Alex Casey talks to Nix Adams after her history-making win on Celebrity Treasure Island last night.
When I first met Nix Adams, she was having a serious problem with her internal organs. “My heart just nearly fucking fell out of my ass,” she cackled, remarkably not in any pain. It was the day before she entered Celebrity Treasure Island, and the social media creator had just found out that she was the oldest member in team Kāhu by nearly a decade. “I’m scared because now I’m representing all us fucking older bitches so, shit, no pressure,” she added. “I’m the oldest one and I’m the only parent, and I don’t know yet if that’s a weakness or a strength.”
Last night, Adams got her answer. Dragging herself through endless army netting, unlocking word puzzles and decoding symbols scattered across sprawling seaside dunes, the 38-year-old won out against TikTok star Louis Davis and actor Liv Parker in the dramatic finale of Celebrity Treasure Island. Taking home $100,000 for her chosen charity, the Child Abuse Prevention Foundation, it marks the first time a women has found the treasure in the near decade-long rebooted era, and the first time ever that a wahine Māori has won the series.
“It’s such a proud feeling to be representing women all over the country,” Adams says over the phone on finale day. “We women lose track of our strengths because we’re putting everybody else first and we put ourselves last. But I’m proud to show that no matter how little confidence we may have going into something, we women can always pull through in the end.”
With over a million followers on TikTok, many will know Adams for her extremely frank and funny sketches and reflections on life and motherhood. And, as we saw on Celebrity Treasure Island, she’s also not afraid to open up about her troubled past, including the passing of her son Alaska when he was just 16 months old, and how her grief led her to a life of drug addiction, prostitution and prison. “With my past, I didn’t know what the future held, but I fucking stormed through life every single day, and coming into the show was going to be no different,” she says.
One of the more memorable moments from the season was a conversation Adams had with broadcaster Simon Barnett, who lost his wife Jodi two years ago, about navigating grief. “His spirit is in my heart,” she said to Barnett of her son. “He’s right here with me, he’s seeing everything that I’m seeing.” Adams says she grew up watching Barnett on television, and was honoured to share some of her tools with him. “I felt like I needed to share with him that I have been there,” she says. “I had no expectations that the show would bring that out in me.”
What also surprised Adams early on was that the living conditions really were as rough as they appear on TV. “When we really had no food and there was no Airbnb waiting for us. I was like, ‘holy fuck, how the hell am I going to do this?’” The ravenous mozzies also posed a problem. “The nurse put this cream on all my bites to stop the itching, but I didn’t know the cream turned bright white,” she laughs. “The cameras turned up, and they were like, “Nix, do you want to wipe that off?’ I was like, ‘hell no, New Zealand can fucking see me in my natural habitat’.”
A pivotal moment came when Adams was made kaihōtu of Kāhu after Barnett was eliminated, forcing her to confront her imposter syndrome head on. “I felt like I didn’t deserve to be there and I had to get over that feeling every day, all the way till I hit that treasure.” Even when she found the treasure in the finale, she still wasn’t sure. “The first thing that went on in my head was, ‘you better have hit the treasure and not a Coke can girl, because you just made a big ass scene,” she laughs. “I was even second guessing my own eyes right until the very end.”
Despite her doubts in herself, Adams says she stayed laser-focussed on the cause throughout the show. “A lot of the time we hear about child abuse in our country, it’s too late,” she says. “I love the fact that this charity is trying to prevent us from seeing something on the news, and doing workshops with families, because it starts with the parents and the caregivers.” It was keeping “all those children who need help” in mind, along with her own family back home, that kept her going. “Girl, you’ve left your children at home, it better not be for fucking nothing.”
As she shared with Barnett early on in the show, her late son Alaska, who would have turned 14 just last week, stayed with her throughout the whole Celebrity Treasure Island experience – including the harrowing finale. “I remember crawling under those army ropes and I had a fuckload of sand in my mouth, and saying, ‘come on Alaska, pull mum through, pull mum through’,” she says. “I was getting so tired, but I knew that he would have been there cheering me on being like ‘god Mum, you’ve been through much worse than this, come on’.”
Given that just seven years ago she was sitting in a jail cell, there’s never been a Celebrity Treasure Island winner like Adams before. “To have this opportunity knock on the door, and for me to be able to go out there and come out on top? I mean, fuck, that doesn’t happen to people like me very often.” She hopes her story will inspire others who might be facing an uncertain future right now. “If you’ve been to rock bottom, you’ll know there’s nothing that can come across your path that’s scarier than that,” she says.
“And once you’ve been there, the only way is up.”
Watch Celebrity Treasure Island 2026 here on TVNZ+
