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The Anonymous Winner Nina Twine "Never Doubted That I Would Make It"
The legacy competition winner mastered the first season of The Anonymous!
Maybe its Nina Twine's genes — as the daughter of legendary Survivor winner and The Traitors competitor Sandra Diaz-Twine — or her own quick wits as a two-time Australian Survivor competitor, but Nina sorta made it look easy as she took her place as the very first winner of USA Network's The Anonymous.
Over 12 episodes, she managed to persist through multiple handle changes, and slipped into that coveted Anonymous position twice, during which she attempted to vote out Marcel and successfully booted out Bismah.
RELATED: The Anonymous' Bismah Ahmed: "Nina, You Eliminated Me. You Better Win!"
Now, she stands triumphant.
Who won The Anonymous Season 1?
Nina Twine is now the winner of The Anonymous Season 1. She stuck to her game strategy that she shared with us weeks ago, and proved that her efforts to "keep somebody else's name" in her fellow contestant's mouths worked well.
But did she ever doubt her skills?
"I never doubted that I would make it. Did I get nervous? Yes, but I honestly never doubted it," Nina told USA Insider in our exclusive exit interview. "There were a lot of times where I looked around and I thought, 'OK, could it go bad? Yeah, but I don't think it will.' And honestly, I was probably living in a little bit of a delusion. But I don't care, because it felt great when I didn't go!"
Below, Nina also reveals the moment she got nervous toward the end, how her ballcanon mindset switched out mid-bonk, and the next show she'd like to conquer...
Marcel's Survivor accusation did get Nina nervous
In the penultimate episode of the season, Marcel Cunningham casually threw out to Nina that he thought that she might have been on Survivor, and suddenly the audience at home leaned in — how would she respond? Would the connection spread among the other players?
Nina said Marcel was the only player left to confront her, so she tried to play it cool.
"There were a lot of discussions about Survivor, The Traitors, and things like that, around the house," she said. "I never shied away from any of those conversations, but I also did stick around too long, so it was very shocking. I think I was able to convince him, and even if I wasn't, it didn't seem to bother him too much. And I think that's all due to my approach. It wasn't combative. It wasn't nervous. It was more confused, but willing to talk about it. And I think that that is something that I learned a lot [about] ... I was very confident in myself and executing."
Nina versus the balls of doom
In one of the final competitions of the season, Nina and the others had to try to catch a barrage of silver and red balls to add to the final total of the show's overall pot of money. Shockingly, Nina was great at getting hit by the balls ... and not so great with the catching. Asked if she was worried it would keep her from winning in any way, Nina said after getting hit so many times, she made a mental adjustment:
"I said, 'Let's make most of this. Let's contribute as much as we can and kind of enjoy it,'" she said of her situation as a target. "I know that that's really hard, and it was hard for me to enjoy at the beginning, but as the challenge went on, I was like, 'This is hilarious. I'm getting hit in the head. I can't breathe. I can't see. I'm running into people. People are running into me. This is actually kind of funny. Let me enjoy this. Let me take a deep breath and just really focus on getting as much money as I can, because when that pot is mine, I don't want to think I didn't give enough.'"
RELATED: The Anonymous' Xavier Blames DANI, Not Lilly: The A.I.'s "Twist Blew Up My Game"
The Final Face Off
When it was just Cunningham, Andy King, Christopher Shulstad, and Nina in the final Face Off for the Win box, Nina said she was relieved that she had done the game before with all three and had that experience to help her make the right choices in the end.
"I could read them in the moment, knowing now what I saw happened, I could read Andy the best, Christopher second best because he, of course, switched up his story about lose or win," she said. "It made me take a step back, but then I was like, 'He's jumping off that puck like he wants a second chance. Andy is still like a statue.'
"But I will say, if you go back or you look, there's a moment where Andy's picking his box for the first time, and I'm actually kind of standing forward. I'm not really looking at Andy. I'm standing forward and I strained my eyes like this," she added of looking at the other box. "And I was looking at Christopher because he's thinking, 'We're looking this way.'"
She could tell he didn't have it, she said, because his shoulders dropped.
"Then Andy, as we all know, is [a] very charismatic, very physical, moving person, and he is still as a statue. And that's a red flag," she explained. "I just had to make the decision: 'Is this a red flag because he's just disappointed, or is it that he doesn't want to give anything away?' And like I said, I felt like he was trying to dupe me based on my previous experience with him. And I was right."
RELATED: The Anonymous' Gameplay Master Jack Reveals the Players He Think Can Win
She took Andy's box and won the whole game. Nina absorbed the good will of her competitors with grace, saying that she could go all the way. And she rode that to the win.
"I said to myself, 'If you go over there and you doubt yourself in that final face off, you're going to be kicking yourself in the butt. Yes, even if you don't get the win, don't doubt yourself either.' That's something I took from Survivor," she said, "is being certain with every decision I make that I've never regretted."
Nina Twine on The Traitors
Now, she'd like to stay in the competition reality game and maybe follow her mom's path again by joining The Traitors, if they'll have her.
RELATED: Alan Cumming Accepts The Traitors' Emmy for Outstanding Reality Competition Program
"Yeah, I would talk to my mom about it, but not a lot," she said if she gets cast someday. "Because that's something that I never want anything to be tainted because I have this preconceived idea that might not happen. You're gonna be different because her approach is also very different. So I want to go in with an open mind and do what I feel like I need to do as each day passes."
But for now, she's more than content being The Anonymous.
