Interview with Marcellas Reynolds - Big Brother: All-Stars
On Thursday, September 7, a couple of hours before Janelle was evicted from the Big Brother house, I was able to conduct an interview for AfterElton.com with Marcellas Reynolds by phone from the sequester house. There were restrictions with which questions I could ask, but we never even had time to get to all the questions I had. It was a great session and I'm a bigger fan of him now than I was before, and you know I was cheering for him to win, and if not win, at least get to the final two with Nakomis.
The interview was long, frankly too long for AfterElton, so you can read what they wanted by clicking here. I got permission to post everything else here, so read them both and enjoy!
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Tabby Lavalamp: Hi, Marcellas, how are you?
Marcellas Reynolds: I'm fantastic! Beyond...
MR: Were you trying to get ahold of me last week?
TL: We did have an interview last week, but you know what happened last week. You had to move!
MR: [laughs] The hurricane! I was saying we can't leave until I do my interview!
TL: So how are you feeling? It's been a few weeks since your eviction.
MR: I'm good. I mean, I didn't have a good time on the show. For me it was, once I got kicked out of the house I was sort of happy to stay, happy to go, in a weird way. I just felt, good God, I'm glad I'm out of the house. Now this is done and it should be easy, breezy beautiful, now there shouldn't be any real beef because for me a lot of it was that it's just a game.
Intellectually coming in I knew people would get scumbagged, I knew it wasn't going to be a good game, I knew it wasn't going to be a nice game...
TL: But that's Big Brother though.
MR: That's Big Brother. Unfortunately for me the things that made me the most unhappy about the game weren't the lies and the cheating, it was the bad behaviour of the other House Guests.
TL: Oh, we're going to get to that in a bit...
MR: It was that kind of thing, so I'm out and I've been really good because I'm really accustomed to spending a lot of time alone from having been a model, and you travel so much and you live in hotels, and you don't really know anybody. Blah blah blah. So I'm good at managing my time alone and being really happy alone. I guess that's why I feel so good now, because it's good to be alone.
[At this point I asked Marcellas how alone he could be in the house, with more people arriving each week and them having had to move to a smaller house due to the hurricane. Because he's new to the whole sequester thing, not having had such a thing in his first season, he had to check with the production staff member what he could say concerning it. When he came back on, he asked me to ask which he prefers, season 3 or All-Stars.]
MR: I still don't believe that sequester is necessary [an argument he has made over two seasons of House Calls: The Big Brother Talk Show], I'll say that. After being in sequester, I don't think sequester is necessary. I think that if you're going to sequester the House Guests, you're need to completely keep them all separate. It has to be all or nothing, it can't be this middle ground where the contestants can still talk to each other.
TL: So a lot of the secrets do come out there then?
MR: You know what? I feel like I know more information now than I would have known if I was sitting at home watching it unfold. If I was watching it unfold, all I would have is the producer's storyline, the edited version of what they were trying to portray [Big Brother is available online to be watched via live feeds, but even those don't show everything due to which cameras are on whom, and are often blacked out for a number of reasons]. Every other person who comes through the door has a different take on a different thing, and had a different conversation that I may not have been privy to that otherwise I wouldn't necessarily know.
[Here we talk about “showmances”, most of which can be found in the AfterElton part of the interview, but this was left out...]
MR: Mike “Boogie” [Malin] and Will [Kirby], their strategy from season two, is the same strategy they're playing in All-Stars. Will's strategy in All-Stars was to lie to people's face. He said it in the Diary Room, he told people to their face in the show. He's done that this season. He's never really won anything and then he says that he' throwing competitions, and it's like okay, so how did your strategy change between seasons?
TL: One thing though that has changed and you know Will's there now, so it didn't work as well for him this year.
MR: It didn't work for him as well this season and I love that!
TL: It got him farther than anybody would have expected...
MR: And should have! You know, I feel that I was the town crier from day one, get rid of 'em!
TL: Everyone has made a big deal since season 3 [that Marcellas didn't use the Power of Veto on himself] and this year you didn't get a chance to redeem that by getting the Veto, but for four weeks Season Six ran the Head of Household room and every week you said “you have to get rid of Chill Town.”
MR: Can you tell me, and this is a rhetorical question so I don't expect an answer, why would you not, when somebody tells you they are coming after you, believe them? Don't go around them, don't try to weaken them, go right to them. It's like that competition I threw which I feel was my biggest mistake of the game, was handing Janelle [Pierzina] that competition and then she put up Erika [Landin] against Mike “Boogie” and then when Mike “Boogie” got out she didn't put Will up.
For me, if I had won that competition, if I hadn't pulled that punch because I was trying to go under the radar, if I had not given her that competition... And I was working under the assumption, because we had talked and she told me, that if she won HoH she was going to put up Will and Mike “Boogie”. We had an alliance, what I thought was really an alliance, and an agreement to go to the final two. Why would I not, at that point in the game, believe her when she says she's going to put up the two of them?
And she doesn't. She changes and puts up Erika. For me, right there is where I lost the game. If I had won that HoH, if I hadn't thrown it, if I hadn't pulled that punch... Remember, first question, I got it, the answer was “love”. Who do I send out? Mike “Boogie” Why do I send Mike “Boogie” out? Because Mike “Boogie” told people that he was coming after me and Janelle. If somebody is coming after you and they tell you to your face, believe it, and do it, get rid of them.
