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\n \u201cWe were the most formidable team, I would say, in Traitors history, until he broke up the band.\u201d
\n Photo: Euan Cherry\/Peacock via Getty Images\n <\/p>\n
Candiace Dillard Bassett knows how to make an entrance. When she joined The Real Housewives of Potomac<\/a> 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<\/a> castle, she found a new adversary, this time in the form of snake wrangler and Love Island USA<\/a> contestant Rob Rausch, who betrayed her just one day after voting out their fellow Traitor, Lisa Rinna<\/a>. Dillard Bassett, shocked by Rausch\u2019s heel turn toward Rinna, gave Rausch a \u201cthrowaway vote\u201d 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\u2019s whole thing<\/a>), and voted her out the next night. There\u2019s no bad blood with the Faithfuls who banished her, though. \u201cOne of the greatest things to come out of the game for me was the friendships and getting to know the cast.\u201d she says. \u201cWe have the most amazing cast. No one is topping us.\u201d As for the last remaining Traitor in the turret, however \u2026<\/p>\n I loved that you didn\u2019t do the typical Traitor thing, which is to stay quiet as long as possible until you\u2019re forced out of your shell.\u00a0 Listen, folks, we\u2019re 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.<\/p>\n How did it feel when Alan tapped you on the shoulder? 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\u2019t just come out of nowhere, like it appeared onscreen. Was there really no music playing? Did anyone else get suspicious besides Rob C.? You and Lisa Rinna were such a great team. Is there anything that could make you betray her or another Housewife? You think he wanted to do the big Traitor-on-Traitor backstab that we all know and love from the show. How much thought did you put into your throwaway vote? Or as Maura would say, your trowaway vote? Rob had lied to his Traitors at breakfast. He told us he didn\u2019t mean to vote for Lisa, he was sorry he voted for Lisa, he didn\u2019t 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\u2019s coming for me next. You just lied to our faces. The game is called The Traitors, and he wasn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n Do you actually? But the strategy of your throwaway vote was \u201cIf I\u2019m going down, you\u2019re going down with me.\u201d Your private sit-down with Rob where he was like \u201cIt\u2019s just a game, you\u2019re taking this too personally\u201d and accused you of having poor sportsmanship: What was it like to watch that back? Do you still think of Rob as a teammate? What do you think of the fans\u2019 reaction to him? I do wish that we could keep it within the fun of the game and not make it so ugly, \u2018cause that\u2019s not fun for any of us. As someone who has dealt with the very worst of the fandom, I don\u2019t wish that on anyone, including Rob.<\/p>\n If you stayed, who would you have recruited? Who are you rooting for now? Who from Potomac would make the best Traitor or Faithful? What was your fashion strategy going into the castle? Were you moodboarding? Unrelated to The Traitors, I loved your Twitter thread on Bad Bunny<\/a>\u2019s Super Bowl performance and the MAGA reaction to it. Was that targeted at specific Housewives<\/a>?
I\u2019m not a low-key person, okay? Let\u2019s call a spade a spade. I wasn\u2019t gonna be quiet, but my goal was to \u2014 as much as possible \u2014 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.<\/p>\n
Internally, I screamed. I was doing backflips. My body got hot, and I felt like the world was my oyster. If you\u2019re 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\u2019m a main character. It made sense, and I was so happy that Alan entrusted me with such a responsibility.<\/p>\n
Ugh, my dear Rob C.. No, there was no music, we\u2019d just been talking as a cast about what we want our contribution to the castle to be, and I was like \u201cIt should be a conga line!\u201d And everyone was like, \u201cYeah, let\u2019s do it!\u201d We didn\u2019t have a planned time to do it, and Alan is always throwing a monkey wrench in everything. He said, \u201cMurder in plain sight!\u201d And I was like, \u201cOh, Lord have mercy. How are we gonna do this?\u201d So I\u2019m 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, \u201cAha! The conga! We were supposed to do the conga line!\u201d This is how I get everybody in one place, and it\u2019s loud enough, and it\u2019s boisterous enough, and it\u2019s enough of a distraction that one of the others can run in there and find these cards and finish the job. And it worked.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s like, \u201cI love you guys to death, but I might have to put you to death.\u201d 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\u2019s just what he wanted to do.<\/p>\n
Yeah.<\/p>\n
I love Maura, my Sagittarian sister. It was very strategic. It was an intentional move, and there\u2019s 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\u2019m a woman and I do something that goes against the grain, it is categorized as emotional. When we watched Michael<\/a> yelling and screaming like a banshee, when we watched Rob saying, \u201cI can\u2019t vote for Colton and Ron<\/a>, they\u2019re my friends,\u201d that\u2019s 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\u2019s emotional. Y\u2019all need to put your patriarchy down. Relax it a little bit.<\/p>\n
[Long pause.] Of course!<\/p>\n
\ufeffYes! It was literally, If you\u2019re gonna try to take me down, which all signs are pointing to, I\u2019m going out swinging. I\u2019m clearing desks. I\u2019m taking phones, I\u2019m taking lamps, I\u2019m taking everything with me on my way out if I have to go out, and I\u2019m going to leave as many breadcrumbs as possible so that these Faithful kids can get you out of here.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
No. We\u2019re 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.<\/p>\n
As a Housewife, I\u2019ve given almost my entire third decade to reality television. I\u2019ve fallen victim to the perils of the fandom. There\u2019s a lot that is being said about all of us, and Rob is getting it. He\u2019s getting a lot of hate, but he\u2019s getting love, too. There are people that are like, \u201cHe\u2019s perfect, and he\u2019s playing an excellent game.\u201d And I\u2019m like, \u201cHe ain\u2019t doing that good.\u201d But he\u2019s doing what he has to do. I\u2019ll give him that.<\/p>\n
My one regret is that I did not push harder to recruit Kristen. She\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
Everybody but Rob. [Laughs.] I\u2019m 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\u2019m hoping they pick up one. Just pick up one breadcrumb, please.<\/p>\n
Charisse would be a great Traitor. Robyn would have been a good Traitor. She wasn\u2019t a great Faithful. Karen would have been a good Faithful.<\/p>\n
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\u2019t go to jail? You can\u2019t wear regular clothes. You gotta wear traitorous campy Scottish clothes. Most of my wardrobe was from this online store called Nana Jacqueline<\/a>; 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.<\/p>\n
Yes, it was. It was targeted at everyone who has the audacity to be foolish. I\u2019ve kind of gotten away from, in recent years, ranting on Twitter. My dear Andy Cohen once affectionately referred to me as a \u201cdisaster on Twitter.\u201d I\u2019d like to say I\u2019ve grown away from feeling like I need to be in the weeds on Twitter. Every now and then, I\u2019ll get jiggy with it, but for the most part, I don\u2019t have time \u2018cause I\u2019m 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\u2019ve always been an ally, and I\u2019m a Black woman, so it\u2019s part of my duty as a public figure to speak out against all injustice when and where I can.<\/p>\n