This week in Big Brother history, Brent Champagne hoped to pull off the biggest blindside in history by winning the votes of the house and staying in the game. Unfortunately, for the East Coast flight attendant, he was out-schemed by Head of Household Xavier and sent packing for his flight home in Thursday night’s eviction.
Despite being told by Xavier and the house all week that he was only the pawn to send Britini home, Brent is explaining why he wasn’t really surprised to be the one sent home in his exclusive interview with AfterBuzz TV below:
AFTERBUZZ: I wanted to go back to the beginning of the HOH week; when Xavier first told you he was planning on using you as a pawn, he asked if you trusted him. You said you did. Why was that?
BRENT: Oh, I don’t believe I said I did. I might’ve said I trust him, but I’m pretty sure I closed down that narrative as soon as he mentioned it. I said, ‘Absolutely not. There’s nothing about me that reads pawn. You’re gonna destroy everything we just built as far as The Radicals are concerned.’ I think when he pulled me in, he goes, ‘Do you trust me? What do you think about playing in the veto?’ And I was like, ‘As the house guests choice, absolutely. Anything else? Absolutely not.’ So I made it very clear that legit nothing about me screams pawn. I’m not okay with it. I gave him an ultimatum actually. I said, ‘If you put me up, it’s most likely going to destroy everything we just built. If you don’t put me up, I’ll pretend this conversation never happened and I won’t tell my alliance or my team.’
AFTERBUZZ: When did you realize you were the real target?
BRENT: As soon as he opened his mouth. I went pretty ham in the Diary Room. And then he just solidified everything I was trying to tell everyone else by targeting me in the veto in the second round when Derek F was still in the line of fire. So if you put me up to help win a veto, and then you target me in the second round when I already eliminated the other person on the block and Derek F is still in there and can still take Britini off the block? I mean, I’m many things but an idiot isn’t one of them.
AFTERBUZZ: What do you think made you the house target aside from appearing to be a strong physical competitor?
BRENT: My charm and my personality and my outgoing wit was something that a lot of people were concerned about. And I can understand that; it is who I am. I am very flirtatious. I am very witty. I like to joke around and have fun. I think laughing is the best medicine. Those things can be perceived as a potential threat, especially when I guess everyone wants you to kind of just be miserable and stay quiet and in the shadows. And I would have done that a little bit more if I didn’t have a target on my back as soon as I entered the house. But I was in defense mode and I don’t think I could have shook the target off my back regardless of whatever I’ve done. Other people’s minds were made up very early on and it was more or less an opportunity, and they had that opportunity, took it and they executed it, and I would have done the same thing.
AFTERBUZZ: You spent quite a bit of time trying to convince people who were saying ‘No, you’re the pawn,’ that ‘Yes, I am the target.’ Why didn’t you use that time to campaign for yourself to stay in the house?
BRENT: Human beings are very, from my understanding, creatures of habit. So more or less, you can’t really change a lot of people’s ideals and beliefs, and a lot of us believe that we’re right all the time. And unfortunately, I was one of them and I did believe I was the target. I did believe I was right. So I’m practicing what I preach I guess, to some extent. But if I think I’m the target and I’m actually on the block, you think others would be like, ‘Okay, well, I guess he has a reason to believe that.’ I mean, I was just using Britini as a way to get the target off of my alliance and my team. Britini was not part of a lot of the things that we had brewing up and Frenchie threw her name in there several times as the leader of an all-girl alliance. I was just using it as a narrative. So, for anyone to really believe that that was actually true as far as Xavier being in the Slaughterhouse–I’m like, Xavier, I mean, we’re aligned in two different alliances. One’s crumbling, the other one just was struck, and you want me to think that you’re really afraid that Britini is the mastermind of something that we know is not going on because we already know the other girls in the house are not really reacting or doing anything to the news of Britini going up twice? I mean, it would have screamed like worry or panic or some type of tick that we were right, and it wasn’t there. So that, the veto, him attacking me, me obviously being somewhat of a competitor, even though I didn’t get to display it, it just all added up to me being a target so it was no surprise to me.
AFTERBUZZ: You said you didn’t want the veto used because you’d just be safe for the week and then you’d go home next week, and so you were using the eviction vote to collect data on the numbers you had and who you had on your side. But why not just convince Christian to use the veto and then gun for the HOH next week?