So now Mike “Boogie” is taken out of that HoH competition, that is irrevokable, he can not continue to play. Then Will is out and I throw the competition to Janelle, keeping the [Season Six alliance] in power, hoping that they step up to the plate and finally do what they should have done from week one but they refused to do.
We let people who didn't have the capacity to run the game, run the game and I always said that the longer Mike “Boogie” stays, the stronger he's going to get, and then he will then have the capacity to win, not win the game, but to at least win competitions.
TL: So there you go. If anyone ever brings up the Veto again, say that was one moment, not four weeks worth of mistakes. First Kaysar [Ridha] goes out, then Howie [Gordon] , then James [Rhine], and who outlasted them? You tried to tell them.
MR: And the thing that is the funniest about that is the overwhelming theme of this season for me is that people should have gone in trying to play different games than they did their season, but people played the exact same games they played their season and they made the exact same mistakes. As far as I know, Janelle asked Kaysar and Howie to play for Power of Veto for her the week that she was up. Kaysar turns it down and goes home. He did the same thing season six! It's like if you play for Veto and you win, you're immune. If Danielle [Reyes] and Erika and I are coming after the four, and Danielle is not going to put up Howie, James is already up, Janelle is already up, there is one person left from the four to go up. You have to protect yourself. Kaysar should have been out there playing for that Power of Veto like it was his life, and it was his life in that game... and he chose not to.
TL: I think Kaysar's biggest mistake was in his HoH, who did he go to, to make a deal? Did he go to the two people hanging after Alison [Irwin]'s vote out, Nakomis [Dedmon] and Diane [Henry]? He should have gone to them, made a deal with them, and gone after Chill Town. That would have made more sense.
MR: Absolutely! You know what? That's what happened with the four. By you not going after Will and Mike “Boogie”, and sort of throwing the rest of the house a bone, and by you going after two people who haven't even begun to play, you begin to make all the other people who haven't begun to play sort of look at you like, “Oh! You either have a deal with Mike 'Boogie' and Will or you're scared! And if you're scared, you're going to come after people who it doesn't matter if they go.”
And at that point there were still so many of us that it didn't matter if we win. “Chicken” George [Boswell] was that kind of player like “Well, I can put up 'Chicken' George and I'm not going to piss anybody off.” I was that kind of player where if you put me up, it would be like let's get rid of Marcellas because he has House Calls or he's successful outside of the show or because he's smart. You know what I mean? And I don't have like an obvious alliance in the house so it's not really going to piss anybody off.
So once he nominated those two players, it was like a wake up call for all of us. Oh, they're not going to do the right thing, they're going to stay in bed with Chill Town.
TL: You did have one alliance that you mentioned already with Janelle, that kind of seemed to go up and down to us. There were times you were sticking with it, there were times you were done with her. Do you think you have, if given the chance, booted her out or would you have stuck with that alliance to the end?
MR: Here's how I feel about it. The same reason I had to unload Jase [Wirey], because you know I had a deal with Jase to go to the final three, was because I couldn't trust Jase. Well, it became apparent that I couldn't trust Janelle, and so it fell like I had to unload her at certain points. But unfortunately, I couldn't unload Janelle because I never really had the numbers or never really did anything directly that I could have unloaded Janelle, so I needed other people to unload Janelle for me.
It was the same way when James put up Jase, it was perfect, James is unloading Jase for me. Now I needed to find somebody else to unload Janelle. But I still had to hedge my bets with Janelle and go, listen, if you get nominated I'm not going to vote against you. Yeah, I'll play for the Golden Veto for you and I'll use if on you if I win it, to allow her to think our deal was still in place.
Janelle definitely wanted to unload me at certain points. The girl was overextended, and that's part of having a deal in this game. The deals only work as long as they work. There was a moment of desperation that I had when Janelle won that, at this point I think it's her third HoH, and I realized, and this was after Kaysar had left, that I realized we're not going to stay in power, she's not going to go, I have to go upstairs and I have to plead for my life. And how do I plead for my life in the game? I have to make her believe that I think the deal was still in place and what I did to Kaysar, or what I hoped to do to Kaysar, was necessary. Because remember, as far back as week one Janelle and I had a deal to go to the final two, and I said to her, “You can't get pissed off at me if I get rid of Howie and Kaysar. They have to go.”
[In the AfterElton part of the interview, I asked about if he'd do anything different and he talked about being able to beat Janelle at the end. Here's where he explains where is thinking is and frankly, I agree.]
MR: With her nominating Diane and Erika and kicking Diane out, with that botched HoH competition [technical difficulties in the competition forced it to be replayed, and the first time around Janelle lost not because of the technical problem but because she got an answer legitimately wrong, as did Dr. Will, and both of them played again the second time around and Janelle won] and the ill will that created and this feeling of bias everybody in the house had towards the four...
I'd have conversations in the Red Room with Erika, George, and Danielle, and we would all say the same thing, “I will never vote for her at the end.” And the moment that sentiment started to sweep through the house, that was like, I'm keeping her in! Because if I took her to the end, I could beat her! Winning Big Brother isn't about getting to the end with someone that could beat you. That's why when people say that Danielle was this ultimate player, the biggest flaw in her game was the most obvious flaw in anyone's game, you don't go to the end with somebody that could win, you go to the end with somebody that could lose. The worse Janelle began to play, the better it was for me. So when I tried to pick that deal back up, I meant it. I was like, that's cool. Make as many mistakes and be as sloppy as you want, because it just makes me look better if I'm sitting next to you at the end.
