To start, how did you each end up applying for a show like The Mole? Were you aware of its prior seasons before its return?Joi Schweitzer: I have always been a fan of reality TV. mM family and I will watch competitive reality TV shows all the time. It was a no-brainer. I got a casting message on social media. And at first, I thought it was spam. I have a social media account about inspiration. I do fitness; I speak a little bit about my career. And so I was like, “What? I don’t understand this. This is weird.” And so I ran it by my husband. We did our homework, and he encouraged me to go. He said, “Joi, you’re gonna do well. You’ll win it.” So I went for it. William Richardson: Mine is kind of a cliche story. It was a slide in the DMs. It was a casting producer. And he’s like, “Look, man. I’m looking at a sheet that has your name written all over it for this. A one-of-a-kind show.” And I was like, “Hit me with it. Let’s hear it.” And the second you hear the pitch, I’m like, “Who’s gonna say no to traveling to Australia, doing missions for money, and trying to find a saboteur?” I was sold the second I heard the pitch. I’m like, “Who do we got to talk to? Let’s make it happen.“Kesi Neblett: I am actually historically a software developer. I had just quit my job last year. And literally, the day after I quit, I was sitting in my living room with my brother. And my friend from boarding school texted me and said, “Hey, I think you would be great on the show. You should audition.” And I remember laughing with my brother, and he was like, “Why not? You have all this time.” I was like, “That’s true. I don’t have a job. I’m just gonna travel the world. And why not do it in Australia?“Well, you do end up getting hired in a way when you get chosen to be the Mole. What was that process like, and what was your preparation for the game?Kesi: They told me that I was going to be the Mole about two days before I flew out to Australia. And they had asked me three times. The first two times, I said no, because I just felt like that was not my natural personality. I was like, “How do you do this?” But the third time, I said, “Anything is possible. Let’s take risks. Let’s be bold.” I’m stealing that line from Joi. (Laughs.) And about two weeks before we started filming, I went into an academic deep dive. And I was studying psychology, reading John le Carré’s espionage novels, and also doing a little bit of studying probability and statistics.Will, you vocalized that Kesi was on your suspect list since the bank heist mission. Did she stay on your radar until the end?William: Yes, so it’s confession hour. Kesi was in my top three from day one. When I talk about splitting votes, I will be honest with everybody. I was so cautious about even in interviews telling people who I was really voting for it. So a lot of times, I would only focus on the last person I hit on the quiz, because that’s the only person you can truly see. I kept Kesi on the very bottom of the three from the very beginning. And then it was the gold mission. And the funniest part is there’s a part at dinner where I’m the one defending her. I’m like, “Well, it makes sense. Her job deals with numbers and analytics. She could skip that.” And in my head, I’m like, “There were three pages, and you didn’t see El Dorado?! I don’t believe this for a second.” And so then I basically, at that moment, broke it down to a top two. But still, in this game, you’re never positive at all. And I was in the very last episode and not positive. It’s a fun time, but it’s nerve-racking.Joi, you picked Will as the Mole in the final quiz. But did you ever have Kesi on your suspect list?Joi: In the beginning? No way. I’m like, “Not Kesi at all. She’s sweet. She’s innocent. She’s a little gullible.” But in the end, 100%. Not the very last quiz, but the quiz before last, I went heavily on Will, but I sprinkled Kesi in there, which got me further. But on that last quiz, my gut told me it’s Kesi. But I thought Sandy went home on a Kesi vote. That confused me. But I got my weeks mixed up. And so I went for Will, and it bit me in the butt. And I regret it to this day.Joi, we have to talk about when you decide to remove $25,000 from the pot in order to get an exemption. What made you choose to go for such a high amount?Joi: Okay, I’m glad you brought this up. I’ve been ready to talk about this. I know $25,000 is a lot of money. But I did it to get to the end. And also, you guys see a 45-minute edited show. I would hear conversations off-camera. A couple of the cast mates were like, “I just want to do this to be famous.” They really didn’t care about the plot. But as soon as the cameras were on, it’s like, “We care about the money.” And so I didn’t know how to take that. So I was going to go 18,000. But I decided to put an extra $7,000 for good measure. Will went $15,000. And nobody gave him crap! (Laughs.)Will: (Laughs.) That’s true.Joi: Also, they didn’t show me calmly explaining why I went so high. You see me smirk. You see me laugh at the group. But I explained it very calmly. I said, “It was a very tough decision. But I didn’t know what the players thought processes were like at the moment. So I went high, and I didn’t want to go home.” And I wanted to cause a little bit of chaos. I was