It was a shot heard ‘round the Traitors season 3 table. Survivor legend Boston Rob and creator-outdoorsman Dylan Efron vs. Bob the Drag Queen. Efron adds fuel to the accusation that Bob isn’t as faithful as he pretends to be: “Bob is an amazing actor, I grew up with an actor,” he says, referencing his brother, Zac Efron. Bob, quick as always, snaps back with a death blow. “Not a good one.” The room — and surely, the audience at home watching the Peacock show — is stunned.
Efron can grin about it now, calling from Los Angeles inside the van he takes on adventurous roadtrips, his dog Booey by his side.
“Trust me, it was worse in person,” Efron says, laughing. “It felt like that the entire time I was speaking with Bob [during the show]. He's just so quick-witted, and I'm an avoidant. I hate arguments. So I knew I was just stepping in hot water… I kind of teed him up for it. I gave him a softball and he hit a home run.” (And has Zac seen it? Well, if he hasn’t yet, he will soon — he told his brother he’d watched the first three episodes already.)
Bob may have won the argument, but he ultimately lost the game, as the Boston Rob-led charge convinced enough people to vote out the drag queen as a Traitor. They were right: Bob gave an impassioned speech as he left the room, during which Efron says he himself was about to throw up out of stress.
“That's why I love Bob. He easily could have just been pissed. He could have left, he could have just given up, but instead he doubled down until the very last second for us,” Efron says. “He's just a showman. Everything rolls off his back. He has the thickest skin and he's just a professional. He's such a cool guy. I have so much respect for the people like my brother, anyone that puts themselves out there for the performance and acting, I adore. I think it's such a talent because I don't have that.”
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The 32-year-old producer, content creator, and lover of the outdoors may not be an actor, but he was quite possibly made for a game like The Traitors, which divides Real Housewives, former Bachelorettes, competition show legends, British aristocrats, and a few hot random internet personalities and celebrities into Traitors and Faithfuls to compete for a prize pot. Guided by host Alan Cumming in the Scottish Highlands, players gossip, lie, and accuse each other in the name of weeding out the deceitful. A few episodes in, Efron — a Faithful — has disguised a keen strategic eye and spot-on instincts behind his boyish grin.
In one excruciating scene, he finds his way into a secret room with Traitor Danielle from Big Brother clearly panicking beside him. He gets within centimeters of a casket holding secret information, and we see him grow increasingly frustrated, as he knows something is happening but can’t figure out what.
“They even cut that down,” he says. “I didn't give up lightly. I was in there digging around [for a long time]. I actually think that it wasn't in the episode either, but we knew something was going on. Finally when I see the door open, I'm like, ‘Oh, it's going down. We're going to figure this out.’ It was tough watching how close [I was] because that would've been all-time. It would've been hilarious.”
Fans have started referring to him as the Pilot Pete of this season — the Bachelor from season 24 also had a knack for weeding out Traitors — but as one said, “less annoying.” Efron is mysterious: “We'll see. This season's not over yet.”
As a kid in the central coast town of Arroyo Grande, California, Efron loved games, and he was good at them. He and his friends played Mafia — the more analog base game for Traitors — as well as poker and Settlers of Catan. “I was very competitive growing up,” he says.
He describes a pretty idyllic childhood in the smallish town of Arroyo Grande, with its population of about 15,000 at the time and its proximity to nearby Pismo Beach. His dad took the family camping and backpacking, which led Efron to rock climbing and other adventure sports. Efron says his mom always valued her friendships growing up, giving him a deep love for his friends as well. His close-knit friend group would road trip on the weekends, driving to Utah for the snow and the mountain views, or to other parts of California to surf.
“We would just go and explore and get out of our little town,” Efron says. “It was nice being able to grow up in California and get experience on our own out in the wild at a young age.”
Somehow, not much changed even as Zac, who is about four and a half years older than Dylan, began his child star career and ascended into the mainstream with High School Musical in 2006. The pair are close, and their family was able to preserve some sense of normal life for them. That’s not to say it didn’t shape the person he became. On The Traitors, for example, Efron talks about being able to spot liars because he’s used to figuring out who’s real and fake.
“I definitely grew up in the spotlight more than more people would. I think people were always curious about Zac's family and stuff, and I opted to be pretty private because of that. I don't think I had social media until I was 26,” he says. “I grew up in that scene going to Zac's premieres and seeing all Zac's friends and how people can not have your best interest in mind. It's just something I've been attuned to since I was a kid. I can't say that that's why I started so hot in the game or anything, but I think it's a skill that I just kind of got just from how I was raised.”
Efron went on to study economics in San Luis Obispo at California Polytechnic State University, venturing out on his own for the first time and envisioning a life in a suit with a 9-to-5 in Sacramento. He laughs at the idea of that now — it’s hard to imagine the shirtless, muscled, risk-taking, adventure-loving Dylan Efron we see on Instagram at a desk job. He would sprint 10 miles to an office job just to get out the energy; he took up training for Iron Man competitions, triathlons that include swimming, biking, and running. Something had to change.
He had previously interned in Los Angeles at Warner Bros. while in college, and his old boss offered him a job. He moved to L.A. and slept on Zac’s floor on an air mattress while he worked as an assistant producer. “He has always been an amazing brother to me,” Efron says. “I think that's probably when we got closer than ever.” Efron has since worked behind the scenes on A Star Is Born, The Mandalorian, and more.
But his real passion is travel, and sharing that love for adventure with the world. He worked on the travel show Down to Earth with Zac from 2020-2022, and he’s built a YouTube audience that flocks to vlogs that show Efron exploring Guyana, trying out nerve-wracking highline walks between cliffs, even touring his hometown.
He seeks out what he loves, whether it’s spending time with his little half-siblings Henry and Olivia, swimming with manatees, or taking down Traitors. He grew up watching adventure-seeker Mike Rowe on Dirty Jobs, which he considers a dream job — learning new things, taking risks, meeting people with different perspectives and histories, and bringing audiences to learn right alongside him. He's currently finishing up two “little travel documentaries” for YouTube from his time in Guyana and Mexico.
Efron reflects on his time on The Traitors, and the question of whether he went in hoping it would increase his public platform. “It is cool to see people who aren't on social media get to see who I am and what I'm about and stuff,” he says. “[But] that's all kind of secondary benefits. The honest answer is I didn't do it for that, it's more just… I've always put experiences and just life [first]. Making memories and travel, that's always been more important to me than money or fame or any of that.”
Oh, and he’d like to clear up an old interview in which he admitted he doesn’t wear deodorant. That was during a time when he was swimming a lot. “I think the chlorine just killed everything,” he guesses, smiling. The swimming stopped, and the body odor started. “I do wear it now. I think I formed bad habits by not using it until I was 25, so I do forget every once in a while. I've got five sticks in my van right now.”
