‘The Challenge’: ‘Big Brother’ Couple ‘Swaggy C’ Williams and Bayleigh Dayton Share Advice They’ve Received From Alumni (Exclusive)

Ever since The Challenge: Vendettas, alumni from Big Brother have been making the jump over to the MTV competition series. For the latest iteration of the series, The Challenge: Total Madness (premiering Wednesday), several players from Big Brother 20, including “Swaggy C” Williams and Bayleigh Dayton, will be making their debuts. Speaking with PopCulture.com recently, Williams and Dayton even shared some of the advice that they’ve received from fellow competitors who have made the transition from Big Brother houseguests to dominant Challenge competitors.

Williams noted that he received advice from both Paulie Calafiore, who originally appeared on Big Brother 18 and went on to compete on Final Reckoning, War of the Worlds, and War of the Worlds 2, as well as Natalie Negrotti, who also debuted on Big Brother 18 and then appeared on Vendettas, Final Reckoning, and War of the Worlds. According to the Big Brother 20 alum, Calafiore gave him some concrete advice on what to expect as he went on his own Challenge journey.

“He was just saying just watch out, stick with Bayleigh. That’s the only ally you have coming in here,” Williams told PopCulture.com. “Just these Challenge people are snakes, you don’t know them, but just be mindful. I know everybody has their own story about everybody, but him giving us advice to just watch out. That’s basically his main advice, ‘Watch out for yourself over anybody else.’ And basically, we took from that.”

“And basically it’s not Big Brother,” Dayton added. “I will say that Big Brother, I thought was suspicious, and I’m not going to lie, most of it was because I was hormonal and I was going through a lot. I felt everybody like everybody was attacking me. But The Challenge, people were actually attacking you. So my initial capabilities, everything I went through, I was like, ‘Oh OK, Big Brother was not so bad. OK, we can go back.” It was good.”

Of course, Dayton and Williams aren’t the only Big Brother 20 alumni who are making their debuts on The Challenge: Total Madness. Faysal ‘Fessy’ Shafaat and Kaycee Clark, both players whom Dayton and Williams have storied pasts with, are also joining the fray on the MTV series. And reuniting with them once more presented its own set of emotional challenges.

“I would say you’re going to have to watch the season because I think that definitely plays out throughout the season,” Williams noted. “But, being in a house again trapped with somebody when the first time I met them was being trapped in… He [Shafaat] was my number one aside from Bayleigh on Big Brother. So, having that in the back of our minds and then going back to The Challenge where we’re trapped in another house and we don’t know anybody, you kind of see the resemblance, you kind of get old memories again.”

“Literally, I would just say triggered is the word that I can use,” Dayton shared, describing what it felt like to be in close quarters with Clark and Shafaat once again. “Being locked up with Kaycee and Fessy, especially after the experience that I went through on Big Brother personally was so emotionally challenging, I’ve never been through anything kind of worse than what I went through on my season of Big Brother in my life. So being back in that environment really emotionally triggered me.”

As for how Dayton and Williams’ reunions with Shafaat and Clark will play out, as well as how their journey on The Challenge unfolds, fans will simply have to tune in to find out.

The Challenge: Total Madness premieres Wednesday at 8 p.m. ET on MTV.