The Traitors breakout and K-pop star Eric Nam recruited some Faithful for assistance with his new music video.
Photo: Adam Kudeimati
After getting betrayed by fellow Traitor Rob Rausch in the 11th hour of The Traitors season four, Eric Nam left the castle thinking one thing: “I’m gonna have some really good music to put out after this.” All those heady emotions he encountered in Scotland — obsession, treachery, heartbreak — are great fuel for writing pop music. Nam’s first single in two years, “How the Fire Started,” starts with “You never gave a damn about me until I had something you needed” — a message to Rob if there ever was one. When it came time to cast the music video, Nam recruited a few of his once-Faithful friends — Natalie Anderson, Yam Yam Arocho, Ron Funches, and Irish queen Maura Higgins — to treat Rausch to a good old-fashioned western showdown. “It was a cathartic and really funny experience to put this together,” Nam says. Though he got nervous asking for favors from his former castlemates, Nam found they were more than willing to lend a hand: “Rob was like, ‘This is literally the least I can do.’”
In the video, Nam and his Traitors colleagues play heightened versions of themselves with Nam leading the charge as “Eric the Vengeful.” Rausch a.k.a. “Robby Bobby” is holding the Faithful captive on his ranch, where they’re forced to do manual labor while looking chic. The faux–Wild West aesthetic makes for a bright change of pace for a group that spent weeks trudging through mud and rain in Scotland, and Higgins a.k.a. “Maura the Velvet Blade” is almost unrecognizable in a mostly denim fit that’s giving mid-aughts Alyssa Milano. Also, there’s something vaguely familiar about seeing Nam atop a horse — was this video in any way inspired by his time pretending to be a cow during the show’s paintings challenge? “When I was eating grass, I thought to myself, How can I continue the story?” he jokes. The Faithfuls and Eric manage to tie up Rob, cutting the straps of his signature overalls — basically the reality-TV equivalent of Jo cutting her hair in Little Women — until Rausch’s castle BFF, Funches, comes to save him. (It’s especially fitting given that Funches put up a video expressing his desire for Rob to win it all, or, as he put it, “Fuck those Faithfuls.”)
“How The Fire Started” sounds like a mid-tempo country ballad, heavy on the acoustic guitar and yearning. “My new album isn’t necessarily country, but because I’m from the South, country music has always been an influence in one way or another,” Nam, who was born in Atlanta, explains. “Because I’m Asian-American, naturally people don’t look at me and think, He likes country music.” The new music video offers a chance for Nam to bridge the various roles in his life following his Traitors moment: pop star, actor, and, now, reality-TV breakout. “It’s a good way for me to wrap up this crazy adventure, to be kind of tongue-in-cheek and laugh at it while also giving the fans something new that brings them into my world,” he says.
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