Keith Banks - THE TRAITORS - Reality TV Contestants

It's in the news today, but it was actually on TV Reload the podcast past week that might welcome back guys to TV Reload. As you may know, my name is Benjamin Norris and this is your podcast to get all the inside goss on the popular TV shows you may be watching from around the world. Undeniably, our TV sets are a major part of our home entertainment, and yet very little is known about how our favorite shows

I'm very well, Ben, very well, How are you?

I'm very well. I also wanted to ask you straight away, where did you get the green like Hawaiian shirt that you're wearing. I'm curious to know.

I have a number of floral shirts. Mate.

When I think of a retired police officer, I think of them wearing a green shirt like that. So I don't really purely know if that's the right disguise.

No, I don't think well, particularly in Queensland, there's not too many of them who do.

So hints I'm copying a fear bit of friendly banter from my former colleagues.

Well, is it wrong of me now to then start on my first question being how the hell are there three traders and two faithfuls left on this show?

Well, that's a great question. I know what my strategy was, and we will have a chat about that. But I just think Sam's playing a very, very good game. I suspect he may be a little too clever for his own good. You know, when you've got someone like Blake who's just such an affable, lovable guy, it's He certainly was never a my radar, and I don't think he's on too many other people's either, because he just doesn't portray himself any other way than what he was when he first arrived.

Like minute one.

It's interesting for us as a viewer because the whole process of this show is that we are in on the joke. That's the way I like to see it. So for us it seems really obvious.

Yeah, for sure.

Look I look back on it now myself and think, Wow, there's things like the nuances, the facial features, the tisi expressions, et cetera. But I think it's important for people to understand that or realize that in that banishment room a lot is going on and you're not actually staring at someone the whole whatever period of.

Time it takes to get to the vote.

So, and a lot of other people were shiftfty as well. I guess probably myself included. But yeah, it's one of those things that it looks easy from the outside, but when you're in the middle of that whole bubble, it's a different ballgame.

The casting of the show is brilliant because when you look at the show all around the world, what we do notice is that they find people who come across a bit shifty.

Yeah. Look, that's human nature though, you know, and my background, my background, particularly in policing, one of the unintended consequences was that I became quite jayed, not didn't trust anybody at all. And I think this is a great example as well of human nature. You know, everybody is capable of duplicity, regardless of how nice you are. We've all got it within us.

Well, I want to get into all of this, So what an experience to do the traders, I think it's very exciting for you. Did you think when you signed up to it that you would get as fire in the competition as you did.

That's a good question.

I've said to all of my friends and family that, hey, I wanted to make one breakfast because that breakfast look damn good. And really it was something I'd never done before.

How does the show like this come up for someone like you? I mean, I can't imagine you're applying for this show. I feel like they would have come for you to put you in this experience because of your experience, so to speak.

Yeah, I was approached. I was approached via one of Victoria's most well known crime journalists. After my two books were published, He's written a couple of articles about me. He interviewed me in his podcast, etc. And from what I understand, the producers came to him to look for someone that he thought would be a good fit for the show, and he said, I've got just the guy you need to talk to. So then he just he just rained me and said, hey, mate, what do you think.

One of the producers had to have read your book, well, one of your books like drugs, guns and lies, and thought, this person's amazing for the traders. It's born for it.

I was born to be a trader. And it was so disappointing. I wasn't tapped on the shoulder.

Had I been, I can almost guarantee Ben I would have gotten right through to the end because I just lie. My wife tells me I have an unofficial master's degree in Lyne.

How is she still with you? She knows this about you? What's going on?

Well, yeah, that's a good question again, obviously.

Very good in the sack, because there you go, you're going to put up with a liar every day.

Well, I don't lie every day.

I'm only kidding. I'm only kidding. I mean, I mean I think it's hard as well doing a show like this because for you your gameplay was to keep a secret, and to keep a secret that you're a police officer for twenty years, and to keep so much of who you were and what you've done a secret. I'd give myself up straight away. I can't help myself. My partner tells me not to lie because he says, I'm the person who always jobs myself in.

That was part of the rush, though, you know, it really did take me back to all those years ago where I couldn't have any police attitudes, behaviors, signs, all of that stuff. So I went in there with the approach that or the story that I was a retired corporate guy. And the secret to king a secret is that you as a backstory, you have little bits of

To carry that off.

