🤐 SPOILER ALERT 🤐

The producers of The Mole asked Kesi Neblett to be their saboteur three times before she finally accepted the position. “The first two times I was like, absolutely not. I don’t know how to be the Mole,” she tells Tudum days before her public unveiling in the finale episodes of The Mole. “That’s not my natural demeanor. I don’t even like drama in real life. How am I going to manage this in a game?”

The third time, however, was the charm. “My mom has always told me that with time and resources, you can do anything” the New York software developer says. “So I told them I’d be the Mole with the caveat that [they] give me time to prepare.” Several weeks later, she was off to Australia to befriend — and backstab — 11 strangers.

But how did it all come together, and how did the 27-year-old manage to trick all but one player into believing she was not the Mole? Read on to find out.

Step 1: Research 

As a Columbia alum, Kesi is no stranger to doing her homework. Before filming, she went into a “deep dive” that involved all of writer John le Carré’s espionage novels and movie adaptations, as well as the original Belgian version of The Mole. After reading, Kesi then spoke with a producer who helped walk her through what could happen on the show. “We really nerded out. We talked through, ‘OK, do you think players will switch their votes once, twice, three times? What does the probability of playing the game look like in the beginning? Is it better to be suspected in the beginning or the end?’ It was a complete academic social endeavor.”

Step 2: Subterfuge

Once down under, it was time to put that research into practice. But how? “I think there are many ways to be the Mole,” Kesi says. “And I think the secret is figuring out the way that’s natural to you, and also figuring out your story. Being the Mole is about being blatant and bold, but having a story that makes you unbelievable.”

Only one producer on set knew her identity, and they would clandestinely speak in stolen moments. “Sometimes we would be in the bathroom and she’d say, ‘Cover your mic,’ and she’d have something written down on paper and I’d read it. These meetings were quick, five to ten minutes every episode, which is just not enough time. But we made it work. Other times I would meet with producers in the back of a black SUV. It’s raining, we’re next to a railroad track. It’s so dramatic, and we’re just strategizing and talking about options or what happened. Other moments, we’re passing notes back and forth. Sometimes it [was] visits to my hotel room. It truly [did] feel like [I was] a spy.”

While she never received the full details of a challenge, she knew just enough to figure out how to mess things up for the players. But as she revealed in the finale, she didn’t start her sabotage right away. “My strategy was to get people to trust me,” she says. “And it worked.”

Step 3: Go all in

Her first bit of damage to the group prize pot came in the prison challenge, when she focused on slowing her team down as much as possible. “[That was] the first time I really took advantage of sabotage,” she says. 

In the bank heist, she wanted to give her teammates as little help as possible. “Of course I saw the clues! They were so obvious,” she admits in the finale. That’s when Will began to suspect her as the Mole, but she spent the next few episodes trying to get him off her scent. Her error in the mail run could’ve very easily been an honest mistake. And in the chained up challenge, anyone could’ve done what she did: “Surely only a player would want an exemption bad enough to steal it,” she says.

But in the final challenge, which involved transporting heavy ice blocks worth different amounts of money up a mountain, she decided to throw caution aside and began blatantly pushing the blocks off of Joi’s sled and down the mountain — without the other finalist realizing what she was doing. 

“I had to dance with fear while playing the Mole,” Kesi tells Tudum. “And at that moment, I took the lead and I said, ‘I’m not going to be afraid. I’m just going to be bold.’ And that was a really incredible feeling.”

Step 4: Keep it a secret

After successfully outwitting ten other players (aside from winner Will), Kesi was revealed as the Mole and headed home to New York. Next came another difficult challenge: not telling anyone the truth about her role on the show.

“In the beginning I was nervous that I would just blurt it out; that if someone asked me about The Mole, I’d just be like, ‘Yes, it’s me,’ ” she laughs. “But [that] obviously never happened. So now it’s more weird to admit that I am the Mole because I’m so accustomed to not saying it.”

Two days before the finale, her friends and family were still split over whether or not she was the Mole — her friends thought yes, her parents thought no. She didn’t plan on telling them anything until the episode was released: “Technically, I’m still playing the game.”