Rob Rausch Wasn’t Meant For This Life

Rob Rausch has just ordered a BLT when I place the recording device on the table in front of us. Given his two stints on reality television, during which Rausch emerged as America’s heartthrob but also its villain, I’m surprised to learn that being interviewed makes him nervous. “I hate getting my picture taken too,” he tells me. “I don’t think I’ll ever get used to it.” But I’m not sure I believe him. After all, Rausch has just lied his way to victory on Peacock’s hammy, Scotland-based competition show The Traitors, inveigling a cast of Real Housewives and Survivor veterans to the tune of over $200,000.

It didn’t hurt that the 27-year-old Alabama native was blessed with devastatingly good looks, a quality to which his fellow Traitor Lisa Rinna half-jokingly attributes his win. But Rausch insists he’s more than just a pretty face—or a poker face. Over the course of our conversation, in fact, he becomes most animated when talking about his plethora of boyish interests, including but not limited to snake wrangling, pickup basketball, Settlers of Catan, chest day, woodworking, and making remote-control airplanes from materials gathered at the local Home Depot. So how did he become a realty TV star, anyway? When we met up by Madison Square Park the morning after The Traitors finale, I was eager to find out.

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JAKE NEVINS: Hey, Rob. So, congratulations.

ROB RAUSCH: Thank you.

NEVINS: Are you relieved now that you don’t have to keep your big win a secret anymore? I guess you’re pretty good at keeping secrets, though.

RAUSCH: [Laughs] Yeah, it’s a weight off the shoulders for sure. 

NEVINS: So this is your New York victory lap. How often do you come here? 

RAUSCH: Not very often. My brother does live here, so I visit him from time to time. But I try not to come too often.

NEVINS: Before we get into the show itself, I’m curious how tight-knit the circle of people who knew how it ended was?

RAUSCH: It was extremely tight. Literally just my manager, and my sister accidentally found out because she was my personal assistant and she read an email on accident from production. So she found out, but she didn’t want to know. 

NEVINS: Was that stressful?

RAUSCH: Not really. No one started asking me until it started airing. And then it was only a few weeks after that that I had to wait. It was pretty low-key. 

NEVINS: What’s the reception like down in small-town Alabama to you now having been on two of the biggest reality TV shows in the world? 

RAUSCH: Love Island was crazy, but I feel like everyone’s just used to it by now. They’re proud of me, but it wasn’t really a shock.

NEVINS: How does a boy from Alabama come to be a two-time reality television star anyway? You’re here in New York doing interviews and photo shoots with a bunch of fancy magazines. How do you feel about all that?

RAUSCH: It’s a mixture of happenstance and just putting myself in a position to succeed, just being open to possibilities. I said yes to Love Island. I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. And I didn’t want to do Traitors, but I was like, “You know what? It’s a game. I love games.” And then it worked out.

NEVINS: What’s your favorite game?

RAUSCH: Athletic game, nowadays, is probably basketball. And then boardgames, I love Settlers of Catan. And it’s so hard to get people to play, but I love Risk.

NEVINS: Where do you play basketball? Are you in a league?

RAUSCH: I just play pickup at the YMCA. I’m a big YMCA guy.

NEVINS: Cool. Something I’m curious about is what it’s like to watch yourself back on television. 

RAUSCH: I didn’t watch Love Island at all. But Traitors, that was a fun watch. Watching myself is weird, but it was exciting because obviously I know how it ended, but I don’t really know all of the pieces of how I got there. I didn’t see what the other cast people were saying in the confessionals, so it was interesting. I was like, “What were they talking about the whole time?” So I was eager to see every episode just see how everything unfolded, the whole picture of it.

NEVINS: Did anything surprise you? Was there someone who was more onto you than you thought, or someone you were nervous about who was actually clueless?

RAUSCH: Nothing surprised me except that I didn’t realize the conversations that were going on the day Natalie was banished.

NEVINS: Right. They really fumbled that roundtable.

RAUSCH: It was insane. She was very on to me and then went to the roundtable and they just completely flipped the script.

NEVINS: So my understanding is that you guys don’t actually sleep in the castle, and there’s not a lot of time between missions and the roundtable to really circle back with your people and figure out how you’re going to play it. What are some of the other contrivances of reality television that might not be apparent to viewers?

