In a game all about deceit, one player went in the other direction and played a game of trust. Whether that trust was misplaced is a different conversation, but there’s a reason so many of his fellow players wanted Craig at their side in the finale.

While he came so close to a share in the prize pool, one final act of deception saw Alex revealing her Traitor identity, and scoring the entire $250,000 loot for herself. It was a brutal moment when Craig realised he had been duped by Alex. A moment he had to relive during last night’s finale.

“I mean, there’s so many positives out of the game as well,” Craig told 10 Play, “I’m proud I made it that far but it’s just hard to hide the disappointment because I wasn’t playing for me. I was playing for my family.”

Craig’s daughter has a rare neurodevelopmental disorder known as MED13L and he had hoped to play Traitors to raise awareness as well as money for her and her cause.

“In that moment I just felt gutted that I’d let my family down I mean they’re the sole reason I was there and it all kind of unravelled there in that moment.

“I was super excited Alex won, and I’m so excited for her and starting her family,” Craig continued. “I think that’s fantastic but, in that moment, it was hard to see those emotions again.”

Coming into the game, Craig said he was “petrified” at the idea of being chosen as a Traitor, admitting that when he was first approached for the show he turned it down because he didn’t think he had it in him to be a Traitor.

“My plan going into the game was, if I was a Faithful, to play obviously like a Faithful to the best degree possible so that the other Faithful wouldn’t suspect me or be suspicious of me,” Craig explained. “And then equally to play the game in a way that the Traitors wouldn’t feel threatened by.”

Where other Faithful were on a mad hunt to seek out every Traitor as soon as they possibly could, Craig said he was more interested in creating strong bonds with the other players so that, if they were a Traitor, they wouldn’t look to him as a target.

“The connections that I came out of the game with are like a totally unexpected and absolute bonus,” he added. “The relationship with Nigel is just phenomenal… I’ve come out with a tremendous relationship with Justine, being another First Nations person, with Teresa and with Fi. All those relationships have extended since the game.

“But equally your trust can be misplaced. Nigel has even said that to me since the game, [I’m] too trusting and obviously putting trust in the wrong person but that’s who I am.”

Opening up about his life, Craig said trust is a really difficult thing for him to grapple with. “I survived 21 years of horrific abuse, and so trust is a really hard thing for me because the people I was meant to trust most in my life I couldn’t, and my life became about protecting my two sisters and keeping them alive,” he explained.

“I carry a lot of that damage that makes it hard to know where I should and shouldn’t place trust, that’s just something I’ve got to live with,” Craig added.

“But the reverse of that is like, I don’t want to live life not trusting because I had to live an untrusting way the first 21 years of my life just to survive, as an adult I don’t want to play like that anymore,” he continued. “Which means sometimes you do, you do inadvertently put your trust in the wrong people and that happens for me, and I’m sure people will relate to that.

“I’m just 100 percent authentic, that’s how I try and play in life and that’s how I play the game,” Craig said. “I got the luxury of doing that because I was Faithful, so I’m not judging the Traitors because they had to play a different game.”

Looking back, Craig said there was very little about the game he played that he would change, save for the moments he and his fellow Faithful couldn’t see eye-to-eye.

“I would have loved to be able to rewind the clock back and get Teresa, Lewis and myself on the same page,” he admitted. “The Traitors were doing a pretty tremendous job misdirecting us and making us look at each other… we were kind of bamboozled.”

Though the game didn’t go his way, Craig is still celebrating the relationships he formed in such a surreal environment, and has been working with Justine and Nigel on future plans to continue the conversation surrounding mental health.

“In terms of how I played the game as me, as Craig, with authenticity and with integrity, I wouldn’t change any of that,” he added.

Catch up on the full season of The Traitors on 10 Play on demand