How Boston Rob Became The Traitors’ Biggest Threat

It was a matter of when, not if, Rob Mariano would bring his talents to The Traitors, Peacock’s devilishly campy murder-mystery competition. Known as Boston Rob, Mariano — like Cirie Fields and Parvati Shallow, fellow Survivor legends and former competitors on The Traitors — is made for strategically complicated and socially pressurized competitions like these. Throughout his reality-competition career, he’s manipulated challenges, rules, and people without favor, all in the name of finding any available edge to win.

Mariano made his Survivor debut during 2002’s fourth season as a 25-year-old from, where else, Boston. He’d flame out in his first season but make history in subsequent appearances: coming in second to his eventual wife, Amber Brkich, in All-Stars; returning to Heroes vs. Villains; sleepwalking to a win in Redemption Island; and setting a record for most days playing the game with 152 on Winners at War. For two decades, Mariano has adapted his game across the reality-competition spectrum, playing in The Amazing Race, The Price Is Right, and, most recently, Deal or No Deal Island.

“One of the best there ever was,” whispered Britney Haynes, a Big Brother contestant, when host Alan Cumming introduced Rob in the season-three premiere and gave the players a chance to bring him into the game and eliminate another player. No one bit. Even the non-competitors knew to fear him, with Chrishell Stause comparing Marino to a “great white shark.” His reputation as a “very duplicitous player, a very devious player,” according to Tony Vlachos, two-time Survivor winner and all-around maniac, is well-earned. His ability to manipulate other players to give up information and do his bidding has earned him the nickname “The Robfather.” When Alan told him he’d be entering the game as a Traitor, joining the turret alongside Bob the Drag Queen, Danielle Reyes, and Carolyn Wiger, he let out a psychotic laugh and told Alan “I’m going to murder them all. I can’t wait.”

But while others are distracted by his cutthroat gameplay, Mariano looks for his competitive edge. “The key to me doing well in these games is always adapting to different situations and understanding the strategy and rules, but then finding the advantages,” Mariano told Vulture. “We found them on the Amazing Race, I found them on Deal or No Deal Island, I found them on Survivor. I will try to find them The Traitors as well.” He already has his work cut out for him — along with his ruthless reputation, he’s entered a fractured alliance of Traitors who can’t seem to get on the same page. In order to get a sense of how he’ll proceed from here, we asked Mariano to revisit some career highlights (and lowlights) to talk through his strategies and how he might apply them to The Traitors.

Biggest Bluff

Convincing Lex in Survivor All Stars that I would do him a favor if he did a favor to me, which was to keep Amber there, but then not following up on that deal. I think you have to consistently sell yourself to the other person in a way that makes it believable, and then be able to not honor whatever deal because you’re ultimately out there playing for yourself.

I think why I am able to do well is because I try to put myself in that other person’s position and see the game through their eyes. In that situation, Lex wasn’t necessarily thinking about how it would be for me to leave her in the game. He was thinking about himself and how he could probably cash in on that favor should he need it later. Little did he know, I had no intentions of ever honoring that unless it benefited me, but at the time, that’s what got him to act in that certain way.

He’ll tell you that he went outside of the game and it was because of friendship. That’s where I have a problem. He can say he went outside the game to do a favor, but he was hoping to cash in on that favor.

Most Satisfying Blindside

In Redemption Island, I feel like they intended the redemption part of it, where you went to the separate island, in case anything happened to me and I was voted out that I’d have another chance to get in the game. Ironically, it ended up working the opposite way. I was able to control the game so well that every person I sent there I had to worry about coming back. There was a kid, Matt Elrod, who was a very strong competitor, and he went there and he won all the challenges and eventually he got back into the game. I knew that this was going to be a problem for me and the numbers were such that, if I remember correctly, they were tied and he would’ve been the swing vote. So instead of worrying about getting him on our side, I came up with the idea to just eliminate the variance and send him back there. That idea came to me late in the negotiation and I was like, of course: the least obvious is actually the obvious. I was pretty proud of that.

Biggest Error (His)

I don’t have a lot of errors. Sometimes I don’t win, I make mistakes, but I feel like I always do what I need to do. It was a little bit of an impossible situation on Survivor: Winners at War. I didn’t participate in the pre-game alliance building. I didn’t want to do it. It felt dirty to me. I know everybody does it now, but I’m kind of old school in that capacity. It wasn’t necessarily a true old school versus new school season because the alliances had already been made.

I found myself in a position after the tribe swapped and I went to a beach with Adam Klein, Sarah Lucina, Sophie Clarke, and Ben Driebergen. The writing was on the wall. I knew if we lost, I was going, but as a last ditch effort, I reverted to trying to separate people so that I could have them not talk and use the buddy system to separate ’em. I don’t regret it because I had to try something, but it was reverting back to something that worked in the past and obviously wouldn’t work with these seasoned winners. If given the chance to do that specific situation again, I probably would’ve tried something different.

Biggest Error (Someone Else’s)

There’s this moment in Heroes vs. Villains where you took a big swing to split the votes between Parvati and Russell—

That was a layup, bro. That was not a big thing. But Tyson goes rogue and decides he’s smarter than me. I can’t account for other people’s stupidity. I’m friends with Tyson to this day. He knows it was a mistake in his mind. So that’s something I couldn’t account for because it doesn’t make sense to me. I try to see the game through everybody’s eyes and his thinking. It would’ve never entered into my thoughts. His rationale was that he didn’t think that it would make a difference. He didn’t think the vote would be that close. So he wanted to keep Russell in his good graces and say that he never voted for him, should some situation backfire. It was a foolproof plan, but like I said, I can’t account for other people’s stupidity. I can only do so much.

Best Strategic Move

Asking my wife to marry me, on season eight of Survivor All-Stars. This April will be 20 years since we’ve been married. So I think that by far is the best move I’ve ever made.

Traitors Players He Most Admires

I was so impressed with the way Phaedra and Kate Chastain played The Traitors. I thought it was brilliant when Kate just didn’t care and she was like, “vote me off.” It was so entertaining. Pete the pilot really had a good handle on things in that game. It’s fun to see people outside of the reality competition world compete in a game like The Traitors and you see a different side of a housewife or a kid from The Bachelor and you just see that they have those innate skills at the same time. It doesn’t translate for everyone. Dan was such a great Big Brother player and he found himself to be super uncomfortable at the round table. It’s a different kind of game.

The Traitors is a hard game. The biggest reason is because of the numbers. On Survivor, you’re dealing with eight to 10 people per tribe. On Deal or No Deal Island, it’s 12 or 13 different people. The Traitors is like 22, 23 people. You don’t even have time to talk to everyone, let alone figure out who’s doing what. And as a Traitor, you’re getting very little sleep, a couple hours a night.

Biggest challenge so far on The Traitors

Let’s be honest, production did me no favors coming into this. My target is big already and they illuminated it. So I think to try to just ingratiate myself with people, it’s really difficult because there’s a little discord in the turret at this point amongst the Traitors. There’s been some poor decisions. I had to go out on a limb to try to clean up Bob the Drag Queen’s mess a little bit. It’s a difficult situation with Tony because I tried to build an ally by giving him the shield out of the gate and then realizing that everybody’s voting for Tony. At this point, I don’t want to just randomly pick someone else, so I have to jump on that train. Of course he’s upset because we’re Survivors, but he doesn’t know at this point that I’m a Traitor.