Then, roughly a year and a half later, he returned to the public eye with The Traitors season four, and experienced something rare in the reality TV world: a redemption arc. Right off the bat, he played the game with ease and skill so impressive that he completely regained hearts and minds. Love Island watchers were reminded of how fun to watch he really is, and those unfamiliar were introduced to him as the unassuming, sweet, Southern snake wrangler who’s simultaneously outsmarting and charming everyone in the room—including Survivor winners, Real Housewives, and Olympic gold medalists. He was someone impossible not to root for week after week, whose victories on the show feel so personal that viewers are rooting for a Traitor to win the show that’s all about weeding out Traitors.
The way he’s been portrayed on The Traitors is the “most dramatic version” of himself, he says, but it’s still him. As for Love Island—he never watched his season back, so he couldn’t say. Still, despite all the online vitriol that he faced following that season, he doesn’t regret going on the show.
“Financially, it changed my life enough that I was like, ‘Okay, yeah, that doesn’t really fucking matter.’ At the end of the day, I have to constantly remind myself, especially lately, that I don’t really care,” he says. “If it ever got really bad, I would literally fall off the face of the earth, and it wouldn’t bother me at all.”
On the farm, it’s easy to see why Rausch wouldn’t mind falling off the face of the earth.
I get glimpses, throughout the afternoon, of the idyllic countryside life that he grew up with. “I would drag my brother out to the middle of the woods, and we’d build forts and boats,” Rausch says. “We built all kinds of stuff right out there. I mean, that’s all we had to do. We lived on a farm. We didn’t have fucking Wi-Fi. We’d go get some nails and go to town, make some shit.”
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