But really, really interestingly, Luke TOCKI the first minute I met him and the very first night, looked at me and said, have I seen you before, mate, Have you been on TV?

And I said nah to me and.

He said, oh, he said, have you been on a true crime podcast?

Thought, oh, man, I'm blown.

And I just know I just lied beautifully and convinced him that it was wrong.

And I knew who you were. That was the weird thing. So when we first got the profile pictures of everyone that joined the cast, I saw all the photos and I looked at your photo and I was like, I

I don't know, because it's still it's still quite surreal to me, Ben that I do have a media profile. It's only in the last work three years. I suppose that since the publication on my first book that I've been interviewed, I've done promos.

On Channel Team.

The most curious question I had for you is because you've got Camille that's in there, and she also has a similar background to you, and so you know she didn't quite work you out and you didn't quite work her out. Is that the case or I know, no, I knew Camille.

I knew there was something about Camille early.

You did.

Yeah, So if you look at the waterboarding and electrocution torture game, the mission where I think the question Roger asked was you know, to me, who do you think is hiding something in this game? I immediately wrote down Camille, as did Blake from the other group, because I've said to them very early there's something about her, and I can't put my finger on it, but she's much more

At all, so she didn't work you out, but you on to her.

Yeah, I knew there was something different about it.

Yeah, okay, just the way she carried herself and the way she spoke and the way she acted. I thought, yeah, there's much much more to this person thing she's leading on.

It's such a strange experience because you're meeting all of these people and as you said sort of earlier, everyone's you're a little bit dubious of everybody. Who were the people that you immediately had thought were the traders.

Initially I was suspicious of Peydon, but when I saw him completely almost over defend himself, I thought, yeah, this guy's not lying. He's just trying to come up for air. Liam was in my sights. I don't know why, I think because he sort of reminded me.

Of what I was like when I was twenty one. You know.

He was just observing everything and mixing between groups and whatever, and I thought, yeah, that's a bit interesting. I was just trying to pick up on how people were reacting in different situations. And after Ash were banished, I looked at Sam and thought, you are absolutely suspect, which is why all through the game I coz it up to him and made him think I was one of his best friends and completely trusted him because I knew he

That's another podcast which I would listen to.

H Yeah, I do talk the shameless marketing. I do talk about it on other podcasts True Crime particularly, but Hannah not at all.

I don't know.

I just clicked with Hannah and she didn't change her behavior one slightest bit. But certainly Sam suspect on Sam.

For sure, He kind of makes the perfect cartoon villain for a TV so I just sort of thought he's a villain, you know, he's the trader.

You know.

I don't think he needed to have been shown those things. He leaned into his villainry too.

Well, yeah, but he what you're seeing, what I'm seeing now as the show progresses with the one on ones and the dancing down the steps of breakfast, didn't exhibit any of that.

When he was in the group.

You know, he was really playing the country boy approach. What set my antenna up was I can't remember what challenge we were going to, but he, Blake and I were in a car and he started talking about living in Michinos and doing marketing promos, and I thought, Pa, in a minute, I thought you were a country boy. So that was just another plus one to the DOSSI

Yeah, it's not the real world, and I think I want to be able to highlight that, and we'll get into that in a second, because I think for you and Camille with your careers, you know, you could easily be like, you know, maybe we're not as skilled as we thought we were because we didn't detect or we didn't do this, you know, and maybe we should have had that skill set. I don't think that's a reality because the reality TV bubble that does get creative for

You know, for an example, normal lines of inquiry that you do in an investigation to follow the evidence of fuying the offender just don't apply.

And because normal lines of inquiry would.

Be you'd sit down and talk to people and ask them particular questions and then compare their version to others, and then you'd come back to them with a with an anomaly. In this case, my main motivator was not to be murdered, and I'd said to I think I'd said in a couple of interviews with producers that unfortunately writ and see, I'm simply here to survive until a point in time where the pool of people is quite small and they'n I'll be making a move. So I was,

But I think that the show sets up everyone to avoid their first instinct, which isn't what I believe criminals would be doing. So like in this particular show, everyone the whole time feels like they're under investigation, so whatever their first instinct is, they seem to lie to themselves about that to try and throw people off the sand, which means that you're an assessed pool of people who are impossible to read.

