Despite being one of the biggest names on The Traitors, Married at First Sight (MAFS)‘s Cam Merchant didn’t even get a chance to play and was eliminated on day one after Shane Gould was asked to pick one contestant to send home.
Cam had a second chance to join The Traitors cast during a challenge in Episode 3, during which Lawson Mahoney, Henry Nicholson, Kirby Bentley, AJ Antonios, Keira Maguire, and Josh and Luke Packham had the power to decide if they’d let him back in the game — If they did, they’d add an extra $10,000 to the prize pot.
While some of the contestants were initially open to it, Henry was the first contestant to vote against it, quickly joined by Kirby, with both cast members saying they didn’t want someone else in the game to have to compete with for the final prize. The rest of the cast members followed suit and Cam was sent home once again.
In a post-elimination interview with Pedestrian, Cam suggested the cast’s decision was selfish, questioning whether they would have stopped him from rejoining if the prize money were going to charity rather than lining their own pockets.
“My question at the time was like, if the money was for charity like it is in the UK, how does that differ the decision? Obviously money changes people, or it brings their values and their moral compass to the surface, and it did in that moment,” he told the publication.
“It wasn’t about the fact I didn’t get to play; that was never a part of it. It was just that my values and my moral compass differed from those guys that made that decision to not bring me in. The fact that they saw me as one more person that had an opportunity to take the money away from them, that’s the sort of character that I wasn’t really impressed with. In that moment, I was like, ‘They’re not my people’.”
How Cam felt about The Traitor’s contestant’s choice to eliminate him
Cam said he was blown away when the contestant’s chose not to accept him back into the game.
“I’m sure there would have been so many shots of me shaking my head with the hood over, just going, ‘I can’t believe what I’m hearing right now’. That was what was going through my head because myself, the producers, everyone just thought this is such a no-brainer,” he remarked.
“It was at that point I just realised that everyone was delusional already. This is how hard and punishing and how much of a mind twist this game is, because everyone was second-guessing everything.”
He added that he hoped watching the show back would prompt some of the contestants to reflect on their actions and make different choices in the future.
“I hope they get to see themselves and maybe learn a little bit about themselves. Then they can come back, and when they find themselves in a different situation that’s somewhat similar, they make better decisions — or ones that they can improve on,” he said.
The Traitors Australia 2026 airs on Tuesdays and Wednesdays at 7:30pm on Network 10 and 10Play.
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