They say go hard or go home, but for The Traitors New Zealand contestant Andrew Allemora, being bold led to him getting banished.
The Auckland marketing executive, 38, was the latest player evicted from the castle in the Three reality show when his plot to target Gore author Noel Calamas blew up in his face.
“I had seen so many signs from Noel that he was a Traitor,” Andrew tells. “I felt so stupid when I realised how wrong I was.”
A shocking Traitors exit for Andrew
Host Paul Henry separated Andrew, Noel and Wellington administrator Brianna Anglesy from the rest of the cast. Then he gave them the morbid task of digging a grave to represent the fact one of them would soon be dead to them all. Banished from the series.
Unfortunately for Andrew, his calculated attack was against a fellow Faithful and a shock about-turn from Brianna at the round table led to his exit.
“I was so blindsided Brie got me banished. I was flabbergasted,” he says. He never believed he’d last long in the game. However, Andrew was frustrated to be brutally backstabbed by someone he thought was an ally.
“She eventually messaged me on Instagram to apologise, which I accepted, but we’ll never be friends.”
Overseas ventures
Avid traveller Andrew found out he was cast on the show while camping in Botswana’s Okavango Delta. The threat of a being ambushed by a lion barely prepared him for the surprise attack he’d meet on The Traitors.
Travel has always been a passion for Andrew. He’s visited more than 90 countries and hosts the remote-working vlog Out Of Office. In 2014, he was a lucky recipient of a US green card, which allowed him to relocate to New York with permanent residency, despite “knowing nobody there at all”.
The part-time actor quickly found work on Broadway in the marketing team of the Manhattan Theatre Club. It was “a pay cut but a dream come true”. The role saw Andrew rub shoulders with an almost-unbelievable array of A-listers. Some of which included Meryl Streep, Oprah Winfrey, Tina Turner, Laura Linney and Hillary Clinton.
He was working on the musical of Mean Girls when the COVID pandemic struck.
“I was in a studio with Tina Fey recording a year’s worth of marketing videos. They never saw the light of day because Broadway shut down five days later,” he recalls.
As the rest of the city followed suit, Andrew managed to secure flights back to Aotearoa. This was when “the most romantic thing in my life happened”. He remembers, “Eight hours before my flight, my partner said, ‘I want to go with you,’ and he came to New Zealand.”
Back to NZ
Andrew and Californian actor Esaú Mora caught what turned out to be the final flight from New York before boarders closed. The last-minute decision to bring his boyfriend to meet his “very conservative, evangelical Christian” family was a “big deal”, he says. “They’ve come a long way now, but it’s been a ride.”
The couple celebrated their one-year anniversary in a quarantine caravan on Andrew’s parents’ front lawn. When borders opened, they travelled back and forth to the Big Apple until they realised they wanted to settle in Auckland.
Andrew shares, “Seeing my family vibe with Esaú made me realise New Zealand was where I wanted to be.”
Esaú has fallen in love with his new home, where he’s found success in theatre and TV. Andrew jokes, “There aren’t a lot of Latin actors in New Zealand, so he’s hot property here!”
The pair got engaged while floating in the tropical waters of Aitutaki, in the Cook Islands, in 2022. They were married on Auckland’s Karekare Beach six weeks later.
The newlyweds combined Andrew’s surname, Allen, with Esaú’s last name, Mora, to become the Allemoras. They’re now the proud parents of dogs Kira and Pietro, who welcomed a second litter of seven puppies just days before Andrew travelled to Timaru for The Traitors.
A dramatic 2024
This year has been quite a theatrical one for the couple. Esaú acted in The Brokenwood Mysteries and both of them appeared on stage in a production at Auckland’s Basement Theatre.
Even more dramatically, the couple’s lounge was destroyed a month ago, when high winds sent a large branch crashing into their house.
“It was crazy!” tells Andrew. “I heard a massive explosion, so I ran downstairs, and Esaú and Kira were covered in glass. It was like there’d been a car crash inside.”
Fortunately, the room was fixed and refurbished to its former glory just in time for Andrew’s 38th birthday. It served as the venue for a celebratory screening of his final episode of The Traitors!
The Traitors New Zealand screens 7pm Mondays and Tuesdays on Three, and streams on ThreeNow.
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