Axed Traitors star Armani breaks silence on ‘back-stabbing’ sister after making history on BBC show
AXED The Traitors star Armani Gouveia has broken her silence after being eliminated in one of the show’s best ever round tables.
Armani quickly established herself as a strong presence in the show and managed to rub her fellow Traitors – Linda and Minah – up the wrong way at the end of episode two when she bluntly told them they could be doing more.
But just an episode later the game was up as her sister, Faithful Maia, played a critical role in her downfall by admitting to the group that she wasn’t 100 percent sure her sibling was being honest.
Despite the drama, it’s all water under the bridge, with Armani revealing she’d have done the exact same thing if the roles were reversed.
She said of her Traitors experience: “The number one standout was that I was there with my sister!
“Also, of course ‘the witch hunt’ – as I call it – the round table that got me out, was incredible! That was a super move by everybody, because they came out of nowhere.
“My little sister didn’t even back me up! I can’t complain, I would have done the exact same thing.”
Though she revelled in being a baddie, if she had her time again Armani said she’d like to be a Faithful.
She said: “If I had a chance to do it again, make me a Faithful! The thing that I learnt from this was that killing people off was easy, it was a part of the game.
“I think the problem was that in the back of my mind I kept feeling bad for people that were getting accused of being Traitors, so I kept voting for people that nobody was voting for.
“As a Traitor you need to be throwing people under the bus, it just didn’t come to me naturally! It was the deceitful side of it that I struggled with, you need to throw people under the bus, but I just couldn’t do it.
“What did make me laugh was that people were calling me a Traitor for things that I wasn’t even thinking about – like the rowing challenge!”
Maia revealed early on that she had doubts about her sister after noticing a change in her personality.
But it wasn’t until episode three that barber Tyler, 29, raised the prospect of producers selecting one sister as good and the other bad.
Asked for her opinion, Maia said: “On Armani, I have no actual evidence that she is a Traitor.
“I did think she was a Traitor, for a time. I’m still not 100 per cent . . . but something is just not feeling fully 100 per cent [right].”
Pressed, Maia hammered the final nail in Armani’s coffin by saying: “Yeah, maybe like 60 per cent.”
Trying to defend herself, Armani said: “I appreciate that the statistics would make it more likely that one of us is a Traitor but I know for a fact I’m not a Traitor, so either she is or we’re both Faithful.”
Maia sobbed as her sister was voted out, with Claudia asking if she was OK.
Later, she said: “Even though she’s a Traitor, that’s still my sister, she is everything to me, so it felt so weird for me to betray her.”
Armani’s exit left retired opera singer Linda and call centre boss Minah as the remaining Traitors.
The show, which broke its ratings record for the series launch episode with 5.4million viewers, continues on BBC1 on Wednesday.