RAUSCH: I feel like a lot of context, and decision-making especially, is taken out of the show, which makes sense because it adds suspense, right? So that was frustrating at times. It was like, “No, this is why I did that.” And they don’t show that because then they’re going to see like, “Oh, he has a whole plan.” So I think a lot of that is left out. And then I don’t think people realize that there really isn’t that much time to talk. So there’s breakfast, and then after breakfast we have maybe 45 minutes to talk and strategize. And then we go into the mission, and then we’re right back and we’re doing the roundtable. So it’s a whole day, but there’s really not as much time to talk as you’d think. So I was surprised at how little time we had to really connect. Because I’m fake strategizing, obviously, with all the Faithfuls, but I’m just trying to build a personal connection with everyone. I think I did a good job, but it would’ve been a lot easier had I had more time with everyone.

NEVINS: That could have also meant more time to make mistakes.

RAUSCH: That’s true. 

NEVINS: In life, are you a good liar?

RAUSCH: Before the show, I wouldn’t have said so, but I guess I am. I play a lot of poker, and when I play poker, I’m lying the whole time. I’m always playing mind games when I’m doing that. I almost thought of it as method acting. I was just acting as a Faithful. Because every single day, when I’d wake up in the morning, I’d tell myself, “I’m a Faithful, I’m a Faithful, I’m a Faithful.” And even in my head, I wouldn’t allow myself to think about the game through the scope of a Traitor. 

NEVINS: What do you feel is the biggest misconception of you that’s taken hold post-Traitors?

RAUSCH: I mean, I’ve seen a lot of misconceptions.

NEVINS: It doesn’t seem like you care.

RAUSCH: I don’t, and I don’t even want to talk about them because I’m not going to feed into that. I know who I am. The people that love me know who I am. It got in my head mid-season, but who cares? If you just take everything out of the equation, you take the people out of it and just look at it from a logistic standpoint, I made every correct decision. Which shows, because I won.

NEVINS: Right.

RAUSCH: It had nothing to do with personal vendettas or any kind of emotion. It was just calculated decision-making.

NEVINS: Can you identify the moment where you felt most confident that you would go all the way?

RAUSCH: I felt really confident, truly, the whole game.

NEVINS: Really?

RAUSCH: I felt really good. But my worst moment was the roundtable before Candiace’s banishment. I was really nervous for that one, but not because of me. I knew I wasn’t really going to do anything dumb, but I was really nervous about what she might say that I couldn’t undo. I knew I could talk back a decent amount of stuff, and then she comes in and says I dropped a fork at breakfast. And I went, “Oh, I’m good. That’s what you’re going to say?” I knew going into that roundtable that I needed to stay as cool as a cucumber and almost act confused. That’s what I did and it worked.

NEVINS: After moments like that, what’s it like when you retire to your hotel room for the night? I know they took away your phones. Were there any other distractions available?

RAUSCH: We only had access to Spotify and Netflix. The best thing I watched was KPop Demon Hunters. I was like, “What the hell is this?” And then I finished it and I was like, “That’s one of the best movies I’ve ever seen.” But mainly, I’d get home from my Traitor duties and I would lay in bed and close my eyes and visualize the next roundtable and the next one. I would say, “What if this happens?” And then I’d come up with several different possibilities and think them through, then think what I’ll do in that scenario so that I don’t have to make too many game-time decisions.

NEVINS: Let’s talk about the finale more specifically. Did you imagine how it might go down when you inevitably broke the news to Maura? Was it something you were dreading?

RAUSCH: I tried not to think about it.

NEVINS: I bet.

RAUSCH: No, really, I tried my best not to really think about the outcome of being successful. But it was tough. And at the end of the day, I was so happy with how her response was.

NEVINS: She was a good sport.

RAUSCH: Such a good sport. She said, “Well-played. I would’ve done the same thing if I was you.” It was such a weight off my shoulders, and I’m really proud of her for that.

NEVINS: Her face dropping, though. That was great television. 

RAUSCH: The funniest part watching it back was the twinkle in Alan’s eye being like, “Okay, now you have to tell them.” And he’s trying so hard to just stay composed. I can tell, because he knows what’s about to happen. When that happened with Eric, I did not take my eyes off of him, and I was telling him with my eyes, like, “I’m sorry man, but I’ve got to do what I got to do.”

NEVINS: I know you said you don’t pay much mind to the online discussion about you, but I do wonder what it does to a man to have now been the villain, so to speak, on two reality shows.

RAUSCH: I’d say it’s a mixture of brushing it off, and then introspection. Looking at myself and being like, “Is there any weight to this?” And I think with Love Island, there was some. I definitely didn’t handle things as well as I could’ve and I did my best to rectify it, take accountability for it, and forgive myself for it. Because I’m hard on myself. It’s one of my character traits, and I can get real down if I let myself feed into negativity like that. But then I move on and learn from it. It’s been a learning experience overall.

