‘The Traitors’: Johnny Bananas Slams His Shocking Elimination (Exclusive)

Johnny Bananas still can’t believe the way his time on The Traitors came to an unceremonious end. Bananas may hold the record for most Challenge wins, but he was the first competitor to be murdered on Season 2 of the Peacock show, killed off by Traitors Dan Gheesling (Big Brother) and Phaedra Parks (Real Housewives Of Atlanta) at the first opportunity they got. 

Following his elimination, Bananas opened up to PopCulture.com about the “frustrating” end to his game, lamenting the fact that “those who were lacking in the entertainment and personality department” decided they were “way too intimidated by people who were fun and charismatic and energetic and humorous” and decided to kick him out of the castle.

“It sucked, dude,” Bananas admitted. “Obviously, anytime [I] get an opportunity like this, I have a lot of expectations. There are a lot of expectations of me coming onto any competition show just based on what I’ve done in the past.” He continued, “I’m going to come in, it’s going to be like, ‘Oh, Bananas, you’re going to be so good at this!’ And coming in with a couple allies from The Challenge – [Chris ‘C.T.’ Tamburello] and [Trishelle Cannatella} – I really thought that we were going to have a good thing there. But it was like I never even got off the launch pad.”

“I never even had an opportunity to play the game and that’s what was so frustrating about it,” Bananas told PopCulture. “I’m fine if I go in and I lose because of the way I played the game, mistakes that I made, something that I screwed up, a bad strategic decision. But to come into a game like this and have absolutely no shot regardless of what I did, it’s kind of frustrating.”

It might have been a murder Bananas had hoped to avoid, but it wasn’t unexpected, as he was worried going in that being coined a Faithful would be the beginning of the end. “I had to be a Traitor because I knew that coming into this I was going to be targeted early and often if I was not just due to my track record,” he theorized. “So that was my only option at surviving in this game. … So yeah, it was kind of s-ty, but I knew that going in. I was like, ‘If I’m not a Traitor, my time here is going to be cut incredibly short.’”

Peacock drops new episodes of The Traitors Season 2 on Thursdays at 9 p.m. ET.