Kate Chastain Explains Her Major Move and Unexpected "Castle Cred" in the Latest The Traitors
Below Deck's Kate Chastain unpacks her do-or-die choice on this week's fraught The Traitors.
Spoilers below for Season 2 of The Traitors!
From the moment, Kate Chastain, the Below Deck and The Traitors Season 1 alum, sauntered back into The Traitors Roundtable room this season, we knew she was likely going to turn the game upside down. And tonight, the piper (aka Phaedra Parks) came calling with an offer for Kate to turn Traitor.
After three episodes of laying low and just observing the playing field as a Faithful, the banishment of Traitor Parvati Shallow (Survivor) left Phaedra as the sole Traitor in the game. But at the end of Episode 8, Master of Ceremonies Alan Cumming gave Phaedra the chance to remedy that with the option to recruit a Faithful of her choosing to help her deceive on the down low for the rest of the season. And Phaedra chose Kate.
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At the top of this week's episode, Kate was offered the rather limited "accept or die" scenario. Of course, she left the Faithful in the rearview mirror.
In an exclusive interview with Bravo's The Daily Dish, Chastain explained her ultimate choice to flip sides and what shocked her about Phaedra's game.
Kate Chastain on the lack of Traitor strategy
Kate said when she walked into the Traitor's lair and discovered that Phaedra had no existing plan, it blew her mind.
"It was a high compliment that she trusted my judgment, it really was," Kate said of Phaedra deferring to her murder choice. "But, I had just been given the rules of the Traitors so I thought it'd be rude if I went into the turret and started calling the shots.
"So of course, I'm gonna let Phaedra take the lead. She's been up there a lot longer," she continued. "Then, I realized nobody has a plan up here! I thought that there was perhaps a map on the board. Or, a list of 'here's where we go next' as strategy," she said, laughing. "So I was very surprised when that was not the case. But you know, it's a fast-moving game. Everything changes so often that any plan is going to change soon."
Kate used the Faithful's trust to her advantage
Asked if she thought her mid-game appearance in Season 2 made everyone still in the game assume she was a Faithful, Kate emphatically said, "Yes!"
"Not only did the people assume I was a Faithful, but they kind of looked to me for advice because I did it before," she explained. "That was a very different position than I was in last year. Nobody would listen to me last year.
"Now I had a little castle cred," she joked. "Everyone looked at me and I'm like, 'Oh, I'm the expert now.' So, it was fun for me."
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Even with those dampened suspicions working to her advantage, Kate said the "turn Traitor or die" ultimatum didn't give her a real choice about her gameplay.
"It made it very hard for me and I didn't have a choice," she said. "I don't know if I had been given the choice, perhaps I would have stayed a Faithful. But at this point, I was so in the game. And I was having fun with these people. I was gonna do whatever it took to not go home. It's really interesting how you can be in the castle for a couple of days, but it feels like a month. And you were desperate to not go home."
And as Kate was a new mom, who amongst us wouldn't choose luxury chaos over delayed diaper changing?
Season 2 of The Traitors is ongoing, and new episodes are available to stream every Thursday at 6 p.m. PT/9 p.m. on Peacock alongside The Traitors: Postmortem aftershow. All of Season 1 is already available to watch on Peacock.
