In one of The Traitors’ most frustrating Banishment Ceremonies yet, last night saw Annabel and Luke lay it all on the line… for nothing. After correctly naming Sam and Blake as the Traitors and trying in earnest to convince her fellow Faithful to vote with her, Annabel was banished from the game.
Chatting to The Latch over the phone, Annabel reflects on the frustrating and emotional Banishment Ceremony.
Tears of Frustration
“Let’s be honest, I’m a girlie who wears her heart on her sleeve,” Annabel says over the phone. “It doesn’t take a lot to get me emotional.”
Throughout the Banishment Ceremony, Annabel was emotional, but not so much because she was sad that her time in the game was coming to an end. Rather, they were “tears of frustration” that no one was listening to her and Luke.
“So as I was looking around, I’m speaking facts,” she recalls. “Everything coming out of my mouth is truth, I’ve got my number one man Luke backing up everything that I’m saying, and it’s just not sinking in! It was so far beyond my comprehension that they could not understand what we were saying.”
From Annabel’s perspective, “it was irrefutable that Sam was a Traitor”, and all signs pointed to Blake being the other Traitor. She couldn’t believe her fellow Faithfuls wouldn’t listen to her.
“The stranglehold [Sam] must have had over them in order for them to still keep him in the game last night, it begs belief,” she adds.
How Sam Has Fooled the Faithfuls
Watching the episode, it’s hard to believe that Sam — and to a lesser extent, Blake — have been able to deceive the Faithful to this extent.
“For me, and for the audience, it’s so bleedingly obvious that Sam in particular is a Traitor,” Annabel says. “Blake is playing a much more subtle game, and working him out took a little more nuance.”
It begs the question: How are they getting away with it?
“I really don’t know,” Annabel says. “I think people must really buy that the Ash vote was proving him a Faithful, which again — to me that was red flags one through seven.”
Noting that Sam is playing an assertive and aggressive game, Annabel muses: “For whatever reason, that’s more forgivable on him than it was on us.”
Strat Chat: Keep Your Enemies Close
A longtime fan of strategy games like The Traitors and Survivor, Annabel entered the game with a detailed strategy.
“So my plan coming into the game was, ‘Get in bed with the enemy. Make them feel safe, give them the best night of their life, and make yourself indispensable’,” she explains.
“I wanted to make sure that I had a tight, core group of people who really, really, really trusted me. I entered the game with Luke, Sam and Gloria, and was just praying that one of us would be made a Traitor,” she says.
“Once you have one Traitor who is keeping you safe, then that means you don’t have to stress about the murder, anymore,” Annabel explains. “It’s all about maximising your agency. So if I’m safe from murder, that just means that I have to concentrate on building my relationships with other people, so that we can control the banishments, as well.”
On Teaming Up With Luke
Although Annabel is a diehard Survivor fan, her teaming up with Luke wasn’t a guaranteed move. In fact, when she first saw him enter the game, she recalls “screaming ‘NOOOOOOOO!'” in her head.
“Of ALL the Survivor players you could have paired me with, you paired me with the one who I probably have the least in common with!” she recalls thinking.
So why not vote him out immediately? Well, it all comes back to strategy.
“I definitely thought ‘Luke must be a Traitor’,” she says, “But again, my strategy was ‘get in bed with the enemy’. So I invested a lot of energy in trying to build that relationship, and even though we don’t have a lot in common on a personal level, we both saw the game in the same way, and we were really able to connect and build quite an intense loyalty based on our shared understanding of the game.”
Quickly, Annabel and Luke became a force to be reckoned with. By Episode 2, they’d become suspicious that Sam was a Traitor. By Episode 3, they’d confirmed that. With one Traitor locked in, Annabel and Luke realised they were both Faithful, and could trust one another.
In Episode 5, the final pieces of the puzzle fell into place as they came to realise that Blake was the other Traitor. But of course, we all know how that ended for Annabel.
Related: After His ‘Traitors’ Banishment, Ian Zaro Is “Down to Do Anything”
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Who Annabel Thinks Will Win The Traitors Australia 2023
Now that Annabel’s time on The Traitors has come to an end, she’s rooting for her “ride or die” ally, Luke.
“I really, really, really hope he can get to the end,” she says.
Of course, she knows that Luke will have quite the challenge ahead of him if he hopes to survive in the game, so she’s “also going for [her] main girls Gloria and Simone”.
“I would absolutely love to see them win the game,” she says. “I think Simone has a pretty good shot. She’s super intelligent, no one is really looking at her that much, and so I do think she has what it takes.”
As for Sam, Annabel doesn’t “see him coming back” from last night’s Banishment Ceremony, but if he does?
“If, by SOME MIRACLE, Sam manages to survive the absolute nuclear reaction that just blew up in his face, give the man the money, because he would deserve it,” she says. “Give him the cheque. If he survives, the others don’t deserve the money, frankly.”
The Traitors Australia continues at 7.30pm tonight, only on 10 and 10 Play on Demand. Miss an episode? Catch up on 10 Play.
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