He is the Department of Conservation’s southern South Island operations director, Aaron Fleming, who is also a long-running Ironman triathlete and a motivational speaker — he was made a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit two and a-half years ago.
He notes The Traitors is "one of the biggest TV formats in the world at the moment, in fact this NZ series is being watched all around the world".
The 42-year-old says he was close to making the second-series cast, "which I think made it easier this time to get on".
For the uninitiated, The Traitors is a Survivor-kind show where, as Fleming puts it, "people get either murdered by the traitors or you get banished".
He says he had a strategy before filming took place for two weeks last October in Claremont Manor, near Timaru.
"So the person you see on TV playing the game is not the Aaron people know, and I start the game not being myself and with a bunch of lies."
Fleming says the game was mentally and emotionally very tough — "you are constantly watching your back, you can’t trust anybody".
He adds he was pretty resilient anyway, "but this has given me a whole heap of life experience of how to test my resilience".
He is enjoying meeting people round town who are wishing him good luck.
"They know I’m the Queenstown lad on the show, and people have got behind me, which is pretty cool."
The final two episodes of this latest 10-part series are on Three this coming Sunday and Monday at 7.30pm, with streaming on ThreeNow.