TL: You mentioned Danielle. How does it feel to get past what you had from season three, get past those issues? [Marcellas had an alliance with her, it was his first season, and felt very betrayed when she turned on him.]
MR: You know what what I said to Julie [Chen, host of Big Brother] was probably the truest statement that I said the entire season. I am free. I have had this love/hate relationship with Danielle for four years. You know, part of the reason I had that relationship was because I really like Danielle as a person. Danielle and I, because we are both black and because of the way we were raised, have a shared reality that I have had with very few people. So every interaction that I have with Danielle, I felt was a real interaction. When I looked at Danielle, I saw my mother, I saw my sister, I saw my girls from growing up, and you know they were my familiars, so when I found out through her actions that she didn't feel the same way I felt, I was devastated. It caused me not to trust other people.
That was the biggest thing for me, was having gone through my entire adult life, I've traveled and lived on my own, and basically been working and living on my own since I was 16-years-old, and thinking that I was street smart and smart enough to see people, to now have this tangible reason to not be able to trust people. Danielle stole my trust, season three, and that's something that took me a really long time to get back.
But to go into the house this season and actually feel the same way about her and actually sort of trust her was freeing.
You know what? Let me flip it. Danielle was to me, my week that I was evicted, Danielle was the lynch pin of me staying. She's in the Legion of Doom, which is this thing with Will and Mike “Boogie”, and Howie and James. She has a lot of power, Danielle the power again to keep me in the game. And what does she do? She takes me out of the game. Danielle told me so many times that she was going to vote to keep me. Janelle is under the assumption that her two people, Howie and James, are going to vote for me to stay, I'm under the assumption that they're going to follow suit with what Janelle tells them to do... James has told me that he's voting for me to stay, but he's telling Erika that he's voting for her because he doesn't want her to be upset. I've had James' back up to that point in the show... I've kinda had no reason to believe that that wasn't going to happen.
But then I know the power that Mike “Boogie” and Will have, that Chill Town has over people to change their minds through lies, manipulation, and deception and through charm. These are two very charming men. So I know that I am in danger. I'm smart enough to know that I'm really, really, really in danger. It's like I told Janelle when she first came to me in the Ant Room, when she first said, “I'm going to have to put you up,” I said, no, do not do it. If you put me up, I will go. And then I looked her in the face and I said I would never do that to you. I had no qualms with voting against Janelle, but I would have never put her up.
Even that week it all came down to people believing whether I was going to put Janelle up or not, and me saying, yes, I will put her up. I wasn't going to put her up, I wanted to keep her in the game because I could beat her at the end but I had to say I'm going to put you up because Mike “Boogie” and Will wanted to know that I would put her up and not come after them. Danielle and Erika wanted to believe that I would put her up and not go after them. James was trying to unload Janelle and wanted to believe that if I won HoH I would put her up. You know, I think that at the end of the day I think they knew I wasn't going to put her up so it was like he's gotta go.
And I wouldn't have put her up, I would have gone after Chill Town, I was focused from day one on getting rid of them. Yeah, I could have gone to Mike “Boogie” and Will and try to cut a deal with them, and there were times that I did – and let me be honest, on the outside I'm friends with them, they are my peers... They are two liars, and a liar is going to lie, there was no way I felt that I could ever enter into a deal with them because I knew that if the deal went south, they would throw me under the bus, or the train, or the car, put your automobile in the blank, before they threw each other in.
Now if one of them had gone, I would have tried to scoop up the other one, definitely. But the problem with having a deal with them is that they will always put themselves first. You can't be in a deal with them, you can't be the third person in the alliance.
[Read the AfterElton interview if you want to see what Marcellas has to say about Howie and some of the other men in the house, but what's left out is where he says Jase is his friend, and his choices as potential replacements for him on House Calls would be Jase or James.]
TL: On your House Calls when you appeared this season you were such a natural. You fit in so well! You took over. It was your show again and you were interviewing Jase... It was great!
MR: You know one of the producers of Big Brother said it was literally like you and Gretchen again and Jase was being interviewed, and you know that makes me feel awesome, that makes me feel amazing, and I'm just happy about that because of course I was worried that whoever got House Calls after me would do it better! [Laughs] Or that Gretchen would have chemistry with somebody else and I would be replaced or whatever, but from everything I've heard that didn't happen. [Laughs] I'm happy!
TL: As a Big Brother fan, what do you think was done right this season and what do you think was done wrong?
MR: God, I'm still so mired in the whole thing and for me I'm just incredibly disappointed with how the game played out. I think putting Mike “Boogie” in the house was amazing. I think that he emerged as something I didn't see season two and I did not think he would become All-Stars. He really actually proved that he is an All-Star.
I think that there is no way in the world that [executive producers Arnold] Shapiro/[Allison] Grodner should have allowed four people from an alliance as popular and as current as the Sovereign Six to go into the house together. I think that was just an unfair advantage for them, it was a hurdle for the rest of us to have to... it wasn't even a hurdle, that was just a mountain we could not climb. They could have shortlisted the four better than they... there didn't have to be five people from season six that could go into the house. You could have picked three people from season six and that was it and then picked other people from other seasons in the pool. Or you could have mixed it up again. It didn't have to be four people that were in an alliance. It could have been two people from the Nerd Herd [the Friendship alliance in season six] and three people from the Sovereign Six, you know, it could have been that way. It didn't have to be four people that we knew were together.
