Million Dollar Secret Season 2 Finalists on Best and Worst Clues, Endgame Behind the Scenes

[Warning: The following contains spoilers for the Season 2 finale of Million Dollar Secret. Read at your own risk!]

Million Dollar Secret has crowned a new winner. At the end of the Netflix reality competition series' second season, 27-year-old Nick Pellecchia from New Jersey took home the coveted prize. He was a finalist along with Kaleb Moon, Lauren Gierth, and Kat Ellis — with Kaleb possessing the million dollars heading into the show's final test. But through a mix of people-reading and luck, Nick exchanged his own empty box for Kaleb's, which contained the jackpot, in a blind swap. 

For the uninitiated: Million Dollar Secret, hosted by Peter Serafinowicz, invites 14 contestants to an estate where the goal is to identify and eliminate a hidden millionaire among them. In every round, one guest is randomly selected to have the money placed in their possession. The millionaire then receives an "agenda," where fulfilling it grants them an advantage in the game and failing to fulfill it puts them at greater risk for elimination. To help the rest of the estate guests find the millionaire, "clues" are regularly given to them to solve the mystery. 

Ahead of Million Dollar Secret's Season 2 finale, the finalists spoke to us about the last task, their assessment of the clues and agendas across the season, and, of course, which phrase they would have personally picked from the first millionaire, Altie Holcomb's, selection.

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I want to ask about the final part of the game where you decide whether to move your box. After stepping into the room with Peter, did you know what you would do?
Kaleb Moon: I'm first up, I get to choose whether I'm gonna keep the money, move the money. And so immediately I just think, if I were in Nick's spot, what would be my obvious? What do I think Kaleb would do? And that to me was, move the money. And I thought, I'm going to keep it, because I would assume, Season 1, I believe the money was moved. So I kept and as it turns out, my obvious and Nick's obvious were two different obviouses.

Nick Pellecchia: I was extremely confident Kaleb had the money going into it. We were on different pages about what was the obvious thing to do in his position. I just know that if I was in his position, it would be really hard for me to give up the money. So that was my plan going into it, to take his chest.

Lauren, at that point did you think Kaleb or Nick had the money?
Lauren Gierth: I was pretty confident coming out of the Final Four challenge that [Kaleb] had it, but it's a confusing thing. You can never be 100% confident — the whole time you're questioning yourself. I didn't get a chance to move it, so my only strategy was, how do I cause enough chaos to keep myself in the game? And so my only play was to stop talking, because I felt like I talked the whole time. So if I stop talking, maybe they'll get confused.

Kaleb: And it was actually very brilliant, because had I switched the money and Nick felt a certain way about the way you were acting, you could have very easily walked away with the million dollars.

Lauren: No, Nick read me like a textbook.

When I was watching the season, it was fascinating to think about how much a clue should reveal. For example, Nick I don't think you were on anyone's radar in your first reign as millionaire until the clue about the birth year. Of the clues throughout the season, was there one you thought revealed just the right amount without being overly incriminating? 
Kat Ellis: I think the 1999 one was great when you consider how many people were left in the game at that point. I think it's always good when it is a bigger group, because you don't want it to really narrow down to you if you're the millionaire. But if you're someone like me, who wasn't the millionaire, I was like, I hate this clue, who came up with this clue? It's good when the clue is a little more broad the first round of the millionaire having the money, and then narrows it down a little bit the second round.

Nick: That was hard. I think we went from 10 players [who could be the millionaire] immediately to four. I thought about lying about my age on that spot and just saying [I was born in] '98.

Lauren: Why didn't you do that?

Nick: I was nervous someone was going to call me out on it, and that would have been even worse. I think I had already told people my age — I told people the year I graduated college. I'm honestly glad I didn't lie, I was so close to doing so, I think it would have ended up badly. But that one was hard.

Kaleb: For me, it was the "millionaire is as straight as an arrow." At that point, I believe I was the millionaire, and I'm sitting there thinking, holy cow, I can survive this. I think there were six potential options that it could have been, and I'm just gonna slow down that Southern drawl a little bit and look around aimlessly like, I don't know where I'm at. So I was a fan of that one. 

Kat: The worst clue was the last one [about the millionaire having owned a clothing store and loves fashion]. Because I literally was like, it's anybody but Kaleb. 

What was your reaction, Kat, when you found out it was him who owned the clothing store?
Kat: Floored. I was like, I'm sure somewhere in a smart book it says never trust a cowboy, and I should read more.

Now that filming has wrapped, do you have second thoughts about lying about that specific clue?
Kat: Of course, I think somewhere along the lines was my million-dollar mistake. With six people left, I didn't think it was good to still be looked at as a suspect for the millionaire. And off-camera 24/7 all I was talking about was fashion, so I really thought the clue was going to point to me. But maybe in hindsight, I should have just told them the real clue. And maybe everyone would have kept me around if I was the millionaire, because they would have thought it was easier to get the money from my box to theirs at the end.

Similarly, the agendas also seem to range in their level of difficulty. Of the agendas throughout the season, was there one you thought was just the right level of difficult without being overly obvious?
Nick: At least for me, I got two agendas. I think clothespins was a lot harder than I thought it was going to be. That was impossible. I was trying to have extremely serious conversations with people about not having the money, but all I was looking at was the back of their clothes and how I could pin this thing on them. But my agenda before that, calling people celebrities, I thought was a great level of difficulty. That was fun and doable.

And finally, Altie famously had to repeat a phrase 10 times for his agenda. Out of the 5 phrases that Peter listed — "Give me some skin," "see you later, alligator," "sorry, not sorry," "no cap," and "bye, Felicia," which would you have picked and how would you have used it? 
Nick: "Give me some skin," I probably would've picked. And just been dapping everybody up, high-fives — even though I use that later [to incriminate] Kat. That's the only one that would've sounded relatively normal coming out of me. 

Lauren: I'm a "see you later, alligator" kind of gal, I think that would have made sense coming from me.

Nick: You could've pulled that off. 

Kaleb: I'm with you. I'm "see you later, alligator." Works with our accent.

Kat: Mine would have been "no cap," but with no emote (makes hand gesture) with it. 

Million Dollar Secret Seasons 1 and 2 are available to stream on Netflix.