BRENT: So here’s the thing. Christian is very fond of Alyssa, and me and Alyssa are very close–no type of romantic connection between me and Alyssa, there’s attraction, but that’s it. So when I asked her about them using the veto–and I asked both of them just out of curiosity–they both shut it down very fast as I would expect because that is their team and their teammate is the HOH, so why go against them to save someone like myself. Now, if Alyssa is not on board with using that veto, then Christian, who is incredibly fond of Alyssa, would definitely follow whatever she says. And when I asked Christian, before I could even finish the sentence, I was like, ‘Dude, just yes or no, I’m not going to get upset. I don’t care either way. Just going to ask you, would you use the veto on me?’ And before I could even finish he goes, ‘No.’ And I was like, that’s all I need to know. It’s incredibly hard to change people’s minds and to go against the people that they’re supposed to be loyal to. You know, it’s going to be hard for me to tell you to not trust your mother, right? Like you’re incredibly close with your mother or whoever you’re close with, so it’s going to be very hard for me, a guy on the outside to be like, ‘Listen, pick me over your own kin.’ Right? It wasn’t going to happen, and I wasn’t going to get the target off my back, and I was just going to go home next week. So I wanted for the sake of my team, actually, ironically, I wanted my team to know where they laid with their alliances. So even though they voted me out, at least my intentions were actually pure for them to keep the numbers as something they could use to help progress, because I was just dead weight at that point. I knew what was going on.
AFTERBUZZ: Was there anyone in the house who really shocked you that they voted to evict you?
BRENT: That would only be Alyssa, just because we really were friends. But then again I’m not shocked because she needs to not put a target on her back, so why vote against her team and Xavier’s HOH and Christian’s relationship with her? She’s not going to put all that at jeopardy because of someone that she’s friends with and I completely understand it. And I hope that everything works out for her and Christian and Christian in general because he’s killing it right now. He’s winning every competition. He’s staying under the radar. People are still not looking at him as a threat and he took out someone that wasn’t even winning anything yet and I could have competed against him. But I guess I don’t know, I can’t explain that part. Kind of wild. So, I’m rooting for them.
AFTERBUZZ: So do you think that Christian is the biggest target in the house right now?
BRENT: Absolutely. He’s young, but he’s not dumb and he’s not that naive. I think that’s just a gimmick. I mean, the guy’s making octopus hot dogs in the house. It’s brilliant because it’s just like, who’s going to look at a guy that’s making octopus hotdogs and be like, ‘This guy’s a threat’? You know what I mean? And I know there’s so much more to him and he’s a great competitor and he has a great team. I mean, Xavier is winning things and Alyssa is great with a lot of people in the house, her rapport is great. They’re potentially going to be a showmance. He’s crushing it right now in absolutely all avenues of the game.
AFTERBUZZ: I know you said that you knew you were going home, but at a point you did think that it would work to blindside Xavier. Had you been 100 percent sure there was no way you were going to stay, would you have blown up anyone’s game while you were still in the house?
BRENT: Again, this is actually ironic because I did have my team’s best interests at heart and Alyssa’s because they were aligned with me. The only reason why I made Alyssa promise to vote for me was that if I did go home, which I thought I would, at least the vote would be four votes for me, so my team knew they could trust Alyssa. Obviously that vote could have been from anyone, but at least my team would have known they could trust Alyssa and Alyssa could have trusted my team. Everything I did was more or less to try to have my team go the distance. If I couldn’t do it, even though I conflicted with Hannah and Whitney a few times, at least the Aces could get far and one of them eventually would win it, and still that’s participation in that aspect.
But blowing up anyone’s game wouldn’t have been beneficial to me because The Radicals already betrayed me. Xavier just put me up on the block, the veto wasn’t used. It was like, alright, well now why would I want to blow up The Mafia? Because now The Mafia is not going to trust the Aces because they are aligned with someone else. So it was just a messy situation and I just would have made it so that my team would have been targeted regardless, and it would have been three against one. But now that I know that there’s The Cookout and The Royal Flush, my gut was right. It would’ve just been everyone versus my team because no one was really aligned with my team. Derek X is in a few of them and I believe so is Whitney and Hannah, but still, it would have just been easy pickings for them.
AFTERBUZZ: Who are you rooting for right now?
BRENT: I think Hannah’s going to win. I think Christian deserves to win. If he can do everything he’s doing and still stay not a threat, I think that’s just brilliant. I think Christian’s the biggest target. I would have put Xavier and Christian up if I won or had my team won and I would have made them decide as far as who was staying, who was going. Hannah’s most likely going to win, but I would like Christian to win.
To find out if Brent’s predictions come true, watch Big Brother Sundays, Wednesdays and Thursdays at 8 p.m. ET on CBS or tune into the live feeds on Paramount+.
