Everything was going so well for Joe Vanella inside The Traitors castle until he was tasked with murdering a fellow contestant via a tossed apple. Unlucky for him, Victor Vollbrechthausen noticed both Joe and his fellow Traitor, Tomica Adams, carrying fruit around the castle, and ultimately got the pair banished at back-to-back Round Tables.
If it wasn’t for Fruitgate, however, Joe believes that the Traitors would have ended the game with a perfect record.
“The end of the game is three Traitors standing around the fire,” he says of the alternate history. “If we hadn’t been felled by Fruitgate, chances are Victor’s banished and the three Traitors are just waltzing to that fire pit at the end. Me, Tomica, and Katie [Fites] are $250,000 richer, collectively.”
In the history of The Traitors U.S., only Cirie Fields and Rob Rausch have ever won the game as Traitors, but Joe suspects his unique strategy could have added the New Blood trio to that winners list.
“My strategy going in as a Traitor was different because it was all social,” he says. “I played a very unique game for a Traitor, and it was working. People are like, ‘The Faithfuls are so clueless.’ No, they’re not clueless. We just used our social game so well that they never thought it was us.”
Their strong social games, however, weren’t enough to overcome the power of the fruit, and after Joe’s banishment in this week’s episode, only Katie and her recruit Shane Beatty remain in the turret heading into next week’s two-part finale.
After Joe’s exit from The Traitors: New Blood, he sat down with Gold Derby to discuss Fruitgate, his rivalry with Victor, and the heart-to-heart he shared with Michael Foote.
Gold Derby: Starting with the most important question: Are you still eating a lot of apples now that you’re outside of the castle?
Joe Vanella: Dude, my 6-year-old daughter clowned me when this happened. She’s like, “Daddy, you really should eat more fruits and vegetables.” And I’m like, “You live on mac-and-cheese and Cheerios, and you’re going to start this with me?” So yeah, I’ve been crushing apples. Too much, to be honest.
Walk me through the Fruitgate murder in plain sight. You get the instructions saying you need to throw an apple to someone. What are you thinking?
I stormed out of the confessional, and I grabbed an apple. I’m gonna throw it right away. I saw Morgan [Cook] and Mark [Zgoda], and I wanted to get some input from my Traitors. What you don’t see is I take the apple when I’m talking to Tomica. She’s talking about being with Clyde [Moser] in the crypt, and I’m like, “Hey, Tomica, when you were in the crypt, was the tomb with the shield on your left?” and I touch Morgan with the apple, “Or on your right?” and I touch Mark with the apple. She’s like, “What are you talking about? I don’t remember.” And I’m like, “Dang it!”
So I go ask Katie who she wants to murder: Morgan or Mark? She’s like, “Morgan.” So I come back in there. Morgan’s eyeballing me as I round the corner. I toss the apple to her. Listen, normal human beings? They’re gonna catch something you throw at them. But it’s like there are magnets in her thighs. Her hands go down, and the apple falls onto this couch that every person who’s ever played the game has sat on, and now I have to eat this apple that was on this couch.
I go out, and did I walk around with the apple too much? Yeah, but when Niyyah [Hayes] came down the hall, I saw a great opportunity because I could isolate her in the kitchen. Nobody would see it, and I knew the exact way to get her to play into this, which was relying on her Philadelphia Eagles fandom to be like, “Hey, run a route for good luck, and I’ll toss it to you.” So while I walked around with the apple too much, I feel like the murder itself was about as well done as I could have done it.
Were you at all concerned someone had clocked you?
I didn’t think people would notice me walking around with an apple. So credit where credit’s due: Victor clocked me. But Victor and I were beefing the whole time we were in the castle, so I shouldn’t have been surprised he picked up on it.
Looking back, do you wish you had done the murder differently?
Nah, it was such a hard one to pull off. I probably should’ve just tossed it to Mark, but it’s more fun this way. As a fan of the show first, this is going to be something we talk about for years and years, so to be part of that lore is pretty awesome.
You attempted to kill Morgan with the apple. You end up killing her later with the poisoned chalice. What was your strategy in picking to poison her?
This is a great question. Everybody’s like, “Why didn’t you kill Victor?” And the fact is, Victor didn’t have social currency even at that point. Everybody knew Victor and I were at each other’s throats, so I could argue with Victor. I feel like I out-argued him at that Round Table. I think he just had the Dolls block, and that’s what sunk me. But Morgan was going to come after me at the next Round Table, and Morgan’s a quiet player. What happens when quiet players start using their voice? People take notice. If she came after me and made a compelling argument, it would be a lot harder to wiggle out of that. I felt more confident being able to argue with Victor than I would arguing with Morgan.
You had a couple of other opportunities to murder Victor earlier. Do you wish that you had taken him out sooner?
No, the guy was banished! The guy was gone. We did our job, and then this power that nobody’s seen before comes out of left field and saves his ass. Us, as Traitors, we did what we had to do. We just got destroyed because Alan [Cumming] decided to try and keep Victor in.
Going into the Round Table where you’re banished, did you think you were going to be eliminated?
That whole day, I felt like a dead man walking. I felt like I really didn’t have a shot, and midway through the Round Table, I was like, “Oh, I might wiggle out of this,” and unfortunately it didn’t happen. I still feel like I defended myself at that Round Table enough that I shouldn’t have been banished, but the votes weren’t there. Once Jay [Vinnedge] flipped — and Jay knew I was a Traitor at that point; he told me on the lawn — it was a wrap for me.
Do you wish you had tried to throw Tomica or Katie under the bus at all?
No, that wasn’t what we were going for. We were a unified front, and truly, when Katie didn’t write my name down on that slate at my last Round Table, that meant so much to me, because I told her, “Listen, if the heat’s too much, pull the cord, get out of here.”
You have that heart-to-heart with Michael early on about him being gay and not expecting to find an ally in you. What was that conversation like for you?
Oh my God! I was just so honored that he felt so comfortable to come and tell me that. That meant the world. That might be my biggest thing to come out of that castle. I grew up in the same place he did, and I know when you see somebody who looks and sounds like me, you’re like, “This isn’t going to be the most tolerant human being on the face of the earth.” But there’s a change now. It’s getting better. I’ve got three little kids, and I want them to be able to love whichever way they want to love. To hear he went through that horrible experience when he was a kid, it just hit me right in my heart, and I wanted to make sure my kids never go up against that. When he was telling me that, it hit me right in the gut, to the point that when it was finished, I told production, “When Michael goes home, please let him know I was defending him as a friend at that Round Table. It wasn’t gameplay. It’s just somebody I like.” One of my favorite things to come out of this show is our friendship. I treasure it so much. I talk to him every day. He’s one of the greatest human beings on the planet.
If Katie had been banished and you’d had to recruit another Traitor, who would you have recruited?
Shane, no doubt. Shane’s the move. I was proud of her for grabbing Shane. Shane’s a heady player. He’s physically good. He watches a lot of reality TV. Like me, he was a fan of the show first. I think that Katie and Shane connection is going to be huge.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
