“We were the most formidable team, I would say, in Traitors history, until he broke up the band.”
Photo: Euan Cherry/Peacock via Getty Images
Candiace Dillard Bassett knows how to make an entrance. When she joined The Real Housewives of Potomac in its third season, she came in as a former White House staffer under the Obama administration and a former Miss United States, making her a perfect foil to castmate (and former Miss District of Columbia) Ashley Darby. In the Traitors castle, she found a new adversary, this time in the form of snake wrangler and Love Island USA contestant Rob Rausch, who betrayed her just one day after voting out their fellow Traitor, Lisa Rinna. Dillard Bassett, shocked by Rausch’s heel turn toward Rinna, gave Rausch a “throwaway vote” at the round table, which she hoped would serve as a breadcrumb for the Faithfuls in the future. Unfortunately for her, the rest of the players deemed it suspicious (or perhaps were blinded by Rausch’s whole thing), and voted her out the next night. There’s no bad blood with the Faithfuls who banished her, though. “One of the greatest things to come out of the game for me was the friendships and getting to know the cast.” she says. “We have the most amazing cast. No one is topping us.” As for the last remaining Traitor in the turret, however …
I loved that you didn’t do the typical Traitor thing, which is to stay quiet as long as possible until you’re forced out of your shell.
I’m not a low-key person, okay? Let’s call a spade a spade. I wasn’t gonna be quiet, but my goal was to — as much as possible — fly under the radar, be friendly, and get to know everyone. For the most part, I was undetected until someone started putting my name out there.
Listen, folks, we’re making television, okay? You gotta give them a little color, a little jig, if you will. If I was sitting here forcing myself to be quiet, I would have robbed myself of enjoying the full experience.
How did it feel when Alan tapped you on the shoulder?
Internally, I screamed. I was doing backflips. My body got hot, and I felt like the world was my oyster. If you’re gonna play the game, go balls to the wall. The game is called The Traitors, so of course you want to be the main character, because I’m a main character. It made sense, and I was so happy that Alan entrusted me with such a responsibility.
You landed the titular role! One of your many strategic moves was the death conga, which you and others have said was an ongoing idea in the castle and didn’t just come out of nowhere, like it appeared onscreen. Was there really no music playing? Did anyone else get suspicious besides Rob C.?
Ugh, my dear Rob C.. No, there was no music, we’d just been talking as a cast about what we want our contribution to the castle to be, and I was like “It should be a conga line!” And everyone was like, “Yeah, let’s do it!” We didn’t have a planned time to do it, and Alan is always throwing a monkey wrench in everything. He said, “Murder in plain sight!” And I was like, “Oh, Lord have mercy. How are we gonna do this?” So I’m wracking my brain, walking back and forth, working with my fellow Traitors, trying to figure it out, and I literally happened to walk into the bar, and I just went, “Aha! The conga! We were supposed to do the conga line!” This is how I get everybody in one place, and it’s loud enough, and it’s boisterous enough, and it’s enough of a distraction that one of the others can run in there and find these cards and finish the job. And it worked.
You and Lisa Rinna were such a great team. Is there anything that could make you betray her or another Housewife?
I think everything is circumstantial. Intention is important. I never intended to betray my Housewives. There were a lot of people I felt an allegiance to in the castle, and I never wanted to hurt them. However, as a Traitor, it’s like, “I love you guys to death, but I might have to put you to death.” So I always had that in the back of my mind. I never intended to betray any of my fellow Traitors, but if a circumstance presented itself where I truly felt like my back was against the wall and there were no viable options that could keep me covert, then I would do what I had to do. For Rob specifically, there were other options. I think that’s just what he wanted to do.
You think he wanted to do the big Traitor-on-Traitor backstab that we all know and love from the show.
Yeah.
How much thought did you put into your throwaway vote? Or as Maura would say, your trowaway vote?
I love Maura, my Sagittarian sister. It was very strategic. It was an intentional move, and there’s a lot of discourse out there about me being emotional, that I put the nail in my own coffin because I was reacting like an emotional woman. To that I will always say, fuck the patriarchy. You are out of control with this idea that because I’m a woman and I do something that goes against the grain, it is categorized as emotional. When we watched Michael yelling and screaming like a banshee, when we watched Rob saying, “I can’t vote for Colton and Ron, they’re my friends,” that’s emotional. A lot of us have moments where we are living in the fullness of our feelings, and those were seen as strategic moments. But when I do it, it’s emotional. Y’all need to put your patriarchy down. Relax it a little bit.
