Candiace Dillard Bassett Has No Regrets

Candiace Dillard Bassett is ready to talk. Wearing a poofy fur hat, the singer and reality star settles into the center booth at New York City hotspot L’incontro by Rocco, which chef Rocco Sacramone opened early just for our lunch. She’s preparing for fallout from The Traitors just two days before her final episode aired Feb. 5, which calls for wine and comfort food. “You should be scared,” she warns me. “Everyone should be waiting with bated breath.”

On The Real Housewives of Potomac, Bassett, 39, earned a reputation as a quick-witted shade assassin, who could both read her co-stars for filth and show vulnerability by pulling out her infamous “cryangle.” That caught The Traitors producers’ attention. She was initially asked to join Peacock’s reality-competition series before she announced her RHOP departure in March 2024. Not only was she newly pregnant with her now-15-month-old son Jett then, but she didn’t think it was her vibe. (“I don’t want to be outside,” she says, sipping a glass of red wine.)

But after fans tagged her on social media as a dream casting during Season 3, she realized NBC executives were onto something. “They have always been very supportive of me,” she says. “And I like a challenge.”

In Season 4, Bassett was given the ultimate challenge: She was selected to play as a Traitor, alongside former Beverly Hills Housewife Lisa Rinna and Love Island USA alum Rob Rausch. In the game, she had to get strategic and tight-lipped to conceal her identity from the opposing Faithfuls, including fellow Housewives alumnae Dorinda Medley, Porsha Williams, and Caroline Stanbury.

In fact, Bassett proudly declares Season 4 has “the best cast so far,” and reveals there are several group chats, including a Faithfuls thread she’s not allowed in, where they talk about their children and analyze the show as it airs. However, her time in the Traitors turret wasn’t without its fair share of drama.

The Traitors worked as a seamless trio in the first six episodes — until Rausch went rogue. When some Faithfuls floated Rinna as a possible Traitor, he voted to banish her. But instead of backing off when that failed, he led the charge against Rinna with Colton Underwood at the next roundtable, sending her home. In that moment, Bassett gave him a taste of his own medicine, voting against Rausch and cheekily disguising it as a “throwaway vote.”

As we’re being served prosciutto-wrapped burrata and eggplant rollatini, Bassett defends her gameplay. “If you’ll smile in her face and walk back what you did in your first vote, and then vote for her again, of course, you’ll do the same thing to me,” she explains. Her “throwaway vote” garnered laughs, praise, and hatred on social media, but one critique Bassett won’t accept is that her vote was emotionally charged.

“When Rob was justifying voting for Lisa the first time, what did he say? He’s hemming and hawing and giving this very Sandra Bernhard ‘Oh, I can’t vote for Ron [Funches] because it would hurt me, and I can’t vote for Colton because he’s my friend in this game,’” she says, mimicking his fake agony. “That’s dramatic. You’re going to betray your fellow Traitor, who has carried you in this game, because of your ‘friendship,’ quote unquote, with these other two guys? That’s emotional, but it’s not seen that way.”

While fans might’ve expected all-out war between Bassett and Rausch, she aimed to strike quietly. “I think people underestimated me in a very familiar way,” she says. “They filed it under ‘Housewives being petty’ instead of ‘a player clocking a pattern.’”

However, Rausch strategically outplayed her by not informing her that Underwood told people he was onto her, so her choice to murder him began a paper trail that sent Bassett home.

Bassett says she sensed her banishment coming after her final tense confrontation with Rausch and used her final moments to plant seeds against him. “My goal wasn’t self-preservation anymore. It was clarity,” she says. “I wanted to say exactly what needed to be said and leave the game without second-guessing myself. I was proud of how I showed up in that moment, and I felt good walking out knowing I didn’t shrink, hedge, or soften the truth to make anyone more comfortable.”

That doesn’t mean she’s done dealing with Rausch. “Is Rob a gaslighter? Yes. Absolutely,” she says, taking a bite of her filet mignon meatball. “You’ll see more of that.”

It’s a fitting time, perhaps, for Bassett to release her new single “If Only...,” a self-described “f*ckboi anthem” that calls out cheaters. “The opening line is ‘I know you're f*cking with these b*tches. I ain’t crazy,’” she points out. “We are not waiting to get to the punchline. It’s a warning.”

While she’s singing about navigating lies in a relationship, it’s a message she thinks Rausch could learn from, at least going by what she’s seen of him on Love Island USA. “There’s one clip going around with this girl mouthing ‘f*ck you’ to him. I’ve heard that he was quite the f-boy in the castle — or on the island,” she says, before correcting herself: “On the island and in the castle.” She laughs.

During her time on RHOP, Bassett established herself as an R&B force with her debut album Deep Space, winning a Bravo award for her viral single “Drive Back.” Her Traitors departure is the perfect opportunity to remind viewers what she’s capable of.

“That was part of the reason why I felt like the sacrifice would be worth it, to leave home, leave my baby,” she says, as our waiter presents our final course: a vitello al limone. “As much as I am eternally grateful to Housewives... that was always a springboard for me. So I’m excited for the prospect of what will come out of my time on Traitors.”

Bassett also hosts a pop culture podcast, Undomesticated, with cultural critic Michael Arceneaux, and starred in a new musical, Dennis Williams’ I Cried the Blues, in Washington, D.C., which is heading out on tour. But as she expands her horizons, she’ll always have a home on reality TV. She recently filmed for Bravo’s Real Housewives Ultimate Road Trip, a spinoff celebrating the 20th anniversary of the franchise, and isn’t ruling out becoming a Housewife again.

“It would have to make sense for the cast,” she says. “I would want to walk in feeling safe.”

For now, Bassett is basking in the Traitors glow and making sure she has enough time with her family. After lunch, she’ll head straight home to her husband, Chris Bassett, and Jett in D.C., before flying to Los Angeles for the reunion. Despite her loss, Bassett says she’s thrilled with how this season panned out and has zero regrets.

“Well, I have one note, but I’m going to save it for the reunion,” she teases, keeping one last secret up her fur hat.