Pop CultureSeptember 5, 2023

The Traitors NZ power rankings, week five: A disgustingly satisfying finale

Senior writer

Alex Casey power ranks the final week of The Traitors NZ, in which eyeballs are eaten, heads are shaved and backs are stabbed.

Faithfuls, traitors, fedora-wearers, we have made it to the end of the first season of The Traitors NZ and my nerves are well and truly shot. Although we didn’t quite ever reach the dizzying highs of The Traitors UK (available on ThreeNow, run don’t walk) you can always rely on that final banishment ceremony to get you on the edge of your seat. Just a girl, standing in front of her TV, yelling at Anna Reeve to choose the red ceremonial pouch to toss into the fire. Normal show!

I’ve truly had as much fun as Colin tucking into a plate of offal watching this season, but my one wish for next time is that we get a few less celebrities and a few more true blue Robbie-the-hairdresser characters around the roundtable. Give me a real estate agent, give me a dairy farmer, give me a baker, a butcher, a candlestick maker. Brooke Howard-Smith is all fine and good, but I want to know how Brooke’s humble maggot-wrangler Brian would play this game.

PS: If you want to hear more analysis of The Traitors NZ, head over to The Real Pod Substack for weekly reality recap podcasts and more pop culture curios. Onto the finale!

BANISHED: Kings (faithful)

He wowed crowds (me) with his acrobatic double-leg jump during the Paul Henry antiquities heist challenge, but Kings was not quite nimble enough to wriggle out of his own banishment at the roundtable. Even if he was chaotic, he was a good player – the only one to sniff out Colin early on, the one who made everyone tear up when he talked about wanting to take his kids to Japan with the prize money and, in the words of Sam Smith, the one who everyone wanted to be his best friend. Run free Kings, run free.

‘He mea tautoko nā ngā mema atawhai. Supported by our generous members.’

Liam Rātana
— Ātea editor

BANISHED: Colin Mathura-Jeffree (traitor)

I will be the first to admit that I have been entirely under Colin’s spell for the last few episodes (read: decade), but how could you not?! The man is a celestial being and an utter quote machine. “It’s the scorpion and the frog,” he said of Brooke Howard-Smith. “It’s in his nature – he will sting everyone.” OK Laurence Olivier!!!!! “All of these people deserve to win, but I’m dressed for their funerals,” he later cooed, donning a blue velour blazer and stunning silky turban.

He also let his guard down during Monday night’s episode after revealing the loss of mother during the pandemic, and how all he wants is to create memories with his family. There was not a dry eyeball in the house, which is probably why his next wickedly talented move was to eat an eyeball (and other assorted horrors). “I’ve broken a heart but I haven’t eaten one,” he japed. He may have been swiftly banished, but the Emmy award for Outstanding Writing goes to one man and one man only.

BANISHED: Julia Vahry (faithful)

What a glamorous final week for former police officer Julia Vahry. First of all she donned the world’s most impractical aquamarine cocktail dress to jump over laserbeams with in the art heist challenge, announcing it was going to be “dinner and a show” for the audience. As Yves Saint Laurent once said: fashion fades, but hiking your dress up to jump over a laser beam to try and steal Paul Henry’s $200 buzzy bee is eternal.

If that wasn’t enough opulence for you, Julia’s final Fear Factor-inspired challenge was to stand in a cryotherapy chamber for three minutes. People such as Art Green pay at least $75 a pop for that sort of luxury spa day?! Alas, her plummeting temperature led to a chilly reception at the final banishment ceremony, where Anna, Sam and Brooke all voted to banish her for being a suspected traitor. Cold as ice to our girl in blue.

BANISHED: Brooke Howard-Smith (traitor)

I was genuinely crying with laughter when Brian the maggot wrangler doused Brooke Howard-Smith in creepy crawlies for his final solo mission. “Brian, take it easy!” he shrieked. “Brian! Oh my god they are so big, why are they so big? Why are they so big, Brian?” Perhaps Brian had a bout of cryotherapy himself, because he was extremely chill with ignoring Brooke’s yelps and even started adding cockroaches when the going got tough.

“Brian, do to they bite?? They are feeling really itchy!!” Brooke pleaded as the cascade of cockroaches rained down on him. “Why would they be, why would they beeee??” he squealed, as his earplugs fell out and the cockroaches made a beeeeeline for every available orifice. “You forget about the maggots because the cockroaches are so active,” Brooke heaved. “Argh! Argh! I just want to live- argh! Now they are right up in my pants.”

Before he could even shake the final roach from his shorts, Brooke was back under the pump at Paul Henry’s fire pit, where the numbers were stacked against him and he was voted out at final three. “What a game,” he reflected. “I do not want to do it again”.

WINNER: Anna Reeve (faithful)

A true faithful from the very moment she whipped off her wig in episode one for fear of being branded deceitful, Anna Reeve was always going to last a while in this game. She showed unparalleled counting prowess, was unflappable in the face of confusing intruders (Zuggaballantyne) and made a few new “Pals” along the way.

WINNER: Sam Smith (faithful)

Also sharing in Paul Henry’s $59,000 pot o’ silver is comedian Sam Smith, who quite literally offered up his own scalp to the game in the form of a monk’s hair cut. “I did not get this haircut for some asshole to walk away with the money,” he told the camera, as his newly shaved head gleamed like one of Paul Henry’s forbidden tchotchkes.

Sam also stepped into his potency in the finale by calling out Colin for spinning yarns and reminding us all that he is playing to show his two kids that “you have a disabled dad but that doesn’t mean anything.” How you can extract that much meaning from a challenge involving laser pointers and Paul Henry is beyond me, but things only got more emotional when Sam eventually took out the whole damn show.

