Take 22 fanatical players, a gigantic French castle and a golden TV formula that has now been sold to several countries. For the first time, a well-known headline was not a condition for unmasking saboteurs and earning silver bars The Traitors. This proved to be enough for many loyal fans to sign up, but the registration story of winner Tristan Eisank was not so standard. “I suddenly received an email from producer ITV that I had been selected. My wife registered me because she has been a fan from the very beginning, but I had never seen the program.” His wife himself did not dare to be away from home for so long because of the children. “She thought I would do well on TV.”
No hand on the shoulder
And with that boost in his pocket, the gym owner went to work. He binged all the seasons in one go and a corresponding strategy was formulated. “I learned from old seasons that you shouldn’t stand out too much. After all, strong players are quickly voted out or killed. I decided to wait and see.” However, his character only kept Tristan hidden for three days; after that there was no stopping it. “I love games, so I quickly started hunting down the traitors with a vengeance. And although I had told Tijl (Beckand, ed.) prior to the game that I would like to be a traitor, I was glad that in the end I did not feel that hand on my shoulder. It’s a huge burden to carry.” From his move to the side of the saboteurs, the player was always on his guard. “I wouldn’t have kept up this role for the entire game. The game was harder for me than expected.”
Don’t talk without cameras
The father of three found the most difficult thing to be the lack of contact with the outside world. “After dinner, apart from half an hour of walking and having a drink, you spend the entire evening in your room. Then you don’t have a phone, so I was mainly pacing or working with dumbbells.” Tristan also found this whole experience more intense than he had previously thought. “I spent the whole time thinking about everything everyone had said. But when the cameras are off, you are not allowed to talk about the game with your fellow candidates. The candidate supervisors take care of this, because they always sit at dinner. There it can only be small talk.”
‘Kim is talking to me again’
It was perhaps the best position: The Traitors starting among the Faithful as a kind of everyone’s friend and ending as a master manipulator who ultimately ran away with the silver bars. Ultimately, Kim pulled her buddy into the tower: the traitor who eventually kicked Tristan out at the last minute. Laughing: “She’s looking at me again now, you know. After the recordings were finished we spent another day at the castle. Of course she was sad that she had not won, but in the end she had seen it coming because I was trusted more by the rest.” By the way, Kim wasn’t the one Tristan feared. “With Jannie, Robin and Alex I was really afraid of being exposed. They wrote down everything I said. And Mohamed was also a strong player.”
Is something scripted?
Contact with the entire group of the program is still possible via a group app. “A large part of them watched the episodes together, but I live in Limburg. So I watched the broadcast at home with my wife on the couch. I was the only one allowed to confide in her. As a big fan of the program, she of course thought it was extra great that I had won.” Tristan himself looked without tension. “I really wasn’t worried because I know I’ve been respectful. A condition I set beforehand was that I didn’t want to say anything that I didn’t support, but fortunately that wasn’t necessary. Nothing is scripted in The Traitors.”
On holiday with the whole family
Tristan concludes that there were also sufficient psychologists present, both during the recordings and afterwards. “If something bothered me, there was always someone available to talk to. Even two weeks after returning home, they offered me an interview.” In addition to the title winner of De Verraders, Tristan was able to take home a whopping 33 kilos of silver. Does he already know what he’s going to do with the winnings? Laughing: “Shall I tell you that I don’t even know the exact amount yet? In the end I will probably book a nice holiday with the whole family.”
You can watch the entire season of De Verraders via Videoland
