‘The Traitors’: Maks Chmerkovskiy Felt Like the ‘Odd Person Out’ Before His Fate (Exclusive)

Maks Chmerkovskiy is looking back on his time in The Traitors castle after his premature banishment. After being cast aside by his fellow Faithfuls in a misguided attempt to banish a Traitor, the Dancing With the Stars alum opened up to PopCulture.com about feeling like the “odd person out” in the cast and his mic drop moment of an exit. 

“Everybody that came on the show almost all felt like they all knew each other somehow,” the pro dancer explained. “I felt like I was a bit [of the] odd person out. And it felt like my – let’s call it television training – was not the same.” In a cast full of gamers from shows like The Challenge, Big Brother and even the Real Housewives franchise, Chmerkovskiy admitted he felt like “a sitting duck” once he learned he was not amongst Traitors Dan Gheesling (Big Brother) and Phaedra Parks (Real Housewives Of Atlanta) for the season.

The Ukraine-born dancer knows now that laying low would have been a better strategy, but at the time, he wanted to “stand out” and be himself in the castle, which Chmerkovskiy says ultimately “put [me] on the chopping block” sooner than he needed to be. And while Chmerkovskiy wished he could have stayed longer to keep playing the game, he felt like after his elimination, “stakes just went through the roof, and it was like, okay, now the game is on.”

As Chmerkovskiy revealed himself to be the third Faithful in a row that had been wrongfully banished amid Traitor accusations, his dramatic exit left his fellow castmates shocked at their mistake. “That moment, to play into that kind of show with a format where you get eliminated, but on your way out you get the final word? I mean, that was worth everything,” Chmerkovskiy recalled. “I stood there and I turned around, I’m like, ‘You guys got it wrong.’ … My dad had raised us with one phrase, it’s all about the end result. And at the end you were wrong.”

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