The Big Picture

The Trust, a new series on Netflix, tests the greed of individuals from various backgrounds and walks of life. Participants must vote to share a $250,000 prize or vote to send someone home, leading to alliances and conflicts. Lindsey and Winnie, two eliminated players, discuss their experiences and how trust played a role in the game.

Of the seven deadly sins, greed has undoubtedly become one of the most prevalent in modern history. The majority of American society is at a point where even breathing is becoming too expensive, an idea that those with means and access could never understand. The desire to live in comfort is both a simple and elusive one, especially when companies are allowed to raise prices as much as they want with no regard for the regular consumer. One can’t help but wonder: what would happen if people from various backgrounds and walks of life had their greed tested? A new reality series tests that question.

Netflix’s new reality competition series, The Trust, took 11 people to an exclusive location and gave them only a little information. The participants first learned what the game was when they landed in the mansion. There is a large amount of money, $250,000, that is available for the entire group to split evenly. The catch? They have to vote to share the money every single night or vote to send someone home. Even one vote for one person could send them home. The second the rules were explained, human nature took over. Alliances were formed, and pacts were built. Soon, those deemed untrustworthy or undeserving were quickly eliminated. In a game like The Trust, honesty can be a double-edged sword. Opportunities to take money from the group to take home were offered in The Vault, and many of those offers were taken. Those who were honest about making a seemingly selfish decision were immediately vilified. Why tell the truth when it’s possible to get punished for being honest? This tricky aspect of the series created plenty of drama and conflict between the final players in the game.

Two of the last players eliminated from the Netflix series, Lindsey Anderson and Winnie Ileso, spoke with Collider about their experience on the show. Both were asked the same questions, and both gave very different responses, proving that there is always more to the story than what’s seen on screen.

Lindsey Has No Regrets About Her Game Plan on ‘The Trust’
Image via Netflix

Lindsey Anderson went on The Trust as a fan of competition shows. She said: “I’m a big fan of Big Brother, and I’ve watched all the seasons of Big Brother for the last 20 years as well as Big Brother Canada. I just really like the Big Brother situation. My husband and I have spent the last several summers [asking], ‘What would you do if you were in the house kind of thing?’ And so I definitely went in with a Big Brother strategy in mind, which is– you make those alliances on day one because those are typically your ride-or-die by the end of the game. You definitely try to keep in the middle and not create a big stir because, typically, those people will automatically get voted out. So that was my strategy.”

Lindsey’s strategy worked initially but was soon challenged when the group discovered the millionaire status of her closest friend in the mansion, Bryce Lee. The women’s alliance Lindsey joined all agreed that Bryce had to go, something that Lindsey had to accept. She shared: “It sucked. It really sucked. I really like Bryce. I was trying to counsel him about the money thing. For me, it was obvious, based on what everyone was saying, that the more he talked about his money, the worse things got for him… I was trying to give him some good guidance. And my whole thing with Bryce was — it’s a game of trust. I assumed that our votes would have to be put on the table at some point, or at least it was a risk. The fact that Bryce wouldn’t even vote to do himself any good, I couldn’t see why I would put my own game at risk in the future with that vote coming out. Because I told the girls I was voting their way. There was no benefit to me.”

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Lindsey joined the women’s alliance with the hope that all of them would make it to the finish line. Unfortunately, dynamics really began to shift, and soon Lindsey became suspicious of Tolu Ekandare and Winnie Ileso. She heard whispers that they were gunning for her, which led her to switch alliances from the women to the men. When asked why she felt it was necessary to make that shift, she said: “I had played Switzerland while trying to just be honest with everybody. I was definitely on the boy’s side while being on the girl’s side. So the question was, when did things turn? So my concern was watching so much reality TV, knowing that when women start turning on each other, unfortunately, that’s never a good thing. And so when they started, um, kind of turning on Julie, it made me very concerned.” Lindsey was unable to say what exactly was said by Winnie to make her lose trust in the alliance, and ultimately, she was taken out of the game by two votes from Tolu and Gasparre Randazzo.

Winnie Ileso’s Trust In the Group Was Broken the Second the Candles Blew Out
Image via Netflix

This leads to the big question: was Winnie actually gunning for Lindsey when she decided to switch sides? According to Winnie, this was not the case. When asked why she believes Lindsey switched alliances, Winnie said: “Lindsey saw that, ‘Oh, Julie’s over here [with the men]. So I’ll have somebody over there. So then Lindsey, for some reason, whatever reason, felt she needed to go over there too.”

