Big Brother legend Danielle Reyes has another defender for her chaotic gameplay on The Traitors.
Courtney “CK” Kim, the controversial villain and third-place finisher on season 2 of Deal or No Deal Island, praised Danielle’s performance as a traitor in the show’s third season, which concluded earlier in March.
“She was just raked through the coals and she played a great game,” CK, 36, told Us Weekly exclusively. “I think the female villain, the kind of way people look at us, we just have to act differently than men do.”
CK isn’t the first reality player to take issue with how women are portrayed on competition shows. Her castmate and Survivor legend Parvati Shallow took Survivor host Jeff Probst to task for asserting that the show’s most “interesting” stars have been men, arguing that’s because the show is created and edited mostly by men.
La Shell Wooten, who was one of CK’s allies on Deal or No Deal Island, told Us that she believes CK would not have been portrayed as a villain at all if she was a man.
“People seem to have it out for her, and they see her as a villain, but if she was Dr. Will [Kirby], or if she was David [Genat] playing the game that she played, she’d be seen as smart and strategic,” she said.
CK added that Danielle made it further in The Traitors than any of the other original traitors, finally being banished at the start of the season finale.
“I’m a results oriented person,” she said. “I don’t give a s— as long as I accomplish my goal, and she was so, so close to accomplishing that goal.”
Though Danielle’s early game was filled with overacting and strategic blunders, she was able to survive as the season neared the end-game. Then, she manipulated the roundtable that led to fellow traitor Carolyn Wiger’s banishment, allowing her to pull in her ally, Britney Haynes.
Danielle was only eliminated when Britney felt forced to vote her out in the penultimate roundtable of the season.
CK admitted she would like to try her hand at The Traitors one day and promised that if she gets another shot at reality TV, she will be an even better villain.
“I could have been 10 times worse because I would have been a lot sneakier and I would have been a lot more manipulative, and I would have been so much worse,” she said.
Parvati, who was on season 2 of The Traitors, feels CK has potential in the genre if she could “get a handle on her emotional swings.”
“She’s so fun to watch,” Parvati told Us. “So I could see her going out and being kind of like a Russell [Hantz] sort of character when he was Heroes vs. Villains. CK could take a game and really transform it because her brain doesn’t stop.”
The season finale of Deal or No Deal Island will air Tuesday, March 25 at 9 p.m. ET on NBC and will stream on Peacock the next day.
