'The Traitors Canada': First banished, murdered stars spill details on bad rumours and strategy

With two episodes down, CTV's The Traitors Canada is heating up after Survivor Season 41 winner Erika Casupanan was the first player murdered, and transit operator Collin Johnson from Thunder Bay, Ont., was banished from the show after a vote.

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"I'm not mad at anybody for murdering me, I understand why I am a great first victim, but the worst part is on the note that the Traitors wrote to me, they spelled my name wrong," Casupanan told Yahoo Canada. "If you're going to kill me, at least spell my name right."

"It's a little somber feeling, watching it now," Johnson said in a separate interview. "It was so early on in the game that I don't know what I really could have done differently, to be honest, but I found that once your name comes up on this show, especially at the beginning, you have a huge target on your back."

Erika Casupanan wanted to 'neutralize' her experience on 'Survivor'

The three Traitors of the show, Big Brother Canada alum Kuzie Mujakachi, realtor from St. John’s Melissa Best and Mike D’Urzo, a magician and mentalist from Toronto, voted for Casupanan to be murdered. But the Survivor winner highlighted that she did feel that she was at a disadvantage in the game because of her success on another reality competition show.

"There's certainly advantages having come in as a Survivor winner, one is I knew how to navigate the mental aspect, I knew how to navigate the potential paranoia and not let it get the best of me, I understand the strategy for a game like this," Casupanan said. "But this game is all about how people perceive you and whether or not people want to keep you around, based on whether or not you're a threat."

"I wanted to almost neutralize the fact that I was on Survivor. I know that I can't lie and say I wasn't on Survivor, because I walked in .... and there were people who were starstruck when they saw me. ... So I'm like, let me just answer everybody's questions, talk about me being on Survivor, ... not make it seem like I'm hiding anything."

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Knowing that she was in a specific position in the game as a Survivor winner, Casupanan also had a plan for how to engage with other players from reality shows.

"On the first day I wanted to make sure that I got into some type of an alliance with the [two] Big Brother people, because I was just thinking, who would the Traitors be?" she explained. "There has to be at least one Traitor who is capable of playing a social strategy game and the three people who are capable of playing a social strategy game are myself, Kevin [Martin] and Kuzie."

"I thought, OK if it's clear that I have skills in this game, how can I make the other people with skills in this game see those skills as an asset to them, rather than being a threat to them."

Collin Johnson clarifies thoughts on who should win 'The Traitors Canada'

Johnson's issue on The Traitors Canada was completely different from Casupanan's experience. There was really only a target on his back after there was a rumour spreading about him from Donna Hartt, a psychic medium from Calgary, Alta., that she admitted wasn't true.

"It was kind of surreal, because the whole day went really well, our team did great in the challenge, we finished way before everybody else," Johnson said. "We're all hanging out and all of a sudden I overheard people talking about like, 'Collin told Donna to go do this,' and then I'm like, 'Wait, what? What are you talking about?'"

"Once we kind of figured it all out, you can see in the episode, they put that together really well because that is very close to how it really did play out. ... You can see in the episode, people were just like, well it's been cleared up, Donna admitted she was wrong, ... but it didn't matter at that point. I guess, because that was enough for people to go, well that's something and that's more than we have on anybody else."

Johnson also found himself in some hot water when he expressed his opinion of who he thinks should win The Traitors Canada, specifically someone who's "trying to make ends meet." Some players took that as a possible clue to Johnson being a Traitor, specifically after Casupanan was murdered.

"I meant it as, ... just your average person, like somebody who maybe struggles day-to-day, that just happened to get this opportunity," Johnson said. "When I watch these shows, I always go for the underdog, somebody who's got it a little bit rougher maybe than somebody else."

"[That's] maybe not a fair way to look at it, but when I watch these shows that's what I want to see. I want to see the underdog win. The person that comes from nothing, as opposed to somebody who maybe just won a million dollars last year. But that's just me and in retrospect, I probably shouldn't have said that. I wasn't really thinking, I was just talking. I just really hope somebody who deserves it wins, and maybe that was worded wrong."

The most obvious and the most 'under the radar' Traitors

In terms of any hunches Casupanan and Johnson had during their time on the show about the Traitors, they both agreed it was hard to single anyone out in such a short time, but Best did stand out.

"It's hard to really pinpoint who the Traitors are, with the exception of [Melissa Best], within such a short time," Casupanan said.

"I wasn't overly surprised about Mel B, because pretty much right away after that first roundtable when the Traitors were selected, she was acting a little off," Johnson said.

They also both agreed that D’Urzo was a particularly unsuspecting Traitor.

"Someone like Mike [D’Urzo], he flew so under the radar," Casupanan said. "There were times I forgot he was there. So it's nice to ... watch the show back and to see his thought process, and to see how active he was being in the game."

"I really didn't think Mike was a traitor, ... but [I] wasn't there a very long time to really see people's personalities really change," Johnson said as well.