”
Although she was Faithful, Matt said Teresa had “a lot of Traitor-ish behaviours” that others had even pointed out throughout the game.
“But the great thing about the concept of the game is people will react differently under certain pressures and that’s just how she chose to react, and we misread it as treacherous behaviour.”
Going into what would be his last banishment, Matt wasn’t confident that he had the numbers to get Teresa banished. “I just felt that there were cliques with the crew and Teresa was a very big instigator for that,” he added.
“There’s truth to that, but it was on the Faithful side so I just had it the wrong way,” Matt continued. “If I was on her side, we would have had strength in numbers and potentially could have taken out all of the Traitors.”
During the banishment, Dirk’s demeanour defending his innocence was enough to sway votes away from him, while ‘Hurricane Matt’ attracted almost everyone’s attention instead.
“I understood that the strategy I was playing was very risky,” Matt said. “I was at peace with that… I wasn’t in it for the money… my aspiration was for the social experiment.
“I flew under the radar for the first two days, I went with the pack mentality, and I went to bed that night and I wasn’t enjoying it because I wasn’t staying true to myself so I went out on a limb and you saw Hurricane Matt at its finest,” he said, laughing.
“This is the crazy thing, I think most of them knew that I was Faithful. It’s just my execution was causing a lot of confusion, so I didn’t blame them.
“I caused a lot of havoc, and maybe that did confuse them in a way and it was best to remove that from the game. I appreciate that and take that on wholeheartedly.”
Looking back at his time in the game Matt said there would definitely be things he’d do differently if he had his time over again.
“I would take more risks and I would know when to slow down and when to speed up,” he said. “I was just in one gear the whole time, and I think that’s something that I have taken on board in my personal life around my friends, family and colleagues.
“I’m used to 100 miles an hour because of my job and the volume of sales that I do and how busy I am seven days a week, so I’m all in one gear. If anything, that’s taught me there are certain positions where I should probably learn to take it back a gear or two.”
The Traitors continues Sunday - Tuesday at 7.30 on 10 and 10 Play on demand