Rob had lied to his Traitors at breakfast. He told us he didn’t mean to vote for Lisa, he was sorry he voted for Lisa, he didn’t think she was gonna go home. And then he goes to the roundtable that same night and not only votes for her but leads the charge. What else am I to think? Of course, he’s coming for me next. You just lied to our faces. The game is called The Traitors, and he wasn’t being a Traitor. He was being a snake. He did what he felt was best for his game, and I hope it works out for him.
Do you actually?
[Long pause.] Of course!
But the strategy of your throwaway vote was “If I’m going down, you’re going down with me.”
Yes! It was literally, If you’re gonna try to take me down, which all signs are pointing to, I’m going out swinging. I’m clearing desks. I’m taking phones, I’m taking lamps, I’m taking everything with me on my way out if I have to go out, and I’m going to leave as many breadcrumbs as possible so that these Faithful kids can get you out of here.
Your private sit-down with Rob where he was like “It’s just a game, you’re taking this too personally” and accused you of having poor sportsmanship: What was it like to watch that back?
I was annoyed watching it because in the moment, I was really calm, and I recognized that there was an effort to try and rile me up. He said in one of his interviews that he was trying to get me upset. It was dirty gameplay.
Do you still think of Rob as a teammate?
No. We’re not a team. We were a team. We were the most formidable team, I would say, in Traitors history, until he broke up the band. The team is no more, unfortunately.
What do you think of the fans’ reaction to him?
As a Housewife, I’ve given almost my entire third decade to reality television. I’ve fallen victim to the perils of the fandom. There’s a lot that is being said about all of us, and Rob is getting it. He’s getting a lot of hate, but he’s getting love, too. There are people that are like, “He’s perfect, and he’s playing an excellent game.” And I’m like, “He ain’t doing that good.” But he’s doing what he has to do. I’ll give him that.
I do wish that we could keep it within the fun of the game and not make it so ugly, ‘cause that’s not fun for any of us. As someone who has dealt with the very worst of the fandom, I don’t wish that on anyone, including Rob.
If you stayed, who would you have recruited?
My one regret is that I did not push harder to recruit Kristen. She’s such a formidable player and so smart, and I think she would have really had a good poker face. It would have been fun to bring the girl power back into the turret with her.
Who are you rooting for now?
Everybody but Rob. [Laughs.] I’m rooting for the Faithfuls, obviously. As you saw when I was going out, I was doing my best to drop breadcrumbs for them, and I’m hoping they pick up one. Just pick up one breadcrumb, please.
Who from Potomac would make the best Traitor or Faithful?
Charisse would be a great Traitor. Robyn would have been a good Traitor. She wasn’t a great Faithful. Karen would have been a good Faithful.
What was your fashion strategy going into the castle? Were you moodboarding?
I did moodboard. I took my inspiration from Alan. I wanted to be campy and extra. How often do you get to go to Scotland and play a game where you get to murder people and don’t go to jail? You can’t wear regular clothes. You gotta wear traitorous campy Scottish clothes. Most of my wardrobe was from this online store called Nana Jacqueline; they had a lot of fun pieces that I could style into this look. I added a lot of hats and gloves. I love accessories, so it was fun to put it all together and parade around the castle every day.
Unrelated to The Traitors, I loved your Twitter thread on Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl performance and the MAGA reaction to it. Was that targeted at specific Housewives?
Yes, it was. It was targeted at everyone who has the audacity to be foolish. I’ve kind of gotten away from, in recent years, ranting on Twitter. My dear Andy Cohen once affectionately referred to me as a “disaster on Twitter.” I’d like to say I’ve grown away from feeling like I need to be in the weeds on Twitter. Every now and then, I’ll get jiggy with it, but for the most part, I don’t have time ‘cause I’m also momming and wife-ing and working a lot more. But I can never sit quiet, and when it feels like a pile-on of injustice, I will never stand for that, particularly when it comes to people of color and members of the LGBTQ+ community. I’ve always been an ally, and I’m a Black woman, so it’s part of my duty as a public figure to speak out against all injustice when and where I can.
It felt icky and wrong to rain on a moment that was literally all about unity. Bad Bunny could have gone harder. He could have really sent a message, because there were rumors that Immigration and Customs Enforcement were going to be outside the stadium. All this fearmongering was going on, and he could have really stuck it to them, and he made it a party. He made it a celebration, which my Puerto Rican friends, that’s all they wanna do. They want to party, they want to hang out, they want to enjoy and celebrate life, and that is what he portrayed and personified in that amazing, brilliant performance, with the ending being something that no one can deny, which is that the only thing greater than hate is love. How can you deny that? And yet, people still found a way to do so. So I felt like, “Here’s my middle finger to you all, in the form of my Twitter rant. Go sit down.”