throwing people off their game.Kesi: I was so proud. You were doing my work! (Laughs.)Will: She deserves some defense on this because. For a while, it looked like every single person was a saboteur. So I kind of get her vote. She was like, “Everybody’s gonna bid the whole pot.” Nobody cared about money! (Laughs.) Twitter, lay off her a little bit. In hindsight, it was…somewhat understandable.It’s interesting you bring up nobody caring about money, Will. Because you were one of the people most active and vocal about constantly winning missions. Yet we see people like Avori strategically sabotage parts of missions to draw suspicion on themselves. You end up doing that in the final missions, but did you ever think of doing that earlier?Will: Never. That’s not the way I wanted to play the game. I said from the beginning I wanted to prove I could play the game my way and make it to the end. So I didn’t feel like I’d be doing myself justice if I came in and wasn’t true to myself throughout the process. And I’m a competitor at heart. I’ve been an athlete my entire life. And that would feel untrue to my nature to try and throw a game. So I mean, playing tactically, in a certain situation, allowing suspicion onto myself is acceptable. But I’m never going to take $5,000 and drop it to the bottom of the water. I’m not going to kick $5,000 down a mountain. I’m not doing it.Kesi, what are the missions from this season you are most and least proud of as a Mole?Kesi: I would say perhaps the mission that I was most proud of would be on the mountain with the ice blocks. Sorry, Joi. I’m proud of it because I had no fear at that point. I think I had been kind of balancing fear and being audacious this entire game. And at that point, I had overcome it all. And I had decided, “You know what? I have a lot of power here. And I can do what I want and tell the story that I want.” I would say the one I’m least proud of might be the chem lab mission. And it’s really sad because not only had I watched the Belgian Mole, which has a mission that’s very similar to that, but I also was a chem lab guru in high school. The fact that we still lost, I was really hurt. The competitive side of me was so livid at Pranav. My ego was a little bit rattled that he led his team, and I couldn’t do that for us. So that one was a tough swallow.Will: Because that could have been a win and a win! She was allowed to win and take money out. And she won and lost. That’s awesome. Great for us. (Laughs.)Speaking of Pranav, we saw that he and Avori were definitely working together to a certain extent in sharing their suspicions with each other. Will and Joi, did either one of you form a coalition with any other players out there?Will: I’m going to say realistically, no. I didn’t tell anybody the truth about anything I was ever feeling, really. My main goal was I really tried to get as close as possible to the people I thought it might be. Because I work on a similar type of logic where if you can understand the person, you’ll be able to address situations better. So if you understand the person, and then you see something play out, you’re like, “That actually kind of makes sense.” That’s why I got close to Pranav and Avori. And when you understand them, I was thinking, “So it’s obviously not Avori because she’s so clearly trying to look like a Mole.” That was my structure. But as far as exchanging info, that was never my game plan. I never got close to or made an alliance with anybody. I always kind of do my own thing and just try to get close to the person.Joi: Yes and no. I kept a lot of information to myself for sure. What wasn’t shown on the show was my alliance with Jacob for a little bit. We were working together. We were best friends on the show. So the fight that you saw, I told him I was going to throw him under the bus at dinner. He was definitely expecting it. So it was great acting on his part because he looked pissed. But when he went home, I thought he had a change of heart. And I thought I may have confused him. It was a mentally fatiguing game.On that note, Kesi, how difficult was your Mole experience overall? Both in constantly having to be on your toes to sabotage and perhaps reconciling emotionally with the fact that you’re tricking people that you’re getting close to?Kesi: That’s a great question. I would say that 70% of the time, I was having the best time of my life in secret. But 30% of it was really hard. After the bank mission, we were driving back, and everyone was really upset in the car. And I was like, “Man, I’m pretty hyped. But I can’t show that right now.” And I want to make sure that everyone’s okay because that’s naturally how I am. I also remember when I dropped the bag on the train, I was actually very sad. Because I was like, “How am I going to explain this to everyone and make it make sense?” Because I just had explained myself on the gold mission. And I think the last, most taxing part is right after the chain gang mission. I just had like one of the best episodes ever. And then Will started voting for me that night. And I remember, it’s like, “I don’t even have 12 hours just to chill? Now I have to turn around and address getting someone off my scent.“Next, read our interview with The Mole executive producer Chris Culvenor.