NEVINS: What’s the biggest lesson you’ve learned?

RAUSCH: I don’t know. I think the biggest takeaway is, in life, you’re going to make mistakes. The most important thing is the ability to take accountability for those mistakes. And then not just take accountability and apologize, but learn from them. To become a better person because of it, because otherwise it’s all for nothing. All the pain, all the hurt—everything is for nothing.

NEVINS: What’s the difference between the environment on Traitors, where there’s this aura of mistrust and everyone trying to snuff each other out, and that of Love Island, with a bunch of horny 20-year-olds?

RAUSCH: Technically, I guess Love Island is a game, but I never played it as a game. I was just there doing the best I could to make connections, but it’s a shit show. What can I say? It’s a well-designed show to get emotions out of you. Sometimes you see the worst version of yourself. Sometimes you see the best version of yourself. You’re basically running on no sleep. And then you have no outlets, you can’t journal. The thing that really caused me to break down was I had no ability to be alone. I’m an introvert. I can be extroverted, but I need to be alone to recharge my battery and really process how I feel. Not being able to do that really messed me up. The only time you can go outside is if you smoke a cigarette. And if you’re out there, you’re still with a producer. You’re never alone, ever, ever. And for me especially, that really caused some stuff.

NEVINS: How would you like to leverage your reality TV notoriety going forward? I’m sure there’s a lot of opportunities afoot.

RAUSCH: Couldn’t tell you.

NEVINS: No?

RAUSCH: I don’t know.

NEVINS: It’s funny, because on Traitors you found yourself thinking several steps ahead. But in life…

RAUSCH: [Laughs] Right. Well, in Traitors I’m working towards something. But in life, my only aspiration is to be happy, and that doesn’t mean being on television. It doesn’t mean being super successful. Because to be honest, this is not great for my mental health in any way, shape, or form. It’s been stressful. I haven’t been home for more than three days in probably two months, just traveling around and doing stuff for this, and it takes a toll on my mental, but also my physical. I haven’t been to the gym. I haven’t been in a routine. I’m eating very sparingly, in and out. And that’s not a life I really want. I don’t know if TV is good for me. But then another part of me is like, “Well, Rob, just stick it out. Try to get on more shows, do this for five years, then you can settle down.” But it’s like, when does that end? 

NEVINS: I’m in awe of anyone who puts a mic in their waistline and goes on television, but you have to be at least somewhat comfortable in front of the camera. 

RAUSCH: I hate getting my picture taken. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to it.

NEVINS: I think you have a photoshoot for this very magazine this afternoon, so have fun.

RAUSCH: Yeah. [Laughs] It makes me extremely uncomfortable, but something about video cameras doesn’t bother me at all. I just forget about it. I’m not thinking about the show. I’m not thinking about how I’m coming across. I don’t care. With Love Island, it’s like, “Who cares? I’m just going to be myself, I can’t go wrong.”

NEVINS: Sure. So you were blessed with good looks, and there’s a school of thought that that played no small part in your success on Traitors. How much credence do you give to that theory, if any? Did you ever get the sense you’d sort of cast a spell over everyone?

RAUSCH: Not really, no. If you put another guy that looked exactly like me in the exact same scenario, if they weren’t able to make the same strategic decisions, they would’ve been out of the show. Probably right after Candiace and Lisa, you know what I mean? Or maybe before. Sure, maybe it helped in connecting with people, but it definitely didn’t win me the game.

NEVINS: I’m not saying it did, but I’m sure you saw what Lisa Rinna said, that people couldn’t look at you long enough to get a good read…

RAUSCH: They couldn’t look at me, yeah. [Laughs] I think she’s just being funny.

NEVINS: For a self-described introvert like yourself, what’s it like to hear people say that kind of stuff about you in the press?

RAUSCH: I treat really, really positive stuff just like I treat the really negative stuff. I brush it off my shoulder, because it’s all the same thing. They don’t know me. I promise I’m not that great and wonderful, and I’m also not evil. I’m somewhere in the middle.

NEVINS: So how are you liking the promotional aspect of all of this? You can be honest with me.

RAUSCH: I’ll be honest. It’s not my favorite.

NEVINS: Does this interview make you uncomfortable?

RAUSCH: No, this is chill. I enjoy speaking with you. You’re a very chill guy. I like you. Genuinely, I can say that. But then this comes out, right?

NEVINS: Right.

