Joe Vanella, a 44-year-old licensed funeral director from Wantagh, New York, is stepping into the national spotlight as part of the cast for The Traitors: New Blood, the first all-civilian U.S. spin-off of the hit reality competition series on Peacock.
Vanella comes from a storied multi-generational family line in the deathcare industry. His great-grandfather Vincent Vanella Sr. founded Vanella’s Funeral Chapel in 1918 on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. The family business eventually expanded to Long Island, opening a staple chapel location on Long Beach Road in Oceanside in 1965. Following an internal family dispute among shareholders, the historic Oceanside property was sold to a real estate developer in May 2017.
Reflecting on the closure of the long-standing family chapel, Vanella shared on social media at the time:
“As a funeral director who had the honor of serving the families of Oceanside for many years, I share in your sadness. It breaks my heart to see a building that was built by my family lose its purpose,” as reported by LIHerald.com. Despite the dissolution of the family’s venue, Vanella has maintained his active career as a sales manager for SCI.
In The Traitors: New Blood, contestants live together in a remote castle while navigating a psychological game of deceit and elimination. For industry peers following his journey, (and according to the pre-show promotionals) Vanella’s game strategy directly draws on his career in deathcare.
He credits his daily work guiding families through intense grief and stress with giving him a heightened ability to maintain composure under pressure and read subtle non-verbal cues. Combined with a sharp radar for dishonesty that he attributes to his Long Island roots, Vanella enters the game as the self-described “loudest person in the room.” Going into the castle, he expressed a preference for playing as a Traitor, aiming to use his outgoing social demeanor to cover his moves while directly controlling the game’s night eliminations.
You can check out the trailer here.