Yeah, yeah, spot on.

It's you know, if the show had gone let's say for four months, then it would have been much easier to read people, I think, But you know, you're just You're right. People are a second guessing how they're reacting, particularly in the banishment room, and I'd sit there and watch people and you could see them holding down a smile or trying to look more serious. So there was a fair bit of overacting going on.

Yeah, you know, that's so funny. Luke was saying that in the podcast. He said his favorite thing about the show was watching the reactions, watching the people's faces, because their faces would keep changing, like they'd be so dramatic and they would think that they were being really subtle, were an actual fact, it was so dramatic that it was comical that he was laughing, like, what is going on with that person's face over there? That ain't normal?

Absolutely right, which makes it again and you feed the point. It makes it really hard to detect who's acting at normally when they're all almost vying for a try and buy for an oscar, but not doing a very good job.

But doing terribly at it, because you know, most of the time you'll find people are on reality television because they were terrible actors. I found some way to get attention anyway one of them. I can't say anything, but I just wanted to highlight the point though in all of that, you know, Gleton said, Geiiton said that you know the faithfuls are dumb dumbs and that stuck for the whole series, and I can imagine that might have hit you and Kimille hard through watching it back.

Interestingly, a lot of my friends and former colleagues have automatically cottoned on to what my gameplay was, and as the episodes have been shown, I've had dms and pms going, you're playing.

The Gray Men, make nice work. I know exactly what you're up to. So they got it.

But people, I think have probably an opinion about how police investigate, and we should have been able to find things. But the other thing to remember is, and this is going to sound harsh, I didn't really care that I was voting for Faithfuls. I was just happy to diminish the personnel pool and just stay there. So it didn't

When I spoke to Ash Pollard about it, she said, you know, the game kind of works, and she saw it working with people getting rid of the Faithfuls. You know an actual fact, quite a few people probably had that tactic. I know that Berth's a faithful, but I'm just going to eliminate them first. Yeah, I don't necessarily understand the mantra behind that, So can you explain that a little bit? I mean Ash's perspective, she was a trader,

Because I wanted to stay as long as I could, So it's a bit of a vex question. So say Sam, for instance, had I gone out early like Luke and said, yep, Sam's a trader, I'm going to vote for him, and it didn't work, I wouldn't have made it to breakfast, So I was happy to vote for other people who probably weren't contributing, who I thought either weren't contributing or could have been a threat. So Annabel, for instance, Annabel is incredibly knowledgeable about the game, and that's a huge

I think Sam has ended up from this conversation seeing even more clever, you know, doing the dancing and the tap dancing away from everyone, keeping it pretty serious there. Do you think that Sam would make a good criminal.

Look, he probably if he wanted to go on to the dark side, he probably wouldn't be bad.

But I and if Sam, if.

You're going to be listening to this brother I think his ego would actually get a bit too much for him, which would bring him undone.

I was sort of leading into that though. You know, I've met people who have gone to jail who are criminals, and I think something very interesting about those people is the people I met were always very disarming and very likable.

Oh look, that's that's that's a bit, that's a conversation we could have for an hour or two or three.

I've met a variety of them.

I've actually met some crooks I didn't mind, you know, and I'm talking about good we call what we used to call good crooks robbers, safebreakers, who when you get them in an interview room, after you put a gun at them and dragged them into a car, you get them in an interview room, they can be quite personable because they know they know it's a game. As strange as it sounds, you know, hey, yeah, you got me this time.

You haven't got me for something else, but you got me this time. But I've also met some psychopaths.

And some very evil, dangerous, horrible human beings, and fortunately they're also in jail. So you know, the postcard bandit probably way before your time. And I'm Robert called Brandon Abbott, who is still in jail, was actually a very smart, likable guy. He just made his living by pointing guns of people and stealing the money.

Yeah, do you think by doing a show like this you've made friends for life? For these people going to be in your life moving forward?

Yeah, Hannah and Blake particularly absolutely, Hannah. I don't know why or how, but Hannah and I had an immediate connection. I've now met her family Blake similarly, which we actually chat quite a bit.

And yeah, we will be.