RAUSCH: And it’s this thing in quotations and it’s this out-of-context thing I said and I’m like, “What the fuck is this?” It’s not always bad, but I’m just like…

NEVINS: Well, the world only knows you through the pressure cookers of Traitors and Love Island. What are we missing?

RAUSCH: Probably my creativity. I love making stuff. I love art, I love building things.

NEVINS: What kind of stuff are you making?

RAUSCH: Oh, man. I’ve done a lot of woodworking, a lot of ceramics. My favorite thing to do is probably remote-control airplanes, but completely from trash. Do you know what foam core is?

NEVINS: No, not really.

RAUSCH: I’ll get sheets of foam core and I’ll just come up with a design in my head. And then cut the pieces, build it, make the whole thing, construct it. Get motors, servos for the control surfaces, the aileron and all that.

NEVINS: Sounds like you should’ve been an engineer and not a television star.

RAUSCH: Oh man, I would love to do an engineering show. That would be so fun. I would love to build a full-size airplane from scratch. And I think I’m capable of that.

NEVINS: Let’s get Boeing on the phone.

RAUSCH: If someone would fund it, that would be amazing. I think I can make most of the plane from Home Depot, minus the engine.

NEVINS: What’s a typical day in Alabama like for you?

RAUSCH: Most of my days I spend alone. I’ll go to the gym and then I’ll go to the farm. Usually my grandpa’s there. We’ll piddle around. I’ll help him fix something on the bush hog, or we’ll go feed the cows or fix a fence. And then lately I’ve been riding my motorcycle at every chance I can. I’ve been recently learning to master wheelies. And then in the summer, every good day I’ll go down to the creek and I’ll just walk around, look for snakes, or just sit there.

NEVINS: I do want to talk about snake wrangling, but what’s your gym routine?

RAUSCH: It’s like an hour to two hours, depending on how I’m feeling. I’ll do chest and tris, back, thighs, legs. I try to do abs every day. It’s pretty basic.

NEVINS: And then pickup basketball for cardio?

RAUSCH: Exactly. Pickup basketball is cardio. In the summer, I’d go every single day with my boys. But nowadays, most of my friends have moved away.

NEVINS: Your boys, what do they make of television? They must give you shit.

RAUSCH: Not really. We don’t really talk about it. They’re usually like, “Saw that. That was cool.” And then we’re just back to being boys.

NEVINS: What are you going to do with all that money?

RAUSCH: Save it.

NEVINS: Invest a little?

RAUSCH: Oh, for sure. I’ll probably put some into Creek Rat, my business with my sister.

NEVINS: My friend wanted me to ask you when you’re going to restock the half-zips.

RAUSCH: Oh, the half zips?

NEVINS: You have a huge lesbian consumer base.

RAUSCH: Really?

NEVINS: Yeah.

RAUSCH: The half-zip’s my favorite piece that we’ve done.

NEVINS: Well, there you go.

RAUSCH: This one I’m wearing is the snake Creek Rat hoodie, yeah. It’s a full-zip and it’s really cool. I made one from scratch, actually. I hand-sewed one in 2020 just for myself.

NEVINS: So I guess you can sew, too.

RAUSCH: It was inspired by Fantastic Mr. Fox, the Wes Anderson movie. It’s a claymation animation-style movie, and he’s got this toboggan. It’s got these gold stars. It’s really cool.

NEVINS: What is dating like post-Love Island? Is it hard to snuff out the people who just want to date a TV star?

RAUSCH: It’s extremely hard.

NEVINS: Give me an example.

RAUSCH: Well, you meet somebody and they’re like, “Yeah, I’ve never seen the show,” blah, blah, blah. Especially if I’m approached by them, it’s just messed up. But luckily I don’t have to really worry about that. I have a girlfriend now.

NEVINS: How’d you meet?

RAUSCH: Bookstore.

NEVINS: What were you buying?

RAUSCH: I was looking for a field guide to Europe, I think.

NEVINS: What was she looking for?

RAUSCH: A book.

NEVINS: [Laughs] And she found you.

RAUSCH: Yeah.

NEVINS: Well, this has been a pleasure. I will let you go.

RAUSCH: Thank you. It was a pleasure.

NEVINS: Congrats on the win.

RAUSCH: Thank you.

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Grooming Melissa Dezarate at A-Frame Agency

Set Design Jordan Mixon at Silver Tooth Agency

Market Assistant Nicholson Baird

Fashion Assistants Ben Koren and Gali Flores

Set Design Assistant Coleman Chambliss 

Production Director Alexandra Weiss 

Photography Producer Georgia Ford 

Production Assistants Isaac James and Chloe McDonald

Social Media Assistant Sophia Giulietti