Boston Rob on What Makes Traitors "Almost Impossible" Compared to Deal or No Deal Island, Survivor
The reality TV veteran has seen a lot of different competitions, but this one thing makes The Traitors trickier.
Rob Mariano, better known as “Boston Rob,” is a reality TV legend. He’s arguably the greatest Survivor player of all time, and he also was a formidable force on The Amazing Race and the first season of Deal or No Deal Island. It’s fitting, then, that he’s joined the cast of reality all-stars for Season 3 of Peacock’s hit series The Traitors. However, according to Boston Rob, there’s one way in which The Traitors is much harder than the other reality competitions he’s excelled at in the past.
“The main thing that's different from Traitors than Deal or No Deal Island, and Survivor for that matter, is the sheer number of people involved,” he explained in a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly. “Even on Survivor, even if it's a season where there's 20 people, they're split into two camps, so you’ve got to manage 10 people. On Traitors, there's 22 people. I mean, just trying to talk to that amount of people in the amount of time that you have before you go to the Round Table or challenge or anything — it's almost impossible. And it's definitely impossible to have a one-on-one conversation with anyone.”
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The Traitors has nearly two dozen people competing for an ever-growing pot of money while trying to suss out which people among their ranks are Traitors trying to covertly work against the interest of the rest of the Faithful. In Season 3, Boston Rob is one of the Traitors along with Big Brother's Danielle Reyes and Survivor's Carolyn Wiger. Being a Traitor is challenging work, but Boston Rob told EW that, the larger number of contestants aside, there were several similarities between The Traitors and Survivor or Deal or No Deal Island, meaning he could use his experience to his advantage.
“They're both similar in that there's a challenge or excursion component to the game, there is a social or camp component of the game, and then there is the Temple or the Round Table, so they have similar components” he explained, though he noted that the excursions on Deal or No Deal Island mattered more than The Traitors’ challenges.
“The sole purpose of the challenges is to add money to the pot, which at the end of the day doesn't really have any bearing on whether you're a Traitor or a Faithful or whether you stay.”
How Survivor prepared Boston Rob for The Traitors
Boston Rob further added that, although there were aspects of Deal or No Deal Island that relate to The Traitors’ gameplay, his experience on multiple seasons of Survivor was probably the most instructive parallel.
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“Part of the game on Deal or No Deal has an element of luck and risk in it that is different from any other game that we play,” he explained, referencing the briefcases. “On The Traitors, with the Round Table, it's a lot closer to what a Survivor Tribal Council is, where you have to think about what you say, how you say it, listen to what other people are saying and be able to take in that information and put the pieces of the puzzle together and figure it out. The social parts of the games are similar on both shows. The alliances don't matter as much on Deal or No Deal Island, but on The Traitors, you really don't know.”
New episodes of The Traitors Season 3 premiere on Peacock on Thursdays at 9/8c, with the season finale and reunion premiering on March 6.
All episodes of Seasons 1 and 2 are available to stream right now on Peacock.
