‘The Traitors’ Stars Still Haven’t Spoken After That Rough Elimination

(Warning: Spoilers for the first two episodes of The Traitors Season 2 ahead.)

Being the first competitor banished from The Traitors probably stinks in its own right, but there’s something that stings extra about being the first person voted out. Not only have you lost your shot at winning the cash prize, you’ve been accused of being a Traitor! The majority of the cast now thinks you have sneaky, untrustworthy energy, even if you’re a Faithful.

Understanding the burden that comes with the first vote, The Daily Beast’s Obsessed sat down with the first voted off player, Peppermint (RuPaul’s Drag Race)—as well as Trishelle Cannatella (The Real World: Las Vegas), who targeted her.

In short, Peppermint says, being voted out first “felt as bad as it could’ve felt.”

Let’s set the scene: After Johnny Bananas (The Challenge) was the first to be “murdered” by traitors Phaedra Parks (The Real Housewives of Atlanta) and Dan Gheesling (Big Brother), everyone in the manor was flabbergasted. What did Johnny do that was so bad?

But Trishelle was less worried about Johnny’s departure and more peeved by a recent conversation with Peppermint. After Trishelle had made a joking comment about Peppermint being a Traitor, Peppermint apparently gave Trishelle “a look” suggesting the quip might’ve actually been true. (It wasn’t!)

This led to a lot of finger-pointing at the first voting ceremony, which, in turn, led to Peppermint’s elimination.

“It felt terrible!” Peppermint says. “There are so many things I wanted to do. Primarily, I wanted to enjoy the rest of the game and get to know all these people, many of those people I had watched on my TV for so long. In the first few days of the experience, there’s not a ton of time for that. You hit the ground running.”

Peppermint still can’t wrap her mind around why Trishelle targeted her—she has “no idea” why the feud began.

“To be magnanimous, maybe she just really thought I was a Traitor,” Peppermint says with a shrug. “Maybe that’s really what she thought. I don’t think so, there could be some other reasons. You’d have to ask her.”

When Obsessed went ahead and asked Trishelle, she swore she believed that she was catching a Traitor red-handed.

“I felt like I was spot-on,” the MTV alum said. “I felt she looked like a Traitor, the way she was carrying herself—so confident, almost like, ‘I’m untouchable.’ So I was shocked when I found out she wasn’t.”

Once it became clear at the roundtable reveal that Peppermint had, in fact, been a Faithful, Trishelle recalled, “I was very disappointed, and I felt like, ‘Oh, my gosh, I’m going to be the next one to go because of this.’”

Moving forward, Trishelle confirmed, she began to play the game differently. “I think that I was just doing a bit too much in the beginning,” she said. “I needed to dial back a little bit. So I did for for the next one.”

Sadly, Peppermint did not have the luxury of time to calibrate her own strategy in the game. While she was happy to play as a Faithful, she also believes being a Traitor could’ve been fun.

“Maybe stressful!” the drag queen and activist granted. “But definitely a lot more safe, at least in my assumption.”

And as for whether these two have spoken after Peppermint’s dramatic exit?

“I thought about reaching out,” Trishelle confessed. “But I was like, maybe it’s still too fresh. So maybe after today, I will.”

For now, it seems all we can do is mourn the loss of yet another Traitors contestant gone too soon. That said, at least she sashayed away with a hair flip and a smile.