TL: Who would you have liked to have seen from season six other than who was in the house?
MR: You know, I'm going to say something and this is very important. Having been the host of House Calls and now having lived with four of the six, I feel that I owe some people from season six apologies. The one person I feel I owe an apology more than anyone is April [Lewis]. April had some bad moments in the house, you know when she was doing “fuck America” and all that bad talking she did, she deserved what she got. You know I was not a fan of the Nerd Herd, or as I called them, the Fiendsheep. But for April to come back into the house and to be in that competition, I thought showed an amazing amount of courage after having been berated so badly by Howie and after having not been received well by the public. She could have very easily been like, “Absolutely not!” But instead she came in... Like she says Mike “Boogie” calls her “Busto”! Mike “Boogie” is someone that she's never even met before and calls her “Busto” because of Howie and she turns to him and says “Mike 'Boogie', I can't believe you'd say something mean to me. You don't even know me.” I have to give her props for that because one of the best episodes of House Calls was when Gretchen [Massey] and I did the “Busto” thing and I was “Barely 40” and I could barely speak from laughing and I fell out of the chair and we were naming the porn magazines that we thought she should be in... I feel that I had crossed the line there. I crossed into that whole, like, I'm going to bash her too mentality. And after she came back and showed so much class this season by coming back and by being nice, you know now I feel like, you know what, maybe now I understand better why you were so the way you were for a season.
TL: Not just April, but “Cappy” Eric [Littman]... He made an appearance and you know what? I actually liked what I saw of him.
MR: Absolutely. If you didn't have a good time, the last thing you want to do is revisit it. If you weren't well-liked by the public, it's certainly the last thing you want to do is revisit it. For those people to come back and to want to be a part of it... As far as I know, or just from having dealt with people in this business, I don't think they got paid to come back. Yeah, it's a free trip, but I'm sure they didn't line their pockets. It wasn't like it's a special guest appearance, here's fifteen hundred bucks... These people came back because they wanted to. They took time out of their lives and came back for whatever reasons. Show them some respect.
TL: I know exactly what you're saying about April, because last season I was like that too. I was into the whole “Maggot” and all that, but I didn't like where that was taking me. But Ivette [Corredero, the first out lesbian to ever compete on Big Brother] , after last season ended she didn't hide. She came out there and she said, “Bring it on!” She turned me into a fan.
MR: And you know what? She took her lumps. She took her lumps but she stood there and she took it like a woman.
TL: Before the show started when they were casting who would be going in the house, you didn't think anyone from season one should be going in [as it was a much different show then, and the audience voted the House Guests out]. “Chicken” George was put in as a producer's choice to be representing the season. What do you think of him now?
MR: I'll say this about “Chicken” George... Talk about somebody getting through the game without knowing what the hell was going on. But it was perfect because in this season where all of the major players, all the people who should know better overplayed the game. This is somebody who underplayed the game and got amazingly far, and bravo for him. There are very few people that I will probably ever talk to again when this is over, but “Chicken” George is cool with me. You can't say that man did anything mean or didn't try. He was kind, and he was nice! And there's a lot to be said for somebody who has those qualities. Now I appreciate that so much more than these big personalities... He was a kind man, and to be able to say that about somebody is amazing.
TL: And one HoH and one PoV!
MR: Exactly! He stepped up to the plate when he had to! He won that Power of Veto! Everybody in the house was against him, he stepped up to the plate and did what he had to do. And he won an HoH, how stunning was that? He wins the HoH the night that I leave. You know what? He won one Power of Veto and one HoH more than I did!
TL: He was doing great, and he did so much of it on slop [a bland, watery oatmeal-like food to replace the Big Brother staple of peanut butter and jelly this season].
[Here we talk about slop for a bit.]
MR: I'll tell you something else about sequester that you might not know... I actually got sick in Mexico. I got very sick in Mexico. Right now I'm on two antibiotics, I'm on an anti-inflammatory, I'm on an antihistamine. I think that I actually got sick in the house and carried that with me to Mexico.
[Read AfterElton for what's missing here.] I thought this game is rough enough with us killing each other and lying to each other and being mean to each other, the last thing we need is Big Brother making it that much more difficult for us. So for me it was like, not eating that slop that was so unappealing and was giving people stomach problems – everybody was farting and everybody was going to the bathroom – not eating slop was me taking a stand and going you know what? I'm sure that when you thought it up it was a great idea and it was funny, let's put them on slop, but you know what? It wasn't a good idea. Change it. Give us the option of eating slop and peanut butter and jelly.
So it wasn't me being a diva, it was me taking a stand. This game is hard enough and being away from my life is hard enough, and you think that this is funny and you think that this is okay? Well, it's not. If it means that I have to fall down and faint before you decide that this wasn't a good idea, then I'll do that.
[More slop talk in the other part of the interview...]
TL: It was that awful, huh?
