The latest season of the hit reality competition series The Traitors USA is set to make it's premiere on Peacock this Thursday. Amongst the star-studded cast of reality TV stars and entertainers, two HBCU alumni look to advance in the season as either “Faithfuls” or “Traitors.”
Big Brother star Tiffany Mitchell and former Real Housewives of Potomac star Candiace Dillard Bassett are set to appear on the show and are being received with much fanfare. Both women attended HBCUs, with Mitchell being a Spring 2002 graduate of Clark Atlanta University and Dillard-Bassett being a Spring 2009 graduate of Howard University.
Mitchell, who competed on Big Brother in season 23 of the long-running program in 2021, is known as the strategist behind the “Master Plan” that powered “The Cookout” to dominance. “The Cookout” was a group of black contestants who set out to work together to become the final six houseguests with the goal of having the first black winner of the series in the two decades of the show's run.
Mitchell's strategy was for each of the six members of “The Cookout” to pair with another non-affiliated member of the house to both increase their influence over the eviction vote as well as systematically get each non-Cookout member out of the house. While Mitchell was the first Cookout member evicted after the final six, she eventually won the title of America's Favorite Houseguest and cemented her place as a Big Brother legend.
Dillard-Bassett parlayed her pageantry skills into a prominent role on The Real Housewives of Potomac. She joined the cast of the series during the third season and departed the program in 2024. She's since launched a podcast called Undomesticated that often receives viral acclaim.
The latest season of The Traitors USA premieres on Thursday, January 8th, on Peacock.
