Plus the “Real Housewives” alum reveals what she plans to do to fellow Traitor Rob Rausch at the upcoming reunion: “Put your seatbelt on.”

Candiace Dillard Bassett explains how biases are impacting *The Traitors *exits: ‘A reminder to all of us’

Plus the "Real Housewives" alum reveals what she plans to do to fellow Traitor Rob Rausch at the upcoming reunion: "Put your seatbelt on."

By Sydney Bucksbaum

Sydney Bucksbaum

Sydney Bucksbaum is a staff writer at **. She has been working at EW since 2019 and is a published author. Her work has previously appeared in *TV Guide Magazine*, E! News/E! Online, *The Hollywood Reporter*, Mashable, Bustle, IGN, DCComics.com, Inverse, *The Daily Northwestern*, and more.

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February 10, 2026 1:56 p.m. ET

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Candiace Dillard Bassett on 'The Traitors'. Credit:

**This article contains spoilers for *The Traitors* season 4, episode 8, "A Queen Never Comes Off Her Throne."**

Candiace Dillard Bassett is ready for the most pivotal roundtable discussion yet ... even though she's already been banished from *The Traitors.*

The *Real Housewives of Potomac *alum was sent packing from the castle in the latest episode after her "throwaway" vote on fellow Traitor Rob Rausch roused suspicion among the Faithfuls. She then sealed her fate by proceeding to attempt to rally people against Rob at the very next roundtable, despite claiming her previous vote meant nothing. Since her voting pattern all season long had been about "consistency," her flip-flopping caused almost everyone — including her castle BFF Johnny Weir — to vote her out, leaving Rob as the only Traitor left standing ... until he recruited Eric Nam into the Turret, of course.

But Candiace isn't done giving eloquent speeches just yet. She tells ** that she's coming for Rob at the upcoming reunion special, and that he needs all the luck he can get to survive it. Plus, the second Housewife Traitor in a row to be banished this season explains why she doesn't believe she did anything wrong with the way she played the game, despite how it ended for her. And she dives deep on how unconscious biases had more of an impact on this season's exits in a concerning way.

EW has all that and more in her interview below.**

Candiace Dillard Bassett on 'The Traitors'.

**: Now that you’ve seen your entire run on *The Traitors *onscreen, what do you think was your downfall or biggest mistake that ultimately cost you the game?**

**CANDIACE DILLARD BASSETT: **I would not categorize any part of my time in the castle as having experienced a downfall. I'm going to be defending this for the rest of my life, I feel like. My choice to vote for Rob was intentional. And I will explain in more detail at the reunion, but there was nothing emotional about it. There was nothing heavy tied to it. It was simply, "I see you and I raise you a vote," essentially.

I have no regrets about my time in the castle. I am proud of the way that I played. I'm proud of the way that I went out. And if I were tasked with doing it again, I would do almost everything the same except I would've fought harder to recruit someone, and the someone that I've been saying, and I stand by this, is Kristen. But I don't have any regrets, and I don't think I had a downfall. I think I made a choice consciously knowing what the consequences might be, and I still would've made that choice.

**At your last roundtable, did you consider trying to fight harder to cast more suspicion on someone like Stephen, who already had some heat on him, rather than trying to go against Rob? Especially when you saw how so many people believe that he is a Faithful, and a lot of your conversations with others about him being suspicious kind of fell on deaf ears.**

Well, I think that opens up the door for other discussion about different types of biases and why there was this blind trust for one and not others. No, I recognized that there was a concerted effort to get rid of me immediately, and there wasn't time to dilly-dally with someone else. I needed to do as much as possible in as short a span of time as possible to turn the spotlight onto Rob before I had to go, because I knew it was coming.

Candiace Dillard Bassett on 'The Traitors'.

**I'm glad that you brought up biases because that's been a major topic of discussion this season after so many Black cast members were out early. What are your thoughts on that? Do you think that there were unconscious biases at play within the game? **

One of the many great things about this show, is that it does cast this light on society. It is a very well-oiled machine and a well-thought-out social experiment. Oftentimes, one of the most beautiful things about Black people, and I'll speak for me and for my community, is that we are expressive and we are a colorful personality in the room. And when you're in a game where everyone's senses are heightened, I think it's easier to go to the glitter in the room, the star in the room, and begin to question those people.

So someone like me, someone like a Monét X Change, who is just a formidable player aesthetically, and always just one of the best dressed, one of the most vocal, one of the best players in the missions, just a star all around — I believe that if Monét had stayed longer, maybe she would've also been seen as someone suspicious, again because we are glitter, we are light. And the same for the Michaels of the world — loud, boisterous people are often seen as suspicious. It was interesting to bear witness to those biases and have it serve as a reminder to all of us and hopefully to the audience that this is something that we should all be looking out for and trying to thwart.

Candiace Dillard Bassett on 'The Traitors'.

**When you confronted Rob, he said he was playing the game like a Traitor, but you said he was being a snake. What’s the difference between a Traitor and a snake?**

What Rob was doing, what you saw, that was snake behavior to me. There are a lot of things that I will say at the reunion regarding that statement, but I think that in a game like this, there still has to be some order, some structure, some boundary. We made a pact in the Turret, and he effectively went against that and broke up the band. And it may work in his favor, it may not. I think it'll be interesting to see how that plays out for him. But yes, he became someone that I unfortunately couldn't trust anymore. It was an unfortunate set of circumstances.

Lisa Rinna says she 'knew nothing' about Colton Underwood's past during 'The Traitors'

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**Before you knew who your fellow Faithfuls were that first night, before you made that pact, you said Lisa's name to some Faithfuls. Do you think that is what actually first planted suspicion in people's minds about Lisa? **

I love Lisa, and I think that she didn't do herself any favors in defending herself. Her name kept coming up for different reasons. I think that was so early in the game that I don't think that that became a nugget to be carried through to her demise. There were still so many of us at that time and there were so many theories floating around at that time that I kind of feel like people forgot, but her name kept coming up for different reasons.

I do feel like the conversation that was had with Colton and Dorinda, and there were others in the room, where Colton was like, "Lisa's really quiet, is this how she normally behaves?" And Dorinda was like, "No." And there were enough people in that room for that to have an impact and for people to then say, "Hmm, maybe we should be thinking about Lisa." And then of course, poor Yam Yam being ripped from the table, that was just so dramatic, it is burned in my brain, I think that kind of sealed it. But even her first roundtable, she didn't defend herself. I was in my head like, "No, say this. No, say it like that. Don't say that." She wasn't good at defending herself, and I think that is ultimately what did her in.

**You say that you have a lot of things that you want to tell Rob at the reunion, but what are your thoughts on him now? Give a little tease of something that you're going to say to him. **

My thoughts on him now are, "Good luck, Rob. Good luck to you." He knows that there's the potential for a verbal lashing. So I would just say, "Put your seatbelt on." It's going to be a fun ride for sure. I mean, Housewives are reunion aficionados. So this is really, for me, for Lisa, for Porsha, for Caroline, for Dorinda, it's a Tuesday afternoon, honey. We're showing up for work and we're ready to have fun and have a good time.

*This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.*

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