MR: I never really had it in any incarnation that I could actually stomach. Actually, Will made it one time and he made it like a cookie, but he loaded it with brown sugar and with syrup then he baked it, you know he did so much to it that that was the one time I could eat it, and then he could never get the recipe right again. But nobody could come up with a way to eat it that was edible!
[And the rest can be found at http://www.afterelton.com]
The interview was long, frankly too long for AfterElton, so you can read what they wanted by clicking here. I got permission to post everything else here, so read them both and enjoy!
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Tabby Lavalamp: Hi, Marcellas, how are you?
Marcellas Reynolds: I'm fantastic! Beyond...
MR: Were you trying to get ahold of me last week?
TL: We did have an interview last week, but you know what happened last week. You had to move!
MR: [laughs] The hurricane! I was saying we can't leave until I do my interview!
TL: So how are you feeling? It's been a few weeks since your eviction.
MR: I'm good. I mean, I didn't have a good time on the show. For me it was, once I got kicked out of the house I was sort of happy to stay, happy to go, in a weird way. I just felt, good God, I'm glad I'm out of the house. Now this is done and it should be easy, breezy beautiful, now there shouldn't be any real beef because for me a lot of it was that it's just a game.
Intellectually coming in I knew people would get scumbagged, I knew it wasn't going to be a good game, I knew it wasn't going to be a nice game...
TL: But that's Big Brother though.
MR: That's Big Brother. Unfortunately for me the things that made me the most unhappy about the game weren't the lies and the cheating, it was the bad behaviour of the other House Guests.
TL: Oh, we're going to get to that in a bit...
MR: It was that kind of thing, so I'm out and I've been really good because I'm really accustomed to spending a lot of time alone from having been a model, and you travel so much and you live in hotels, and you don't really know anybody. Blah blah blah. So I'm good at managing my time alone and being really happy alone. I guess that's why I feel so good now, because it's good to be alone.
[At this point I asked Marcellas how alone he could be in the house, with more people arriving each week and them having had to move to a smaller house due to the hurricane. Because he's new to the whole sequester thing, not having had such a thing in his first season, he had to check with the production staff member what he could say concerning it. When he came back on, he asked me to ask which he prefers, season 3 or All-Stars.]
MR: I still don't believe that sequester is necessary [an argument he has made over two seasons of House Calls: The Big Brother Talk Show], I'll say that. After being in sequester, I don't think sequester is necessary. I think that if you're going to sequester the House Guests, you're need to completely keep them all separate. It has to be all or nothing, it can't be this middle ground where the contestants can still talk to each other.
TL: So a lot of the secrets do come out there then?
MR: You know what? I feel like I know more information now than I would have known if I was sitting at home watching it unfold. If I was watching it unfold, all I would have is the producer's storyline, the edited version of what they were trying to portray [Big Brother is available online to be watched via live feeds, but even those don't show everything due to which cameras are on whom, and are often blacked out for a number of reasons]. Every other person who comes through the door has a different take on a different thing, and had a different conversation that I may not have been privy to that otherwise I wouldn't necessarily know.
[Here we talk about “showmances”, most of which can be found in the AfterElton part of the interview, but this was left out...]
MR: Mike “Boogie” [Malin] and Will [Kirby], their strategy from season two, is the same strategy they're playing in All-Stars. Will's strategy in All-Stars was to lie to people's face. He said it in the Diary Room, he told people to their face in the show. He's done that this season. He's never really won anything and then he says that he' throwing competitions, and it's like okay, so how did your strategy change between seasons?
TL: One thing though that has changed and you know Will's there now, so it didn't work as well for him this year.
MR: It didn't work for him as well this season and I love that!
TL: It got him farther than anybody would have expected...
MR: And should have! You know, I feel that I was the town crier from day one, get rid of 'em!
TL: Everyone has made a big deal since season 3 [that Marcellas didn't use the Power of Veto on himself] and this year you didn't get a chance to redeem that by getting the Veto, but for four weeks Season Six ran the Head of Household room and every week you said “you have to get rid of Chill Town.”
MR: Can you tell me, and this is a rhetorical question so I don't expect an answer, why would you not, when somebody tells you they are coming after you, believe them? Don't go around them, don't try to weaken them, go right to them. It's like that competition I threw which I feel was my biggest mistake of the game, was handing Janelle [Pierzina] that competition and then she put up Erika [Landin] against Mike “Boogie” and then when Mike “Boogie” got out she didn't put Will up.
For me, if I had won that competition, if I hadn't pulled that punch because I was trying to go under the radar, if I had not given her that competition... And I was working under the assumption, because we had talked and she told me, that if she won HoH she was going to put up Will and Mike “Boogie”. We had an alliance, what I thought was really an alliance, and an agreement to go to the final two. Why would I not, at that point in the game, believe her when she says she's going to put up the two of them?
And she doesn't. She changes and puts up Erika. For me, right there is where I lost the game. If I had won that HoH, if I hadn't thrown it, if I hadn't pulled that punch... Remember, first question, I got it, the answer was “love”. Who do I send out? Mike “Boogie” Why do I send Mike “Boogie” out? Because Mike “Boogie” told people that he was coming after me and Janelle. If somebody is coming after you and they tell you to your face, believe it, and do it, get rid of them.
So now Mike “Boogie” is taken out of that HoH competition, that is irrevokable, he can not continue to play. Then Will is out and I throw the competition to Janelle, keeping the [Season Six alliance] in power, hoping that they step up to the plate and finally do what they should have done from week one but they refused to do.
