Danielle Reyes Knows Her “Traitors” Crying Is ‘So Cringey,’ Says She’s Normally ‘a Non-Emotional Person’ (Exclusive)

• The Traitors host Alan Cummings selected Big Brother’s Danielle Reyes as one of season 3’s Traitors alongside Survivor's Boston Rob Mariano and Carolyn Wiger, as well as Bob the Drag Queen, who got banished earlier this season

• Reyes explains to PEOPLE why she decided to go after Wiger and why she chose to forgo getting her own shield in the riddle mission

• The reality star calls her fake crying “performance and crazy acting”

Danielle Reyes has truly been putting on an act for her Traitors castmates.

In order to prove her status as a Faithful, Reyes, 53, has cried, shaken and overreacted to the murders of her fallen costars throughout season 3 of the Peacock reality competition.

“That's all performance and crazy acting,” Reyes tells PEOPLE. “I am a non-emotional person in my normal life to the point people think I'm heartless and cold. I've been told that. So I decided to cry. I thought I'd be more emotional. I would get emotional at stupid stuff. It's so cringey. I laugh at myself because it is funny.”

Related: Parvati Shallow Agrees Dylan Efron 'Is the Peter' Weber of Traitors Season 3 but 'Less on His High Horse' (Exclusive)

The Big Brother alum put on a show during the riddle mission, too, forgoing winning a shield for herself in order to give one to Dolores Catania. Reyes explains that she wanted to be 54-year-old Catania’s “Traitor angel.”

“I felt like Boston Rob [Mariano] and Carolyn [Wiger] were going after the Housewives, so I wanted to protect Dolores because Dolores believed I was a Faithful,” Reyes says. “What I did was I spilled it like I'm protecting Dolores and I'm sacrificing myself for Dolores, because then Dolores would’ve loved me more.”

Reyes knows how the move looked to viewers. “It seemed like, 'What am I doing? ‘Oh, you're an obvious Traitor because you're not scared,' but I did act scared,” she says. “I made my hands shake, but I did put my name up eventually, but it was edited out. My point was to make it seem like I was a Faithful, that's why I did that.”

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The reality star feels like her over-the-top antics worked. “If you listen to people who've been murdered and banished, they're all surprised that I'm a Traitor,” Reyes says. “I mean, it'd be so boring if I wasn't doing what I was doing. You don't want Traitors hugging and singing Kumbaya. You want to see the chaos, and that's what we're giving you guys.”

After Mariano, 49, blindsided her and Wiger, 38, by taking out fellow Traitor Bob the Drag Queen, Reyes decided to cause more chaos by going after Wiger in hopes that she’d be replaced with a new Traitor.

“At that point, because my mind's going 50 miles an hour, I don't know if Carolyn and Boston Rob are putting a farce on in front of me and I'm next on the chopping block,” Reyes says. “I'm like, ‘These two Survivor [players] teamed up and they basically took out Tony [Vlachos] and let me take out Jeremy [Collins].’ What's the bigger picture here? The paranoia was at a high level for me at that point. I was like, ’I can't trust these two.’ ”

Reyes explains that she wanted to go after Reyes first to chip away at Mariano. “It's like a game of chess,” she says.

“You don't simply go after the king or queen directly, you got to weaken them first. So in my point of view, I'm looking at two badass gamers who look like they're teaming up and I don't know if they're coming against me,” she explains. “So I said, ‘I got to take Carolyn out because if I can get her out, then possibly I can at least get another Traitor in the castle with me.’ I can team up with a new person and we can take him down.”

Reyes figured that “whoever came in, they weren't going to trust Boston Rob because of what he did to Bob the Drag Queen."

Related: Dolores Catania Defends Dorinda Medley's Traitors Outburst Because 'Emotions Are Not Rational in the Housewife World'

In the Jan. 30th episode, which saw The Biggest Loser’s Bob Harper get murdered and The Challenge’s Wes Bergmann banished, Wiger voted for Reyes at the roundtable after she learned about the Traitor's plan.

“Everyone's panic in mode,” Reyes says. “Buckle up, because it's going to get even more messy.”

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 New episodes of The Traitors stream Thursdays at 9 p.m. ET on Peacock.

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