“People with MS, people with low vision, they can do anything,” he beamed. “Even win a random as murder mystery game show.”

Keep going!

Additional design by Tina Tiller

Pop CultureSeptember 4, 2023

It’s official: Tāme Iti is here to kick Celebrity Treasure Island’s ass

Alex Casey

Senior writer

Additional design by Tina Tiller

Alex Casey talks to Tāme Iti on the shores of Celebrity Treasure Island about his survival skills, reclaiming the mainstream and making that viral TikTok.

You know those funny artworks where Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, Elvis and Humphrey Bogart are all at a pub? Earlier this year, lakeside in Wānaka, I saw the local version before my very own eyes. In said scene, Matilda Green was flashing a gleaming white smile for the camera. Behind her, TV host Matt Gibb and comedian James Mustapic were skimming stones on the water. On the shore, Tāme Iti lay on a rock in the sun like a lizard, fast asleep.

At 71, Iti (Ngāi Tūhoe) has become one of the most recognisable faces in Māori activism after he first rose to prominence in Ngā Tamatoa in the 1970s. Since then, he’s delivered Waitangi Tribunal submissions on a blanket, served nine months in prison on firearm charges after the controversial Te Urewera raids, delivered Ted talks and gone viral on TikTok for correcting the spelling of his name on an artwork at Wellington’s posh Museum Hotel.

Iti is also a Laureate award-winning artist, a poet, an actor, a producer, a social worker, a father, a beekeeper, a gardener, a grandparent, and now, in a turn that nobody saw coming, one of the cast members on Celebrity Treasure Island. “I love it here,” he told me after his lakeside nap, nibbling on a little bag of salt and vinegar chips. “I love the space. I love the challenge. It’s not that harsh, apart from the big mountains over there, but I’m not gonna climb those.”

While other unnamed celebrities were clearly already struggling with sunscreen in their eyes and sand flies biting their ankles before the game had even begun, Iti was more than happy to be entering the wilderness. “I’ve got personal experience living in survival,” he said. “I’ve taken a lot of kids out in the bush and it’s a good space there just to loosen up, distract you from booby traps in our society.” He chuckled. “I can see the city guys already have some anxiety.”

Gesturing to the nearby lake, Iti said that is the first place he’ll be looking when it comes to sustenance. “I’m not going to eat the food in there but I can get the food in there,” the vegan explained, talking me through how to use rarauhe as a trap for fish, who are attracted to the scent. “There’s millions of years of creation from the gods all around us, so why would we not explore that? It’s a good challenge for all of us to get out there and check it out.”

One of society’s big “booby traps” he referred to was social media. “There’s a lot of people yelling and screaming and they are all nameless and faceless,” he said. “I still think kanohi ki te kanohi is a really good thing, so we can look at each other and we can feel each other’s vibration and voice.” Still, social media has provided a new audience for his art. He often posts in the early hours, talking and painting at the same time, to reach those on the other side of the world.

Tame Iti with steel Ira Tumatuma sculptures as part of his Wellington exhibition. (Image: Supplied)

TikTok is Iti’s latest artistic platform, which took off in 2022 when he wandered into the Museum Hotel and corrected the spelling of his name. “That was about art on art. Anybody can see and look at that painting and see it’s me. But it’s Tāme, it’s not Tāma,” he said. “We did it right in front of them, nobody questioned what we were doing, then we just walked out with a smile.” It was his son Toi who had the nous to add Dr Dre and Snoop Dogg’s ‘The Next Episode’.

He’s excited to bring that same sense of theatricality to Celebrity Treasure Island. “Life is theatrical, you know? We’re here to create this reality show and we are allowed to be theatrical and bring new different elements to make it fun, make it laughable,” he said. And look out Paul Henry, let’s just say there’s a new top dog hat-wearer coming to our screens. “Oh yeah, I’ve brought all my bowler hats to add something to the place.”

I asked how he felt about walking into the belly of the mainstream media, especially after decades of derision and “fearsome ferals” headlines. “I just kinda laugh at that now. With my kind of profile, people either like me or they hate my guts. It doesn’t really matter,” he said. “I’m also only one of many other people in the history of this country. And I think it’s important for us to challenge ourselves, not just the system, but for everyone to shift their thinking.”

John Key greets Tāme Iti at Te Tii Marae the day before Waitangi Day in 2008 (Photo: Hannah Peters/Getty Images)

In the wake of his 2022 exhibition I Will Not Speak Māori, a phrase Iti himself was forced to write out hundreds of times at school as a child, he said it is great to see Te Reo normalised on our screens, even in reality TV juggernauts like Celebrity Treasure Island. He’s especially looking forward to using Te Reo in the competition with his teammate Turia Schmidt-Peke. “We are definitely going to use the language, even if just very basic – ‘whakarongo’, ‘titiro’,” he said.

With a mischievous smile, he also revealed it could be an advantage in the game. “We can also both talk without giving things away,” he said, lowering his voice. “We can do it all in Te Reo so they never know what we are doing.” With $100,000 on the line for his chosen mental health charity I Am Hope, Iti said he’ll do whatever he can to win. “It’s something very dear to my soul,” he said. “It’s something that has impacted me and people that I know personally.”

Before the strategy and mind games had even started, Iti had a plan of attack for his team. “I want to be the one at the back giving instructions, because I can see things, knowing the landscape and knowing all of these survival things,” he said. “I’ll have a small role because there’s nine of us, which means nine different thoughts and ideas.” Once they figure out everyone’s strengths, kanohi ki te kanohi, that’s when the plan will come together.

“Because,” the 71-year-old grinned. “We are here to kick ass.”

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