We let people who didn't have the capacity to run the game, run the game and I always said that the longer Mike “Boogie” stays, the stronger he's going to get, and then he will then have the capacity to win, not win the game, but to at least win competitions.
TL: So there you go. If anyone ever brings up the Veto again, say that was one moment, not four weeks worth of mistakes. First Kaysar [Ridha] goes out, then Howie [Gordon] , then James [Rhine], and who outlasted them? You tried to tell them.
MR: And the thing that is the funniest about that is the overwhelming theme of this season for me is that people should have gone in trying to play different games than they did their season, but people played the exact same games they played their season and they made the exact same mistakes. As far as I know, Janelle asked Kaysar and Howie to play for Power of Veto for her the week that she was up. Kaysar turns it down and goes home. He did the same thing season six! It's like if you play for Veto and you win, you're immune. If Danielle [Reyes] and Erika and I are coming after the four, and Danielle is not going to put up Howie, James is already up, Janelle is already up, there is one person left from the four to go up. You have to protect yourself. Kaysar should have been out there playing for that Power of Veto like it was his life, and it was his life in that game... and he chose not to.
TL: I think Kaysar's biggest mistake was in his HoH, who did he go to, to make a deal? Did he go to the two people hanging after Alison [Irwin]'s vote out, Nakomis [Dedmon] and Diane [Henry]? He should have gone to them, made a deal with them, and gone after Chill Town. That would have made more sense.
MR: Absolutely! You know what? That's what happened with the four. By you not going after Will and Mike “Boogie”, and sort of throwing the rest of the house a bone, and by you going after two people who haven't even begun to play, you begin to make all the other people who haven't begun to play sort of look at you like, “Oh! You either have a deal with Mike 'Boogie' and Will or you're scared! And if you're scared, you're going to come after people who it doesn't matter if they go.”
And at that point there were still so many of us that it didn't matter if we win. “Chicken” George [Boswell] was that kind of player like “Well, I can put up 'Chicken' George and I'm not going to piss anybody off.” I was that kind of player where if you put me up, it would be like let's get rid of Marcellas because he has House Calls or he's successful outside of the show or because he's smart. You know what I mean? And I don't have like an obvious alliance in the house so it's not really going to piss anybody off.
So once he nominated those two players, it was like a wake up call for all of us. Oh, they're not going to do the right thing, they're going to stay in bed with Chill Town.
TL: You did have one alliance that you mentioned already with Janelle, that kind of seemed to go up and down to us. There were times you were sticking with it, there were times you were done with her. Do you think you have, if given the chance, booted her out or would you have stuck with that alliance to the end?
MR: Here's how I feel about it. The same reason I had to unload Jase [Wirey], because you know I had a deal with Jase to go to the final three, was because I couldn't trust Jase. Well, it became apparent that I couldn't trust Janelle, and so it fell like I had to unload her at certain points. But unfortunately, I couldn't unload Janelle because I never really had the numbers or never really did anything directly that I could have unloaded Janelle, so I needed other people to unload Janelle for me.
It was the same way when James put up Jase, it was perfect, James is unloading Jase for me. Now I needed to find somebody else to unload Janelle. But I still had to hedge my bets with Janelle and go, listen, if you get nominated I'm not going to vote against you. Yeah, I'll play for the Golden Veto for you and I'll use if on you if I win it, to allow her to think our deal was still in place.
Janelle definitely wanted to unload me at certain points. The girl was overextended, and that's part of having a deal in this game. The deals only work as long as they work. There was a moment of desperation that I had when Janelle won that, at this point I think it's her third HoH, and I realized, and this was after Kaysar had left, that I realized we're not going to stay in power, she's not going to go, I have to go upstairs and I have to plead for my life. And how do I plead for my life in the game? I have to make her believe that I think the deal was still in place and what I did to Kaysar, or what I hoped to do to Kaysar, was necessary. Because remember, as far back as week one Janelle and I had a deal to go to the final two, and I said to her, “You can't get pissed off at me if I get rid of Howie and Kaysar. They have to go.”
[In the AfterElton part of the interview, I asked about if he'd do anything different and he talked about being able to beat Janelle at the end. Here's where he explains where is thinking is and frankly, I agree.]
MR: With her nominating Diane and Erika and kicking Diane out, with that botched HoH competition [technical difficulties in the competition forced it to be replayed, and the first time around Janelle lost not because of the technical problem but because she got an answer legitimately wrong, as did Dr. Will, and both of them played again the second time around and Janelle won] and the ill will that created and this feeling of bias everybody in the house had towards the four...
I'd have conversations in the Red Room with Erika, George, and Danielle, and we would all say the same thing, “I will never vote for her at the end.” And the moment that sentiment started to sweep through the house, that was like, I'm keeping her in! Because if I took her to the end, I could beat her! Winning Big Brother isn't about getting to the end with someone that could beat you. That's why when people say that Danielle was this ultimate player, the biggest flaw in her game was the most obvious flaw in anyone's game, you don't go to the end with somebody that could win, you go to the end with somebody that could lose. The worse Janelle began to play, the better it was for me. So when I tried to pick that deal back up, I meant it. I was like, that's cool. Make as many mistakes and be as sloppy as you want, because it just makes me look better if I'm sitting next to you at the end.
