‘Big Brother’s Frenchie Explains His Controversial HOH

Big Brother is nearing the end of its 23rd season and in Thursday’s episode, controversial player Brandon “Frenchie” French was evicted from the house. After an extremely chaotic turn as Head of Household, French seemed like a shoo-in to be the next on the chopping block. French did an interview with Us Weekly to discuss his exit and the 34-year-old former farmer explained his strategy for competition or lack thereof.

One of French’s most discussed moves was nominating Kyland Young and Alyssa Lopez for eviction, despite promising not to target women and people of color. “When you’re HOH, normally in past seasons, you’ve got a big pool of people to choose from. And with everything that happened, the Wildcard Comp, my pond turned into a little water droplet. I knew that I trusted Kyland. I knew that if he won the veto, he would use it,” French explained. “My whole plan from the start was the backdoor. Travis is an absolute stud. If he was put up on a nomination block, he would have been motivated to win that veto. That would have been one. I had two options from the start to go home. That was Brent and Travis. Christian had already saved himself, so he was taken out of that picture. So I had two options. Both of them are huge guys. They’re studs. I knew they had to be backdoored.”

“And so, from that point, literally everybody left that was able to be nominated was either a woman or minority,” French admitted. “So I knew that they had to go up to place-hold, no matter what, so I could get my end goal, which was getting out a meathead from the start. I said that, and in my heart, in my head, I had to run through literally every scenario to accomplish that. And when you’re stuck with only so many potential nominees, I had to do what I had to do at that moment to reach my end goal. And it worked.”

French also revealed that watching Big Brother as a fan is a very different experience that seeing the inner workings of the house. “When you’re sitting on the couch watching the game as a fan, I would always be like, ‘Why did you do that?’ But you don’t see … watching the feeds, you’re able to click on different cameras and see different conversations, and kind of see where things are headed,” French explained. “When you’re in that game, you only see what’s in front of you. You don’t see the smirks that other people make to the cameras. You don’t see other conversations that are going on. Yes, those walls are thin in there and you can hear some things, but it’s a lot different than being on the couch or watching the feeds. It’s mind-blowing, the difference. I went in thinking that this game was going to be super easy and it’s not. It’s definitely something that tests your mindset.”

Big Brother airs new episodes three times a week on CBS: Wednesdays at 8 p.m. ET, Thursdays at 8 p.m. ET and Sundays at 8 p.m. ET. Fans can stream the episodes via Paramount+. Paramount+ — formerly known as CBS All Access — is also the home of the Big Brother live feeds, where fans can tune in and see what the Houseguests are doing 24/7. Paramount+ is currently offering a free trial, which you can learn more about here.

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