Destination X's Tai Lowry Confirms Betrayal By Her Strongest Ally: "I Wanted to Be the Puppet Master"
Tai admits there was a lot more going on behind the scenes between the players.
This interview contains spoilers to Season 1, Episode 4 of Destination X.
Did Tai Lowry’s fib in the moment about not meeting JaNa Craig during a challenge secure her fate in this week’s Destination X?
Based on the way the episode played out, it would be easy to assume her knee-jerk panic caused her allies to distrust her. However, Tai shared with NBC Insider that there was a lot more going on behind the scenes that sealed her fate, including fellow player Ally Bross shifting her full support to game boyfriend Shayne Cureton.
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"I was very, very hurt,” Tai said of the betrayal.
In our latest exit interview, Tai digs into the details of what led to her orchestrated demise, when she knew she was in trouble with the other members of her alliance, and why she thought she was in the majority going into the Map Room.
Tai explains the lie and the correction that sealed her fate on Destination X
If you were to zero in on a single moment that Tai’s dominance in the game shifted, it’s got to be in Episode 3 when Love Island’s JaNa Craig and Peter Weber of The Bachelor and Peacock’s The Traitors joined the game. As the old and new players introduced themselves, Peter revealed that he and JaNa were part of the labyrinth competition. Shayne confirmed meeting Peter, while Tai denied ever seeing JaNa before.
"It was definitely a split-second decision,” Tai said of telling a lie instead of going along with Shayne.
“We're on a bus. It's small, it's enclosed, and now we got two more people that just joined, so we're back up to nine. It's a whole house,” she said, laughing, about deciding to hold some of her cards back from the whole group in that moment.
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"But here's the other thing, I had a plan to actually just keep it between me and JaNa,” Tai said of her machinations heading into that lie of omission. "We had more of a conversation on the bridge. When I met JaNa, Shayne and Ally were getting too close, so I saw her, and I was like, ‘This is a brand new person, maybe I can work with her?’ So, we had discussed acting like we didn't meet each other. And that's why she played along."
However, the lie didn’t sit right with the rest of the players, and it shattered some people’s trust in Tai.
"It was a bad situation. I'm a liar either way because I already lied about her,” Tai said about how she could have rectified the situation. “In retrospect, I think it would have been better for me to just admit it, and say out loud, 'Jana, sorry, girl.' Because I did tell her I have an alliance. I said, 'I want to protect you. I want to keep you here. We just need to keep this between ourselves.' Because then that would have put me and Shayne on equal footing. Shayne, [whom] I saw last night, used that to his advantage and started throwing me under the bus!"
Even more shocking is that Tai said she did finally come clean with most of the players on the bus…it was just too late.
"The very first person I told was Ally right there on the couches because she was freaking out,” Tai shared. "She just looked at me like her heart dropped. She was like, 'Tai, tell me this isn't true, that Shayne has been keeping this from me?' I said, ‘We weren't supposed to say anything. I'm so sorry.' But I was like, 'Don't be mad at Shayne because I did the same thing. It's just the game, and we weren't supposed to say anything.'
"And then I did end up talking to everybody else on the bus about it. What I think ... my mistake was, in me trying to repair my relationship with people, I didn't act quick enough,” she continued. "Ally was really the main person that I focused on in that moment. It wasn't until the next morning when I was on the bus and I was having conversations with people, and I said, 'OK, this is what it was…' But I think overnight, people sleeping on it, that train had left, and I was all by myself."
Ally’s betrayal and getting tricked heading into the Map Room
Once Biggy, Shayne, Rick, and Ally's plan against Tai was set in play, Tai said her fate was sealed.
“Fun fact, even though I was a flight attendant, before that summer, I had never been to Europe,” she said about her lack of firsthand experience in Europe. "I know that I haven't had boots on the ground in these countries, so I was just like, 'I need to have alliances and relationships. They are really what's going to carry me here.'"
And then they didn’t. Ally in particular was a blindside that Tai did not see coming.
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"I was actually very hurt by her before [the Map Room],” Tai explained. "When Rick and Biggy told me about the little place mats, I knew it was fake because the clues when you win are more specific than that.
"That night, I ran to Ally in the cover of darkness, because her and Shayne ... they were like this,” she said, crossing her fingers. "I felt like Shayne was doing that on purpose, so I couldn't get to her. But I told her real quick, 'Look, they told me this clue. I think it's bulls---. This doesn't sound right. You're in bed with Shayne. Get the information. Let me know.'
“So, I asked her to verify that information, that clue if it was fake or not, and she didn't come through,” Tai said of the Brussels clue. "So that's really why I felt really betrayed. Plus, after that whole fiasco, she was like, 'People aren't feeling good about you on the bus...' And then they're trying to isolate me so that I wouldn't talk with other people and get information. At the end of the day, well-played because it was very intricate. I wish I was on the other side of that type of social strategy. I wanted to be the puppet master."
Tai confirmed going into the Map Room that she believd Ally because she said, "I'm putting in Brussels."
Once she was sent packing, Tai said she was able to travel to the next stop with the crew and make the best of a disappointing situation.
"It was bittersweet, but really like that last moment that I had with Jeffrey Dean Morgan was a beautiful moment for me,” she shared. "He really made me feel good about my game. He praised me and said I was so good and he hoped I would keep doing television. He was like, 'I think this is your thing.' I felt like a doofus. I felt stupid and I felt played, so I was kind of down on myself and just hearing Jeffrey uplift me like that. I was like, 'Thank you.’"
Watch Destination X Tuesdays at 10 p.m. ET/PT on NBC. Episodes are available to stream the next day on Peacock.