TL: You mentioned Danielle. How does it feel to get past what you had from season three, get past those issues? [Marcellas had an alliance with her, it was his first season, and felt very betrayed when she turned on him.]
MR: You know what what I said to Julie [Chen, host of Big Brother] was probably the truest statement that I said the entire season. I am free. I have had this love/hate relationship with Danielle for four years. You know, part of the reason I had that relationship was because I really like Danielle as a person. Danielle and I, because we are both black and because of the way we were raised, have a shared reality that I have had with very few people. So every interaction that I have with Danielle, I felt was a real interaction. When I looked at Danielle, I saw my mother, I saw my sister, I saw my girls from growing up, and you know they were my familiars, so when I found out through her actions that she didn't feel the same way I felt, I was devastated. It caused me not to trust other people.
That was the biggest thing for me, was having gone through my entire adult life, I've traveled and lived on my own, and basically been working and living on my own since I was 16-years-old, and thinking that I was street smart and smart enough to see people, to now have this tangible reason to not be able to trust people. Danielle stole my trust, season three, and that's something that took me a really long time to get back.
But to go into the house this season and actually feel the same way about her and actually sort of trust her was freeing.
You know what? Let me flip it. Danielle was to me, my week that I was evicted, Danielle was the lynch pin of me staying. She's in the Legion of Doom, which is this thing with Will and Mike “Boogie”, and Howie and James. She has a lot of power, Danielle the power again to keep me in the game. And what does she do? She takes me out of the game. Danielle told me so many times that she was going to vote to keep me. Janelle is under the assumption that her two people, Howie and James, are going to vote for me to stay, I'm under the assumption that they're going to follow suit with what Janelle tells them to do... James has told me that he's voting for me to stay, but he's telling Erika that he's voting for her because he doesn't want her to be upset. I've had James' back up to that point in the show... I've kinda had no reason to believe that that wasn't going to happen.
But then I know the power that Mike “Boogie” and Will have, that Chill Town has over people to change their minds through lies, manipulation, and deception and through charm. These are two very charming men. So I know that I am in danger. I'm smart enough to know that I'm really, really, really in danger. It's like I told Janelle when she first came to me in the Ant Room, when she first said, “I'm going to have to put you up,” I said, no, do not do it. If you put me up, I will go. And then I looked her in the face and I said I would never do that to you. I had no qualms with voting against Janelle, but I would have never put her up.
Even that week it all came down to people believing whether I was going to put Janelle up or not, and me saying, yes, I will put her up. I wasn't going to put her up, I wanted to keep her in the game because I could beat her at the end but I had to say I'm going to put you up because Mike “Boogie” and Will wanted to know that I would put her up and not come after them. Danielle and Erika wanted to believe that I would put her up and not go after them. James was trying to unload Janelle and wanted to believe that if I won HoH I would put her up. You know, I think that at the end of the day I think they knew I wasn't going to put her up so it was like he's gotta go.
And I wouldn't have put her up, I would have gone after Chill Town, I was focused from day one on getting rid of them. Yeah, I could have gone to Mike “Boogie” and Will and try to cut a deal with them, and there were times that I did – and let me be honest, on the outside I'm friends with them, they are my peers... They are two liars, and a liar is going to lie, there was no way I felt that I could ever enter into a deal with them because I knew that if the deal went south, they would throw me under the bus, or the train, or the car, put your automobile in the blank, before they threw each other in.
Now if one of them had gone, I would have tried to scoop up the other one, definitely. But the problem with having a deal with them is that they will always put themselves first. You can't be in a deal with them, you can't be the third person in the alliance.
[Read the AfterElton interview if you want to see what Marcellas has to say about Howie and some of the other men in the house, but what's left out is where he says Jase is his friend, and his choices as potential replacements for him on House Calls would be Jase or James.]
TL: On your House Calls when you appeared this season you were such a natural. You fit in so well! You took over. It was your show again and you were interviewing Jase... It was great!
MR: You know one of the producers of Big Brother said it was literally like you and Gretchen again and Jase was being interviewed, and you know that makes me feel awesome, that makes me feel amazing, and I'm just happy about that because of course I was worried that whoever got House Calls after me would do it better! [Laughs] Or that Gretchen would have chemistry with somebody else and I would be replaced or whatever, but from everything I've heard that didn't happen. [Laughs] I'm happy!
TL: As a Big Brother fan, what do you think was done right this season and what do you think was done wrong?
MR: God, I'm still so mired in the whole thing and for me I'm just incredibly disappointed with how the game played out. I think putting Mike “Boogie” in the house was amazing. I think that he emerged as something I didn't see season two and I did not think he would become All-Stars. He really actually proved that he is an All-Star.
I think that there is no way in the world that [executive producers Arnold] Shapiro/[Allison] Grodner should have allowed four people from an alliance as popular and as current as the Sovereign Six to go into the house together. I think that was just an unfair advantage for them, it was a hurdle for the rest of us to have to... it wasn't even a hurdle, that was just a mountain we could not climb. They could have shortlisted the four better than they... there didn't have to be five people from season six that could go into the house. You could have picked three people from season six and that was it and then picked other people from other seasons in the pool. Or you could have mixed it up again. It didn't have to be four people that were in an alliance. It could have been two people from the Nerd Herd [the Friendship alliance in season six] and three people from the Sovereign Six, you know, it could have been that way. It didn't have to be four people that we knew were together.
