He was meant to be asleep, but after climbing out a window, finding a road cone to blow up and causing a fire at his local skate bowl, the Coromandel police caught up with young Bradley Ogg.
Visiting the rebellious teen at his grandma’s Whangamata¯ home the next day, the cops asked him to tell her what he’d done.
He recalls, “I looked her straight in the eye and said, ‘No, I didn’t do it, Nan.’”
Plenty of practice telling porkies
Even before setting foot on the Traitors NZ set, Bradley, 28, agrees he’d already had plenty of practice telling porkies in his early years.
“I was a big liar, always trying to get out of things or making up stories. My idea of fun on a Friday night was to send out a text saying, ‘Let’s go cause mischief!’
“We would egg people’s houses or go roof rattling, launching gravel stones on top of a house and running. I was a ratbag looking for parties and getting into substances.
“My parents are awesome, but I was a handful back then, so they sent me to live with my grandparents.”
A life-changing trip to Vanuatu
Soon after getting fingerprinted by police at 14 on suspicion of arson, a turning point came when Bradley’s cousin had to pull out of a church youth group mission to Vanuatu, offering Bradley his place.
“Two months out from the trip, I went to Easter camp, met God and became a Christian,” recalls Bradley. “My conversion was real radical. No one else in my family is Christian, but Mum said to me recently, ‘Finding faith has been the best thing that’s ever happened to you.’”
He went on to became his school’s head boy and join another mission trip to Cambodia, which inspired him to pursue a teaching career.
He shares, “I remember crying while shovelling cement to make water tanks there because I’m not very strong. They said, ‘Why don’t you help the team run the kids’ programme?’ I loved it. I had found my lane.”
The moral wrestle
After moving to Auckland and becoming a primary school teacher, Bradley experienced burnout, so he quit his job and went to work full-time in the youth ministry at his church, before being cast on The Traitors NZ.
“My youth group kids thought I’d gone on Love Island!” laughs Bradley, adding that he hid his job and faith-based tattoos while on the show.
He explains, “I didn’t want other contestants to be like, ‘Oh, he’s a youth pastor who’s only going to tell the truth, so we should murder him.’ And also the public perception of Christianity can be very loaded. I think that’s why I was chosen to go on The Traitors – because of the moral wrestle.”
The Traitors NZ screens 7.30pm Sundays and Mondays on Three, streaming on ThreeNow.
