Traitors Ireland contestant Faye Louise Brennan was “taken aback” to be branded a “mean girl” by fellow player Joanna Masiarek in one of the season’s tensest round table segments. However, she insists there is no bad blood and looks forward to reconnecting with Joanna in advance of Tuesday night’s final.
“What we need to remember is people say things at the round table in the heat the moment that they don’t mean,” says Faye, who was eliminated in Monday’s penultimate episode.
“When things are heated and when everyone’s coming at you, it’s hard not to take it personally. I think maybe that’s just what happened in that scenario. There’s definitely no bad blood there. I think she’s an incredible person.”
Faye and Joanna clashed during a high-stakes conclusion to Sunday night’s instalment. But 24 hours later, it was Faye who was on the chopping block after the remaining players wrongly tagged her as a traitor and voted her out.
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She left in tears, feeling she had been betrayed by her friends on the show – in particular Nick O’Loughlin and Ben Donohue. Unbeknown to her, the duo were the two hidden traitors plotting her downfall.
“You’ve no contact with the outside world. All you have is each other. You build these relationships with each other. Maybe I’m a little bit too trusting. But from my life and my experiences I’m a very loyal friend. So for these people that I considered my real close friends to betray me, it hurts,” Faye says.
“It does get very emotional. People will be like, ‘oh you only know them two weeks’. But it’s two weeks with no phone, no TV, no nothing but pure connection and conversation. So you do get really wrapped into it.”
Faye was eliminated alongside “faithful” Wilkin Garcia, who later revealed that he did not understand the format of the series and was making it up as he went.
“My wife put me up. She made a quick video, sent the application,” Wilkin says.
His family encouraged him to watch the other version of The Traitors that had aired globally. He had other ideas. “I’m like, ‘nah. I’m going to go in there blinded’. I mean, how hard could it be? I thought there would be little clues – maybe like a murder mystery. But I was looking for physical clues.”
Faye was recruited while attending the National Ploughing Championships with her mother. She says that she has always wanted to be on television and would like to be a full-time influencer. When RTÉ came knocking, she jumped at the opportunity.
“[We] just happened to walk by a booth and they pulled me in: ‘Oh would you go on TV?’ I filled in the application, took a picture and that was that,” Faye recalls.
Her elimination leaves five contestants in the running: the faithful Oyin Adeyemi, Kelley Higgins, and Vanessa Ogbonna, and the traitors Nick and Ben. During her time on the show, Faye never once suspected that Nick and Ben were plotting against her. With hindsight, she is shocked that she was so easily duped – especially during her final round-table, when Nick and Ben stayed silent as Vanessa and Oyin turned against her.
“It’s so obvious now – the boys not saying anything. They were so vocal throughout the whole thing, being “traitor slayers”. All of a sudden they’re mute. It was the biggest telltale sign. We didn’t pick it up – we’re kicking ourselves for that.”
The Traitors Ireland final is on RTÉ One, Tuesday night at 9.35pm