TL: Who would you have liked to have seen from season six other than who was in the house?
MR: You know, I'm going to say something and this is very important. Having been the host of House Calls and now having lived with four of the six, I feel that I owe some people from season six apologies. The one person I feel I owe an apology more than anyone is April [Lewis]. April had some bad moments in the house, you know when she was doing “fuck America” and all that bad talking she did, she deserved what she got. You know I was not a fan of the Nerd Herd, or as I called them, the Fiendsheep. But for April to come back into the house and to be in that competition, I thought showed an amazing amount of courage after having been berated so badly by Howie and after having not been received well by the public. She could have very easily been like, “Absolutely not!” But instead she came in... Like she says Mike “Boogie” calls her “Busto”! Mike “Boogie” is someone that she's never even met before and calls her “Busto” because of Howie and she turns to him and says “Mike 'Boogie', I can't believe you'd say something mean to me. You don't even know me.” I have to give her props for that because one of the best episodes of House Calls was when Gretchen [Massey] and I did the “Busto” thing and I was “Barely 40” and I could barely speak from laughing and I fell out of the chair and we were naming the porn magazines that we thought she should be in... I feel that I had crossed the line there. I crossed into that whole, like, I'm going to bash her too mentality. And after she came back and showed so much class this season by coming back and by being nice, you know now I feel like, you know what, maybe now I understand better why you were so the way you were for a season.
TL: Not just April, but “Cappy” Eric [Littman]... He made an appearance and you know what? I actually liked what I saw of him.
MR: Absolutely. If you didn't have a good time, the last thing you want to do is revisit it. If you weren't well-liked by the public, it's certainly the last thing you want to do is revisit it. For those people to come back and to want to be a part of it... As far as I know, or just from having dealt with people in this business, I don't think they got paid to come back. Yeah, it's a free trip, but I'm sure they didn't line their pockets. It wasn't like it's a special guest appearance, here's fifteen hundred bucks... These people came back because they wanted to. They took time out of their lives and came back for whatever reasons. Show them some respect.
TL: I know exactly what you're saying about April, because last season I was like that too. I was into the whole “Maggot” and all that, but I didn't like where that was taking me. But Ivette [Corredero, the first out lesbian to ever compete on Big Brother] , after last season ended she didn't hide. She came out there and she said, “Bring it on!” She turned me into a fan.
MR: And you know what? She took her lumps. She took her lumps but she stood there and she took it like a woman.
TL: Before the show started when they were casting who would be going in the house, you didn't think anyone from season one should be going in [as it was a much different show then, and the audience voted the House Guests out]. “Chicken” George was put in as a producer's choice to be representing the season. What do you think of him now?
MR: I'll say this about “Chicken” George... Talk about somebody getting through the game without knowing what the hell was going on. But it was perfect because in this season where all of the major players, all the people who should know better overplayed the game. This is somebody who underplayed the game and got amazingly far, and bravo for him. There are very few people that I will probably ever talk to again when this is over, but “Chicken” George is cool with me. You can't say that man did anything mean or didn't try. He was kind, and he was nice! And there's a lot to be said for somebody who has those qualities. Now I appreciate that so much more than these big personalities... He was a kind man, and to be able to say that about somebody is amazing.
TL: And one HoH and one PoV!
MR: Exactly! He stepped up to the plate when he had to! He won that Power of Veto! Everybody in the house was against him, he stepped up to the plate and did what he had to do. And he won an HoH, how stunning was that? He wins the HoH the night that I leave. You know what? He won one Power of Veto and one HoH more than I did!
TL: He was doing great, and he did so much of it on slop [a bland, watery oatmeal-like food to replace the Big Brother staple of peanut butter and jelly this season].
[Here we talk about slop for a bit.]
MR: I'll tell you something else about sequester that you might not know... I actually got sick in Mexico. I got very sick in Mexico. Right now I'm on two antibiotics, I'm on an anti-inflammatory, I'm on an antihistamine. I think that I actually got sick in the house and carried that with me to Mexico.
[Read AfterElton for what's missing here.] I thought this game is rough enough with us killing each other and lying to each other and being mean to each other, the last thing we need is Big Brother making it that much more difficult for us. So for me it was like, not eating that slop that was so unappealing and was giving people stomach problems – everybody was farting and everybody was going to the bathroom – not eating slop was me taking a stand and going you know what? I'm sure that when you thought it up it was a great idea and it was funny, let's put them on slop, but you know what? It wasn't a good idea. Change it. Give us the option of eating slop and peanut butter and jelly.
So it wasn't me being a diva, it was me taking a stand. This game is hard enough and being away from my life is hard enough, and you think that this is funny and you think that this is okay? Well, it's not. If it means that I have to fall down and faint before you decide that this wasn't a good idea, then I'll do that.
[More slop talk in the other part of the interview...]
TL: It was that awful, huh?
MR: I never really had it in any incarnation that I could actually stomach. Actually, Will made it one time and he made it like a cookie, but he loaded it with brown sugar and with syrup then he baked it, you know he did so much to it that that was the one time I could eat it, and then he could never get the recipe right again. But nobody could come up with a way to eat it that was edible!
[And the rest can be found at http://www.afterelton.com]
posted by Tabby at 12:03 a.m.
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