Candiace Dillard Bassett has had a busy week. She was banished from The Traitors, attended her first Super Bowl, watched Bad Bunny’s “historic” halftime show, and released her new single, “If Only.”
“I was crying by the end — and I don’t speak Spanish!” the star of The Real Housewives of Potomac tells Gold Derby about Bad Bunny’s performance. “I know, like, five Spanish words. The beautiful thing about art, and as an artist myself, music transcends language, race, everything. It just felt so beautiful to be sitting there and experiencing that moment with him, and with everyone that was on the field. It was historic.”
When Alan Cumming tapped Candiace’s shoulder in the first episode, it made her dream come true. “I wanted to be a Traitor,” she explains. “The game is called The Traitors, OK? As I said on the show, I have main character energy, so you want to be a main character. And I wanted to have fun.” She adds, “If I’m going to be away from my baby, who was eight months at the time, be miles away from home in the Highlands of Scotland, running around Alan’s castle, I want it to be worth it. And for me, the fun of the game was getting to murder, and getting to scheme, and play this otherworldly, insane game.”
Candiace, Lisa Rinna, and Rob Rausch had a great thing going up in the turret until Rob decided to vote for Lisa. “He started to break up the band, and I wasn’t with that,” she confirms. “I’m loyal to the soil, and I was loyal to my fellow Traitors. It didn’t feel necessary to go against Lisa or Rob, for me, at the time. There were other options. There was enough suspicion and there were enough places to introduce doubt elsewhere, that no one had to betray each other within the turret.”
She theorizes, “I think he always planned to betray us and go alone, if you will.”
Candiace Dillard BassettSam McElwee/Peacock
After Lisa was banished, Candiace really went after Rob at the round table, but it wasn’t enough to keep her in the competition. “I will talk about this at the reunion,” Candiace teases. “I love Lisa, and I love the bond that we had in the castle, and I love her still to this day. My vote was not about Lisa though. My vote was about me. It was self preservation. It was, for me, seeing and observing the playing field and the clandestine betrayal that was taking place under everybody’s noses, and trying to pivot and figure out what my next move was going to be, and realizing that I no longer had allies in the turret. That’s what it was about.”
While it’s true that “housewives stick together,” her main goal was for the Faithfuls to become “uncharmed by this snake-guy that seemed to have them all in a chokehold.” She declares, “I still stand by my game. I don’t think my game was flawed. I think I played a perfect game for my circumstances.”
When Gold Derby suggests that the Faithful might be members of Rob’s cult, Candiace deadpans, “They’re drinking his bathwater. His dirty bathwater. Everybody has goblets clinking together. ‘Cheers to Rob’s bathwater!’ That is what it’s giving. It is mind-boggling to me.”
After Candiace’s exit, Rob was given a choice to seduce somebody, and he picked Eric Nam. How does she feel about that choice? “Oh, Eric — LOL,” she sighs. “Eric is a wonderful person, and so sweet, and really funny, but Eric can’t hear and he can’t see. So, you think about that choice and why Rob would make that choice.”
Had their roles been reversed, Candiace would have “gleefully” recruited Top Chef’s Kristen Kish to the treacherous side. “That is my one regret, that I did not fight harder to recruit. And if I had the opportunity, I would have recruited Kristen. She is a formidable player. I think she would have been a great Traitor. I think she has the propensity to don a good poker face. It would have been fun to turn on Rob together and have girl power back in the turret.”
Candiace’s new single, “If Only,” is out now on all streaming platforms. She describes it as a “Patti LaBelle interpolation” from her song “If,” and is about “F-boys and clocking nonsense in a relationship.” She adds, “It’s a part of a new era of music for me that is a lot braver, a lot more raw. I’m really excited to perform this music, to tour this music, and for everybody to fall in love with it.”
Should Andy Cohen let Candiace perform her single at The Traitors reunion next month? “Andy, let’s talk!” she shouts. “Have your people call my people.”