She cooked. She decorated. She made it nice. But did she murder?
The biggest news in the pop culture world this week was the reveal of the Season 3 cast of The Traitors. Because the show cannonballed into the watercooler with its past season, which featured a 15 Minutes of Fame parade of reality TV stars in the cast, there was intense scrutiny and excitement over who Peacock might draft for its Season 3 roster. Which Real Housewives? How many Survivor contestants? What absolutely random British politician?
Host Alan Cumming delivered the cast announcement as only he could—Clueless by fashion, Shakespeare by elocution—and the internet responded in kind: raving about how savvy and gloriously random the cast list is.
There are the expected: six Bravo personalities, Boston Rob from Survivor, and perhaps reality TV’s most notorious personality at the moment, Tom Sandoval. And there are the WTF choices that this genre thrives on, like Zac Efron’s brother, Dylan, and Britney Spears’ ex, Sam Asghari.
But if you ask me (which nobody has), I can tell you who is the most thrilling addition to the Clue-esque series: none other than former Real Housewives of New York City star Dorinda Medley.
A show like The Traitors, in which the cast must figure out who among them is a “traitor” that can “kill” one of them off each night, thrives in the very specific realm of what I call “sophisticated chaos.” That’s a delicate tightrope to walk, one on which most reality stars make the mistake of inelegantly trampling down. The misconception is that someone who is purely a loud, belligerent mess makes for good reality TV often poisons modern shows. A loud, belligerent mess that uncorks organically is beautiful entertainment; one that is either calculated or too disastrously unhinged is unwatchable.
Dorinda Medley is the best kind of reality star because what she thinks she’s presenting is at wild odds with her actual behavior.
In most circumstances, Medley is a voice of reason, an intelligent and grounded person who serves as an audience surrogate because of her ability to rationalize and her level of taste. So when she, fairly reliably, becomes a slurring, intoxicated whirling dervish of screaming nonsense, it’s more fun than when other reality stars completely lose it. You expect them to be a disaster. When Medley unravels, it’s like you’re looking into a harrowing funhouse mirror: If someone as “together” as she is can become so unhinged, does that mean it could happen to me too? Worse: has it happened?
That personality will make for perfect TV on a show like The Traitors. She’s someone who I can see brilliantly strategizing and breaking down the specifics of the game, which is a necessary element of the series. I can also see her completely losing her shit at the elimination table, concocting nonsensical rivalries, and, after a few wines, sloppily monologuing as if she’s making the world’s most salient point, only to sound like a sentient bottle of vodka.
One of the reasons The Traitors exploded in popularity last year is because it’s a TV show perfectly positioned to produce moments that go viral. Forcing some of the most magnetic personalities in reality TV to execute humiliating tasks is one thing, but then requiring them to deliver speeches about why they don’t trust each other is pop culture gold. That’s how we got moments like former Housewife Phaedra Parks saying things like, “I do too much because you do too little,” last year.
Medley, who will arrive at the Scottish castle with an entire backlog of viral moments and memes from her time on Housewives, is poised to be the show’s successor to Parks. That The Traitors has a reach that expands far outside the Bravoverse means that an entirely new audience will be exposed to her penchant for inebriated poetry. Let’s just hope that production isn’t stingy on the wine.
How perfect is Medley for a show like The Traitors? Take a look at all these posts on social media that imagine exactly how Medley’s time on The Traitors might unfold. Clearly, she’s the fan favorite of the new cast, complete with some of the greatest hits of her RHONY memes.