And you're not always going to meet everyone to be friends with everyone. But I could definitely see the way that Hannah spoke to you when you were eliminited in the banishment room. You could see that was a very genuine connection that she had with you.

Yeah, she's lovely. She's a lovely human being.

How is Sam and Blake going to keep the heat off them for this finale?

I think the biggest battle that they have is the fact that they don't trust each other one bit. So it's your classic traitorous relationship where two people have a combined goal, but each of them is going to stab each other in the back when the first opportunity arises, so that's their biggest battle.

Don't discount Camille.

She is an incredibly sharp operator, and what I loved about her was that she in the first few episodes, particularly in the missions, portrayed herself as being a bit clueless, and as I said, I picked up on her that there was much more than what she was showing the rest of everyone, and I thought, well, you're pretty clever at this.

So she's been recruited.

I think that's a massive error of judgment on Sam and Blake's heart. I really think that she's got the potential to take everything.

Yeah, I think the same thing because I think, what my prediction and I know nothing, So this is just my prediction, which is going to be hilarious because it's probably so far out there and so wrong. But I feel as though, for the first time in the Final Traders Banishment Room, I think those boys are going to rad each other out, and I wonder whether or not that cancels them out of being entitled to the money before we've even eliminated, say Liam and Sarah.

I don't know. I really don't know, because I.

Feel like watching Sam and Blake as much as I do, and seeing the tension, but that's been brewing for the two of them. I kind of feel like they're the sort of boys they're going to be like, don't you dare throw me under the bus that's close to the money, because I'm taking you with me, kind of like when you try and push someone in the pool and they drag you in.

Yeah, that's right. What I would love to see, And like you, I don't know anything. I'm actually hanging out to see the finale. What I would love to see is Camille and Blake convince the other faithfuls for birth Sam out and then and then we'd see an interesting tussle between Blake and Camille. Could they trust each other to split the money? Would they not trust each other? That's going to be interesting. But I would really love to see Sam finally get a taste of.

His own medicine.

You made a comment once you know writing has helped you beat your nightmares, and I thought that stayed with me when I read that. Is there a book coming after this nightmare? Are you going to work your thoughts and feelings out and being in the trader in a book? Are we going to see that?

Oh?

Look, I'd like to, but I know there are certain limitations to what I could write about and what I could say. I'm actually thinking about the next book being How to Survive in the Corporate Jungle No drugs, no guns, but lots of lives, because I had thirty plus years of working in the corporate world, and maybe I could weave something in there about, you know, the entire human relationship thing in an emotional bubble like a reality show.

I think that would be fascinating. Why I'm in your audience, I will be buying any books. Let me tell you thank you before you go. I ask everyone who joins the podcast this question, what is something from behind the scenes of the Traders, something that we as an audience didn't see that we would love to know.

My favorite story is about Roger.

And just to digress slightly, When when I was accepted for the show and I told my wife and my two daughters, the first.

Thing they said was, oh my god, can we meet Roger? We love him so much? And I've delighted in saying no, you can't outside the banishment room. So after the banishment's over, you really only have limited time before you go back to your room.

And we weren't. We weren't permitted to mix with each other off camera, and that's okay. So we spent a lot of our time in our rooms. So I think the second banishment night, Hannah and I went straight to the bar.

So you walk outside, there's.

Red wine, white wine, bubbles, beer, and you really only have a chance to maybe have one maximum two drinks iFIT quick.

Until they came back to your room.

So the mission where the girls were chained up, Roger there was a you know, we're just waiting for the cameras set up, et cetera.

And he's sipping on his scotch and he said.

Keith, oh take great amusement for what you have to banishment And I said, what's that mean, Roger?

He said, so, I just love the way that you go up.

You grab one glass poor a rep so one glass of red, pour another one into it, then do the same with the second one, and then take them both to your room.

So the double feasted drinking is awesome.

You know he told me that story on the podcast, did he really? He didn't say a name because that's not Roger Corser, but he pointed out this has become this is a full circle moment for me, for the podcast and for the people who've come with me on the exit interviews of The Traders. We now know who he was talking about, but the production team did get a lot of pleasure and watching to see who. I

Thanks be that.

That means a lot and I've loved it so thanks for the opportunity.