Having spent the last few weeks completely on edge, unable to sleep out of fear that she could be ‘murdered’ by the Traitors at any minute, the last thing Kate expected was to be recruited by the very people who had been tormenting her in the game.
The queen of games nights admitted that she entered the hotel with a scrapbook full of “multi-level thinking strategies”, tips on body language and reading people for if she was either a Traitor or a Faithful, ready to conquer the game.
“And then literally that first night Rodger was like, ‘Someone’s gonna die tonight.' I was like I’m not prepared for this!” Kate told 10 Play. “I don’t think anyone could be prepared, actually, for what happened.”
Making it to the pointy end of the game, Kate was the last Faithful recruited by the Traitors, and with just Alex sitting in Traitor’s Tower, the duo didn’t have very long to plot their devious doing. It was also a huge handbrake for Kate’s momentum in the game, becoming the expert Traitor Hunter after Mark’s departure.
Though she had come to play, Kate started off trying to stay in the background so as not to draw too much attention to herself. “I know from playing Mafia so much that whoever is outspoken always goes home first so on one hand it was validating to watch but unfortunately for Millie, Midy and Sandra I was like, okay this is playing out exactly how I thought it would.”
As the group whittled down, Kate stepped into the fray more and more and each day she’d arrive at breakfast shocked that she had survived another night.
“I was just really lucky consistently that like, each day, there was just one person who happened to go a little bit harder than me maybe… I was honestly gobsmacked,” she continued. “Every time I got to come to breakfast I could not believe it.
“And then there was, you know, death row and the shield challenge and just all of these little things that I feel like the universe was like no, you just stay here a little bit longer. I was very lucky.”
Her recruitment also came at a pivotal time when it made absolutely no sense for Kate to still be in the game. Admittedly she knew it was a poisoned chalice to accept, but by not accepting she would have also signed her own death warrant.
“I assumed that if I didn’t accept I would be murdered,” Kate said. “So I was like, well listen. I’ve survived this long — I might as well go for the last week. I didn’t think that I had a chance of winning.”
During the finale, as Kate joined forces with Alex and Craig to vote out Lewis, it dawned on her that Alex had played a long game in setting her up, and now had an easy stroll to the prize pool.
“I was hoping that Craig would vote for Alex obviously, but I felt pretty defeated by that point,” Kate said. “I knew from the look in both of their eyes what was going down. I was prepared, although not prepared enough to come up with a speech,” she said, laughing.
Standing in front of the final two, Kate said she felt “icky” revealing her identity as a Traitor as it was still so brand new to her.
“To reveal myself as a Traitor, I still felt like a Faithful at heart, and I wanted to just scream, ‘I’m not really a Traitor tho! I’m still Faithful - love you! Anyway!!’ But, you know, the fact is I was a Traitor so, yeah, it was bittersweet.
“I’m glad I didn’t have to be the one to break Craig’s heart, that was brutal,” she added.
Though she made it all the way to the final three, Kate said she’s given the games a bit of a break for the time being.
“We joked about playing Mafia last night after the finale but there had been too many Aperol spritzes,” she laughed. “I’ll be coming back to it sometime soon. Hopefully the PTSD won’t kick in too hard.”
Catch up on the full season of The Traitors on 10 Play on demand
