The Traitors’ Oyin Adeyemi On Her New ‘Pinch Me’ Life

Oyin Adeyemi smashed onto our screens in the first season of The Traitors Ireland. She became a fan favourite from the first day with her intuition.

She, along with Vanessa Ogbonna and Kelley Higgins, won the show to the delight of viewers. Two months later, Oyin is still flying high. She’s become the face of KASH Beauty’s most recent launch, she’s appeared on TV and is leading Amazon.ie’s first Christmas campaign.

“Everything’s been a pinch-me moment,” she tells us as we catch up. As soon as Oyin enters a room, she lights it up. Her laugh is infectious, and her charisma is literally palpable. She has star quality written all over her.

Here we chat about life after The Traitors, taking on another reality TV show and why “delulu is the solulu”!

Oyin, how are you? You’re a busy woman!
I’m really good, yes. I’ve been busy lately, but good busy. I’ve been enjoying it! The last time we spoke it was at the Hayu InstaStar Awards and the show hadn’t finished then! I was like, “You’re not gonna get me!” [Laughs]

You kept your cards close to your chest! Was it tough to keep that you’d won The Traitors Ireland a secret?
I found it pretty easy to kind of keep it to myself because I don’t have a problem being like, ”No, I’m not going to tell you.” But for that six-month gap between filming and the airing, I actually forgot. It was just not the biggest thing that was happening in my life. I had other things going on. So it was so easy to just kind of push out the side. When it came up to airing, it was also really easy to keep it to myself, also because for the first two weeks of it airing, I wasn’t even in Ireland, I was in Brazil. So I dodged that. But then when I came home, I was hounded.

And did anyone figure out you’d won?
People were thinking that I had already won because I was in Brazil, but I was like, “No, guys, I’m just on holiday. I’m literally just on holiday.” And then after I won, people came back to the same videos and were like, “See, you did win.” But that was unrelated!

Tell us a bit about getting involved with this Amazon.ie campaign.
The campaign is called ‘Christmas Connections’ and since Amazon.ie is having their first ever Christmas in Ireland, they decided that they want to celebrate that by making a campaign around connections, magical firsts, and just celebrating people that you love around Christmas. So I decided to partner with Friends of the Elderly, which is a charity for the elderly community to have a place, a club essentially, they have disco nights, they have bingo, and a lot of the community, they don’t have anybody else really that they can, you know, have that companionship with. So, for the aim of the campaign, it was more of a call to action for people to tell people that they love them, and spend more time with people that they appreciate during this period. And the campaign focuses mostly on two members of the Friends of the Elderly, John and Brian. They have very, very beautiful stories. One of them was a postman for 44 years, and then he retired. He also lost his wife, and you can see all the keepsakes he has from her. We also have John, he never married. He took care of his parents for the entire duration of their lives. And now he just lives alone. It was honestly an honour to be a part of this campaign because I think today Christmas should be about spending time with people that you love instead of receiving presents. It was a really beautiful campaign. I really loved it.

Is working on campaigns like this a pinch-me moment?
Everything’s been a pinch-me moment. Life has been so fast-paced since the show ended, I’m like, “Wow, this is like this is all really happening”. I’ve just been trying to slow down. I’ve been returning to my journal, and I’m just trying to process everything. It’s been absolutely insane since the finale of Traitors. I just recently signed with my new agent. They’ve been so amazing to me. Everything’s just been working, and I’m just so grateful. It’s been amazing, honestly.

How has life been since the show ended?
It’s been two months. But honestly, it feels so much longer. Even when I hit that one-month mark post-Traitors, I was like, “Wow, it feels like it’s been forever”. Life has changed so much. I’m so much busier. I’m meeting so many people. I’m working on so many amazing projects. For example, I just did a campaign with KASH Beauty, and they are my favourite Irish beauty brand ever. So being like the face of their new lip stain was amazing. I’ve just been getting opportunities like left, right and centre. When we started this year, I knew I wanted to do something big, but I didn’t know how, I didn’t know what. So it’s been nice to see that come to fruition.

You have said that you would like to do Dancing with the Stars. Has anyone reached out to you about the new season?
I can tell you that I haven’t actually been reached out to yet. I’ll say yet! [Laughs] We’ll speak it into existence. I would love to do Dancing With The Stars. I know it would be difficult, but that’s kind of like the kind of challenge I would love to do. I’m actually a really good learner when it comes to taking on new challenges. I think, honestly, I’d be really, really good at it. I love dancing, so I think that would definitely be somewhere I’d love to find myself eventually.

You’d definitely have you Traitors co-stars cheering you on. You all seem so close!
Absolutely. Having them all come to the events really, really warmed my heart. Everybody’s been supporting me since the finale came out, and it’s just been really nice to see what everybody is doing and just take it in. The relationships I formed after, especially with Kelley and Vanessa, are just priceless. There are no other girls that I would have wanted to really win with. I think it just wrote itself.

We’ve talked about how The Traitors Ireland changed your life. The show had a viewership of 2.1 million people. Could you have expected such a reaction to it?
No, actually. I did not expect it to do the numbers that it did! Anytime I go outside, I get recognised. Genuinely, I thought that I was just going to be a show that I went on, and it would just be a fun experience. I thought maybe a few opportunities would come out from it, but like it’s been two months later, and it’s still going quite strong, it’s really still buzzing. People are still talking about it, and it’s really nice to see. It’s had a great impact on the Irish media space. It was more of a revival of Irish TV as well. People were saying that we haven’t had that in a long time, like the way Ireland just came together. Twitter was alive. Oh my God! [Laughs] I was really enjoying the tweets and the memes, everybody was so funny.

You are the queen of manifestation, it would seem. So what’s on your manifestation board now?
A big thing that I’m manifesting at the moment is more work opportunities that coincide with travelling, so I’d really love to do more international work, hopefully in modelling in different campaigns, different countries. I want to continue working in social media because I really like social media. For me, when I found my place in social media, I knew this was where I was supposed to be. I studied International Business and French. Those were my two favourite subjects in secondary school. So I didn’t really know what else to do. But then, when I graduated, I majored in finance. And I was like, “What am I doing? Why am I here?” Last year, I really got the ball rolling online. But I think the start of this year was really when I was like, “Okay, I know what I want more.” The pieces have just been coming together slowly, and I’ve just been trusting the process. I think I stopped getting bogged down by life, because at the end of the day stressing is not going to make anything easier.

What advice would you give your younger self?
My advice I’d give to my younger self is don’t let anybody tell you otherwise. Don’t let anybody discourage you and tell you you can’t do what your dreams are. Ever since I was young, I wanted to be a model. And I had so many people tell me: “You’re not model material. Nobody wants you as a model.” So it’s been a lot of discouragement from when I was young. So I’d tell her to be absolutely delusional. It doesn’t matter. Delulu is literally the solulu! [Laughs]

In partnership with charity Friends of the Elderly and starring The Traitors Ireland TV star Oyin Adeyemi, Christmas Connections delivered by Amazon.ie, highlights the highs and lows of holiday firsts and the importance of connection.