Lindsey’s alliance shift came as a shock to Winnie, leading to a heated final meeting before the group went to vote in episode 6. And the emotion behind her speech was real, as she felt incredibly betrayed by Lindsey and the rest of the group. Winnie shared: “We talked about our relationship with our moms. That’s how me and Lindsey connected. I think it was twice. We connected, like, cried, and everything together. So, when you find out somebody that you had a touchy conversation with turns around and is snaking you behind your back, why would I still want you in the house? Why would I even want you in my room?”

Lindsey wasn’t the only person in the house who Winnie felt betrayed her trust. The entirety of the men’s alliance decided that Winnie was untrustworthy and was backed by essentially everyone in the house except for Tolu.

She said: “Everybody is coming at me, it was just kind of– it was interesting to see because Jake doesn’t talk about how, when everybody was gunning for [him], he came and pulled me to the side and was so distraught because everybody was coming for him. I was the one that talked to him and told him, ‘Hey, you need to go talk to Tolu,’ and ‘You need to go talk to Mama Jay’ because my decision was gonna be based on how those two felt [about] him. I didn’t really care about anybody else, but it was based on how those two felt towards him if he [decided] to go talk to them. But they don’t show that. They showed it as Julie told him to go talk to Tolu. So it was just interesting to see how he gave grace to Julie for quote-unquote saving him, but then when it came to me, he just completely forgot about all that. And I’m like, ‘Dude, you wore my shoes! I was painting and doing your nails! I thought we were cool, but then you turn around, and you do that so easily.”

Consequently, the only people she has spoken to since the show ended are Tolu, “Mama” Jay Patterson, and Gasparre, who got back into her good graces after saving Tolu from elimination. She said: “He definitely got some points for me when he came through with Tolu to get Lindsay out. Absolutely. If that, if he did anything up on the show, that was his moment, and he took his moment, and he got points for that for me.”

Winnie and Lindsey Agree On Why the Women’s Alliance Failed
Image via Netflix

The women who entered the mansion allied immediately. The camaraderie made them hopeful that they could make it to the end. Unfortunately, one thing threw a wrench in the gears: Julie Theis’ crush on Jake Chocholous. Julie’s immediate decision to use her wiles failed miserably once she caught feelings. If there is one thing both Winnie and Lindsey agree on, it’s that her actions led to the alliance falling apart. Julie’s vote to save Jake from an elimination he was completely safe from led to immediate distrust in the women’s alliance. Winnie, Tolu, and Mama Jay became concerned that her desire to save Jake would mean that she’d sacrifice anyone.

Winnie said: “I feel like it fell apart when Julie picked Jake over us. That’s how I feel. It really fell apart because a lot of people were like, ‘Oh, you’re mad ’cause she liked Jake and blah, blah, blah. That’s not why I was upset. It’s not a dating show. It’s a game show. We were upset because, [despite] girl code, you picked him over us every time. And then we were confused as to why she kept doing that… Yeah, she made it to the end. Congratulations. But I feel like that’s where everything broke off.”

Lindsey had a similar response when asked about the alliance falling apart. While she believes that Winnie and Tolu turned against Julie after she began choosing Jake repeatedly, she also acknowledges that their TV romance broke the women’s alliance. Lindsey said: “Jake and Julie complicated things, right? Tolu and Winnie weren’t wrong. Like, Julie was between a rock and a hard spot there, and then they turned on her.”

Winnie feels that Jake was playing Julie as a part of his game, and even with the romantic editing featured when they were both sharing the screen, his actions certainly backed her assertions. She shared: “Every conversation me and Jake would have, and we would discuss Julie, or I bring up Julie, he never had anything positive to say about her. And you guys see that in the show. He never says anything positive… ‘Oh, she’s smart!’ [He’d say] no, every single time. He’s like, ‘Oh, she’s young. Oh, she’s overly emotional. I’m not really worried about that; it’s really not that serious,’ and it would always just be negative every time he talked about that girl. So, that’s why you guys see the scene when I’m like, ‘Do not let that man play you.’ But I mean, I guess she called it a strategy of hers or whatever. But I’m like, I wouldn’t want to be seen or portrayed like that on TV, in my opinion, with a man that’s literally dogging me every chance he gets.”

But was Winnie wrong about their relationship? Not likely. When asked if she knew if they would continue their relationship after filming finished, she said: “I don’t believe so. We didn’t really talk much about him. Honestly, I wanted to talk to Julie specifically because I didn’t want her to feel like, during that show, like I was controlling her and so forth.”

And from the viewers’ perspective, it’s clear that Winnie was attempting to give Julie some sisterly advice. While it’s a shame that Winnie did not make it to the finale, she at least got to go home with a cool $20,000.

All episodes of The Trust: A Game of Greed are available to stream on Netflix Watch on Netflix