From the very start of The Mole Season 2, there was one player who remained fixed atop the Internet’s suspect list. “Michael HAS to be the mole,” one person wrote after the first batch of episodes. “It’s clearly Michael. C’mon … this is too easy,” another added. After all, many fans were grappling with the same question: “How the hell can a former lifeguard not pull up a damn case?”

Turns out, exhibiting Mole-like behavior and sowing general chaos from the moment he arrived in Malaysia was all part of Michael’s plan. “I was always strategic about what I said and did,” he tells Tudum. “I lied from beginning of the day to the end. I really screwed up people’s ideas of who was sabotaging and who wasn’t.” And it worked, propelling him through the entire competition and landing him a coveted spot in the finale alongside Muna and Sean. But in the end, there can only one victor: Michael beats Muna in the final quiz by a razor-thin margin, correctly unmasking Sean as the competition’s titular saboteur and becoming the winner of Season 2. 

Below, Michael explains how he deceived everyone up until the finale, when the Mole first caught his attention, and what he plans to do with his cash prize.

Now that your secret is out in the open, how has it felt to keep this hidden all this time?

It’s been insane. I am usually not good at keeping secrets, so the fact that I’ve had to keep this hidden from everybody for almost a year has been extremely hard. But it’s rewarding that no one knows the outcome and seeing everybody really excited for me has been just such an incredible experience. I can only imagine what Sean had to go through during the season, especially since he had to lie to us and his family.

Let’s go back to the beginning of your journey. Why did you want to join the competition? 

I’ve always loved The Mole. I watched the show in the early 2000s and then when it got rebooted for Netflix, I was obsessed. So I auditioned and when I found out that I was selected to be on the show, I was so ecstatic. I couldn’t believe it. But then I was like, “All right, game mode. Let’s go.” My strategy from day one was to play as if I was the Mole, whether I was or not. I confused everybody every step of the way.

You wanted to sow those seeds of distrust and have the target pointed at you?

Yes. I knew I wanted the target on me, but I also knew I couldn’t be too obvious. For the beginning of the game, I definitely wanted to make some errors that weren’t too big and didn’t take too much money out of the pot. I was trying to stay under the radar, but still [make sure] that people were suspicious of me. After overhearing some conversations, I was like, “All right, people really think I’m the Mole and I’m playing the game I want to play.” That’s what I was really happy about.

So when other players take the quiz, they would select you and then consequentially become more at risk for elimination. 

Exactly. I know that’s not the way everyone would want to play the game. Each mission, I went in saying, “How can I throw suspicion on me and not have it be overkill, but enough that people are definitely paying attention to me the whole mission?”

Two moments made you look especially suspicious to the other players: When you dropped the case in Episode 2 and when you cut the wrong wire in Episode 7. Can you explain what happened in both of those moments? 

The case in the water was a little bit of [strategy and reality]. We were treading water for over an hour at that point. We couldn’t find the boat so everybody’s exhausted, and you can see no one really has the breath to go down about 12 feet to get the case. I go down grab it, and in my head, I was like, “Do I drop it? Do I not!?” I kick off the boat, and then I lose my balance. I was like, “You know what? I’m going to drop it and it’s going to look suspicious.” Now, I didn’t mean to throw it down as far as I did. I dropped it half on purpose and half like, “I’ll just go back down and get it next time.” But it went another five feet below the boat and it was so deep after that point and I’m like, “crap.” 

With the wire, my plan for that mission was to sit back and do nothing. I was going to let Ryan handle it from beginning to end. When we reached the end of the challenge, we had about a minute and 30 seconds left until the clock ran out. We didn’t have much time to process anything. We couldn’t really hear what was going on. All of a sudden, we just had to pick a wire, and for some reason, I yelled, “Yellow,” and it was the wrong one, so it wasn’t on purpose, which is the funniest thing.

Are there any other moments of sabotage that you’re particularly proud of? 

One of the make-or-break moments for me was the truck challenge with the shipping containers. At that point, I was going all in on Sean. When the shipping containers came and my name was on one, I had a very good idea. I assumed that production was going to tell the Mole which was the right truck — so the Mole could prevent everyone else from going to it. I wanted to see what Sean was going to do. When he chose Muna, I backed him up right after by picking Muna, too. It helped me because we not only lost money, but I also purposely picked the wrong truck, which only made me more suspicious [to the other players].

During the mission with the gala, I told everybody that Deanna switched all the stuff in the coatroom. In the heist mission, I wrote down a fake code that Q found. With the episode in the cave, I purposely made sure I chose the fish over the tiger. I didn’t know if it was right or not, but I’m a Pisces, so I convinced people it’s the fish and then we lost. I needed to make sure if we lost the money, I was the one making the decision. There was a lot of mind games I was playing throughout the season that never got aired, but I was all over the place with people. I was planting stuff everywhere and then production’s like, “You can’t sabotage without anyone seeing it.” But I told them, “The Mole wants to sabotage without being seen, so that’s what I’m doing.” They didn’t like me very much sometimes, but I killed it. I will say I definitely gave them a run for their money. I wanted to be the Mole without actually being the Mole.

