Category - The Traitors

Tony Vlachos Calls Out Boston Rob's 'Stupid' Move on 'The Traitors'

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Perhaps the castle was lacking in spy shacks. Tony Vlachos, who won two seasons of CBS' Survivor, is opening up about his early demise on Peacock's Emmy-winning series The Traitors.

"Everybody wanted me out," Vlachos, 51, exclusively tells Men's Journal after he was booted in the third episode. "They were all saying, Tony, you're a traitor, you're this, you're that. And then to me, it felt like [Boston] Rob [Mariano] was waiting for the key moment after everybody said what they said, for him to put the nail in the coffin. I don't know if it was for his camera time, so he can have a part of that. Like, an oh, 'I took Tony down' moment. I don't what that was, but I knew I was going home the whole time. Everybody was telling me I was going home before Rob even spoke."

While Vlachos had several votes against him going into the roundtable, it was his fellow Survivor winner – and a traitor, at that – who seemingly put the final nail in his coffin. "He didn't have to do that to get me out. I was gone. I was a dead man walking the second they started talking about my name," the New Jersey native says of Boston Rob. "Everybody was on board. With protecting [fellow traitor] Bob The Drag Queen, what makes you think that you needed to protect him? He didn't need no protection. I was going home. Everybody was saying, I'm going home. They said it in plain English. So there was neither of that. The only thing that I can think of, like I said, it was he wanted the limelight the last second to get the last words in of sending me home."

Vlachos tells MJ he had no intentions on turning on any of the Survivor players, even if they were traitors. "This is a new game, and we're all we have here. We're all we got. Let's stick together. At least that's how I am. I would lose my game for any of those guys from Survivor because that's how I am," he explains. "Once I know that it's an unspoken golden rule, let's stick together. It's us against all of them. It's no longer us against us like it is on Survivor. And I didn't need to go talk to Rob every two seconds the same way. I didn't do it with Jeremy. I didn't go to Jeremy. ...We don't need to be together.' And that's how I thought it was with Rob. And I told Rob, I said, 'Rob, we're good.; Especially when he gave me the shield. I said, 'I'm indebted to you, Rob.' And it wasn't the case. He should have fought for me."

Sadly for him, it didn't work out that way, and he was voted out of the castle with 14 votes. Yet still, the police officer holds no grudges. "We're all sincere people, genuine people with good lives. The game is just a game," Vlachos says. "So me and Rob, I have no beef with Rob at all. I'm going to talk my smack about what happened in the game, but that has nothing to do, what it's like in real life."

He does admit he had no idea who the traitors actually were. "I was super, super shocked that Carolyn was a traitor," Vlachos says. "I would've never, ever, ever guessed that. And I went into the castle saying to myself, I'm not going to underestimate any of these people. And I underestimated Carolyn. I was like, there's no way she would know what's going on as a traitor. And she knows everything. She's great. So that's the one that shocked me. Rob obviously did not shock me. If you're going to force the guy to come in, give him so many chances to come into the game, you're going to make him a traitor."

Looking back, he doesn't think there's much he could have done to turn things around once the train was moving against him. "I was already a traitor in everybody's eyes, so it didn't matter," Vlachos says. "I'm glad I wasn't a traitor in hindsight, because I wouldn't want to give him the satisfaction of getting it right right off the bat."

He did get quite emotional upon his ousting and the reveal that he was a faithful all along. "The emotions are always real. You can't make that up," Vlachos tells MJ. "When I was standing up there, you have a few moments to gather, collect your thoughts, what you're going to say. And then I was thinking of arguing with Rob and say, 'Rob, you're supposed to be the strategic mastermind, and what you did there was nonsense. It was stupid.' So the quickest things that came out my mouth was, 'Rob, you're a sellout' because I really would've lost my game for him, and for him not to even try to keep me as a number. You want your numbers, I'm your number. These people are not your number. These people don't know you. They don't care for you. I know you. I'm going to work with you. I'm a number. You got to fight for me. I would've fought for you.'"

In the end, maybe a spy shack could have helped, but "I didn't even get a chance to shave," he says. "I was gone so fast."

New episodes of The Traitors drop weekly on Thursdays at 6pm PT/9pm ET.