The 32-year-old producer, content creator, and lover of the outdoors may not be an actor, but he was quite possibly made for a game like The Traitors, which divides Real Housewives, former Bachelorettes, competition show legends, British aristocrats, and a few hot random internet personalities and celebrities into Traitors and Faithfuls to compete for a prize pot. Guided by host Alan Cumming in the Scottish Highlands, players gossip, lie, and accuse each other in the name of weeding out the deceitful. A few episodes in, Efron — a Faithful — has disguised a keen strategic eye and spot-on instincts behind his boyish grin.
In one excruciating scene, he finds his way into a secret room with Traitor Danielle from Big Brother clearly panicking beside him. He gets within centimeters of a casket holding secret information, and we see him grow increasingly frustrated, as he knows something is happening but can’t figure out what.
“They even cut that down,” he says. “I didn’t give up lightly. I was in there digging around [for a long time]. I actually think that it wasn’t in the episode either, but we knew something was going on. Finally when I see the door open, I’m like, ‘Oh, it’s going down. We’re going to figure this out.’ It was tough watching how close [I was] because that would’ve been all-time. It would’ve been hilarious.”
Fans have started referring to him as the Pilot Pete of this season — the Bachelor from season 24 also had a knack for weeding out Traitors — but as one said, “less annoying.” Efron is mysterious: “We’ll see. This season’s not over yet.”
Sean Macdonald/Courtesy of Align PR
As a kid in the central coast town of Arroyo Grande, California, Efron loved games, and he was good at them. He and his friends played Mafia — the more analog base game for Traitors — as well as poker and Settlers of Catan. “I was very competitive growing up,” he says.