When did you know Sean was the Mole? What were his earliest signs? 

After the first mission, there were only really four options for me. Everybody in the final paintball zone (Neesh, Jennifer, Ryan, and Deanna) hit somebody and there’s no way the Mole would be that [committed to winning the challenge] in the beginning.

That really left me with my section and the first section. I was close with Melissa, so I knew it wasn’t her from the beginning. We all knew it wasn’t Tony. After the first elimination, Q had a breakdown over the possibility of going home, so I was like, “Either he’s the best actor I’ve ever seen, or this is him actually being nervous.” That only really left me with Sean, Muna, Andy, and Hannah, who was sitting next to me during that elimination and almost cried, so I knew it wasn’t her. Then, during the swimming challenge, me and Muna took $5,000 out of the pot secretly by ourselves. She told everybody about it and I was like, “There’s no way it’s her, because if you’re the Mole you’re not supposed to tell anyone what you’re doing.” I was down to Sean and Andy, and then Andy went home. By process of elimination then, it had to be Sean.

Attention Players: The Mole Season 2 Reunion is Here

From then on, I just focused in on Sean. My game plan was to [keep people from suspecting] Sean when I was with him. If I saw he was doing something suspicious, I either kept it to myself, or if other people saw it, I tried to one-up him. I kept doing these things to make Sean’s sabotage seem less noticeable than mine, and it worked a lot of the time. Once I knew [people] had an idea it was either me or Sean, I started [trying to make sure I was in different groups] than Sean. At that point, it’s not only going to come down to time on the quiz, but also how many points you get. If I know people are between me and Sean, I need to separate every car I’m in from Sean, and every mission I’m in with Sean, because that’s one more quiz question that they have to decide between. 

So you’re pretty confident it’s Sean … and then you choose to watch his video. 

I was probably 85% sure it was Sean before the video because I went all in on him for the quizzes [and wasn’t eliminated]. From day one, I was suspicious of him because he said he was a stay-at-home dad, but had no wedding ring, and then he had a tattoo of a grenade. I watched [the tape] and wanted to tell him I watched it, which is very controversial for some people. But I knew I needed to befriend Sean. I needed to get information out of him for the quiz. As much as 10 of the questions are about what happened that day, 10 others are about people’s personal lives. If I can become better friends with Sean, we’re going to build to that level where he’s going to tell me things. Randomly, I brought up a conversation about cars and he told me about his first car right away. On the next quiz, there was a question like, “What was the color of your first car?” It helped me get further on in the game and ultimately to the end. I had all these answers because I befriended Sean.

Let’s talk about those quizzes because they seem extremely difficult. Why do you think you were able to best Muna in the final one?

When I got to the final three, I was almost positive that Muna would be choosing Sean as well. From then on, I just was asking Sean all these questions that weren’t obvious, but just [came out of] conversations we were having. If you saw my notebook, the amount of info I have on Sean is insane. I made quizzes about Sean to try to remember details about Sean. What shoes he was wearing? What color socks? What order did he come in to a challenge? I was studying Sean from Mission 2 to make sure I knew everything that he did during that whole time in Malaysia. But I was nervous right up until they said my name in the end. Muna is such a smart girl and could’ve easily beat me.

You mention your journey as a gay man on the show. As queer people, many of us growing up in the closet have to live double lives and hold dual identities. Did that impact how you navigated the competition?

In the last year or two, I’ve really figured out who I am as a person. Coming onto this show, I knew I wanted to be as authentically myself as possible when it came to actual relationships. I didn’t want to lie about who I was because I’m proud of who I am and where I come from. If I needed to lie, it was only about gameplay.

Being gay, hiding that and then trying to be myself, it takes a lot for me to put my guard down. It was very hard. You really bond with these people and the connections I built were very authentic. There were many times when I just wanted to tell people, “Oh, that’s not right,” or, “I’m sorry I’m doing this to you.” But I knew at the end of the day, I’m here only for myself and if these relationships are strong enough, we’ll have a great friendship after. But until the finale, I needed to remember my lies, stick to my lies, and make sure that I made it to the end to win the money.

Looking back, would you have played differently because you had the chance to win way more money?

This is going to sound very selfish. Since I was playing the game like I was the Mole, I knew other people were going to put money in the pot no matter what. It was going to go up and it was going to go down, but at the end of the day, there are people there who are really trying to make as much money as possible and I was going to let them do it. In order for me to make it to the end, I was putting money on other people doing the hard work, while I sat there and confused everybody.

What’s your plan for the money? 

I definitely want to do some travel. I really wanted to go to Europe, so that’s definitely one trip I want to do. My dad has done so much for me throughout the years that he’s now retired, and I would love to just do something really nice for him. I would love to buy a house, invest the money, and let it grow. Hopefully, it will put me in a spot financially down the road where I can live my life comfortably and not have to worry about money.