The Traitors' Britney Haynes Reveals 'Pivotal Moment' Her Game Was in Trouble
The plan to make it to the end didn’t come to fruition, so what went wrong?
Britney Haynes had her eyes set on making it to the end of The Traitors with her Big Brother colleague Danielle Reyes – and winning it all as a Traitor. The plan, unfortunately, didn’t pan out.
After spending most of the season as a Faithful, Danielle recruited Britney to join her in the turret with the promise that they would be loyal to each other and splitting the prize money together. They thought they had a roadmap to victory – knock out the most dangerous Faithfuls left and the path to the end would be clear, or so they believed. Following Danielle’s surprising banishment in the finale, Britney was the last Traitor to leave the game after an explosive face-off in Season 3’s final roundtable sealed her fate.
Following the conclusion of the season, Britney hopped on Zoom to break down Danielle’s banishment (and why she cast a vote against her), the status of their friendship outside the castle, and why she thinks being recruited as a Traitor late in the season helped her in the long run.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
All season long, it seemed like you and Danielle were joined at the hip and made promises that you wanted to win together. What made you cast your vote to banish Danielle in the end?
It came down to me trying to put myself in the mindset of a Faithful, and what would make sense for a Faithful to do. In the event that Dolores did flip her vote [for Danielle], did I want to be known as the only single person at the banishment table who refused to vote for Danielle in light of all of the massive, tremendous amount of evidence against her? I thought that that would look really poorly on me. Frankly, I felt like throwing a vote to Ivar in the first place was going to be really difficult to defend, and to do it a second time to think Ivar as a Traitor was going to be even harder to defend. So, purely self-preservation.
If Danielle was not suspicious to anybody, if we had gone into the banishment table, and they would have been presenting an argument against Gabby with Danielle, do you think that I would have been like, "Hey guys..." Absolutely not. Like, we had a clear path to victory as long as we had Dylan. We lost Dylan. That was a very, very pivotal moment for me where I realized this isn't going to be as easy as what we wanted it to be, but frankly, it just came down to trying to keep myself as clean as possible, to go in the next day and know that I'm probably going to be fighting for my own life.
When Danielle left, she took your vote personally, referencing your history on Big Brother: Reindeer Games. Where do you guys stand now?
We had a great conversation after the reunion was over. We both have a mutual respect for each other on a personal level and it was referenced on the reunion. If in the future, she can't trust me in a game, that's a bed that I'll have to lay down in. Like, I get it one hundred percent, but that's honestly less important to me, frankly, than the personal relationships that exist in the real world and in real life. I have nothing but respect for her. I give her a lot of credit for myself lasting as long as I did on The Traitors. I hope that she can see that I was beneficial to her game as well, and that it was gonna be great until it wasn't.
How did you feel about getting recruited because it happened late in the game? Were you at a disadvantage and did you have to change your strategy?
I don't feel that my game would have gone differently if I wasn't recruited, to be honest. If anything, I think it was a little bit helpful for me that I got to argue how much of a Faithful I was. And I was telling the truth because I really was a Faithful. So, I was not at all annoyed to be recruited. I actually thought that I had a clearer path by being recruited and going with Danielle than I did had I not been recruited. I've seen a lot of discourse around like, "Oh, you were screwed when you got recruited." I don't really see it that way. I think that my game would have played out the same regardless of which role I had. And frankly, if I'm gonna win, I'd rather win as a Traitor. So, I was not mad about it at all.
And you got to be in the turret, which is fun.
It's super rare to get to do both. I'm in good company with Kate [Chastain from Season 2]. I'm really not mad about it.
That final roundtable was juicy. You were very set on getting Dylan out but instead, you were banished. What went wrong?
I was sitting around a banishment table that I had no hand in creating. I did not choose any of those people to sit at the end. If I had been a Traitor from Day 1 and made it that far, all those people would have been different than the people you see. [They were] Danielle's choices, right? Those were the people that she said, "This is who I'm best suited to go against at the end." None of those were my people. None of those people had loyalty to me. None of those people were people that I had closely worked with in the castle, so I was at quite a disadvantage when it came to fighting for my own life. Especially against Dylan, who was pretty close with several of the people at that table, including Danielle before she left.
I was already up against the wall because none of those were my closest people from the castle. Dylan's very influential. He really had their ear. I felt fortunate that I was arguing against him versus the others because he was more suspicious. I had a better argument against Dylan than I did against anybody else. Almost anything that he could say about me working with Danielle, I could flip and say, "You did the same thing. You worked with her. You did this, you did this." Again, because I was a Faithful for so long. But I would have preferred to argue against Dylan, as opposed to almost anybody else there because there was a good amount of evidence against him by association with Danielle.
Stream The Traitors Season 3 cast reunion exclusively on Peacock and catch up on the entire season now.
