Tara Ward chats to Bailey Kench, the winner of season two of The Traitors NZ.

It was a cold, cold night when Bailey Kench won $73,000 in the final episode of The Traitors NZ. Standing outside the historic Claremont Manor near Timaru, the Auckland wedding videographer began to shake, not only from the chill in the air, but from the adrenaline surging through her traitorous veins. When the cameras weren’t rolling, the production crew rushed to wrap the players in warm blankets, but it did little to ease Kench’s nerves. 

Two weeks of tactics, tension and treachery had come down to this: Kench was about to pull off the biggest win in Traitors NZ history.  

“I felt physically sick,” Kench reveals over the phone, as she looks back on that dramatic night in the Canterbury countryside. As Kench and her fellow finalists – information manager Donna Officer, landscaper Jason Kahika and content creator Joe Fa’agase – waited silently in anticipation to make their final deathly votes around the firepit, Kench found herself willing it all to be over, no matter what the result. 

“I just wanted that last hour to be done,” she remembers. “You have no idea what’s going on in the other three people’s heads, and no one’s making eye contact. It was so dark and somber – and freezing.”

The chilling scene marked the end of two delicious months of tactics, tension and treachery in what is the best season of New Zealand reality TV ever. Few suspected Kench to be a traitor, a role she didn’t even want, but this quiet assassin played with an unassuming nature that hid her dedication to the game. 

Having started as a faithful before being recruited as a traitor, Kench reveals she kept a diary filled with “every single banishment, every person’s votes, every weird thing I picked up at the round table versus the rest of the day”. Publicly, she made no big, risky moves that would arouse suspicion. From the privacy of the traitors conclave, however, Kench was pulling all the strings. 

“I knew I’d have a chance, just based on how my personality is – blending into a background pretty well, and being like a real thinker and observer,” Kench says of her approach to the game. “Then once I became a traitor, I was like, ‘oh, we might have this’.” 

It was, as Kench calls it, a “slow burn” of a win. As the days passed and more faithfuls were successfully murdered and banished, she grew in confidence. Then, during that intense finale, Kench eliminated her biggest threats, one by one: fellow traitor Siale Tunoka, then Fa’agase, then the clever, perceptive Kahika. That left Kench (a traitor) and close ally Officer (a faithful) as the last two players. 

If a traitor remains at the end of the game, they take all the prize money. But in revealing that she was, in fact, a traitor, Kench had to destroy the trust of a loyal friend. 

Looking back on that highly-charged moment, Kench remembers the truth sticking in her throat. “I was shocked, it didn’t come out as proper words,” she recalls of revealing her true identity. “Then part of me was, ‘oh god, do I have to say it again? Was I loud enough? Did the mic pick it up?’” Officer’s reaction was immediate and heart-breaking; she burst into gut-wrenching, disappointed sobs. “I am so hurt,” she wept, as Kench wiped away tears of her own. 

“It was just awful,” Kench remembers. “It was the nightmare that I knew was coming the whole time.” 

Months later, Officer and Kench are on very good terms. “Donna is absolutely incredible,” Kench confirms, adding that the two have since met for coffee and chat all the time. The entire Traitors NZ cast have a group chat, and several have met up to watch the show together. While some players are reportedly still harbouring grudges, Kench says most of the cast had a great time, and she’s proud of the way she played despite being so far out of her comfort zone. 

“The game itself is pretty cruel and ambitious, but I just enjoyed the ride,” she says, and plans to continue the ride by spending her prize money on a new car. “And if people think I’m the most boring traitor, that’s absolutely fine. I’m so much happier to take that title than the world’s meanest traitor or biggest backstabber.”

“It’s the best experience ever, truly – just for the ride, not even the winning part,” she says. “That was just the cherry on top.”