The guy never really had a chance. David Alexander thought he had the skills to win Big Brother. But an early banishment and loss in the first challenge put him into Camp Comeback, and when he was unable to win a challenge to get back into the game, his stay in the house was over.
David called into EW Live (SiriusXM, channel 109) the day after his ouster to weigh in on what went wrong, what would have happened had he made it back in the game, the charges of bullying in the house, and whether any of the voting in the game was racially motivated. Read on to see what David had to say, and also make sure to check out our exit interviews with Ovi and Kemi.
EW LIVE: You were so emotional after being eliminated for good, crying there in front of Julie Chen. Why did it hit you so hard?
DAVID ALEXANDER: I felt like I just didn’t get a chance to truly be in the game, and the social game I was playing was gaining momentum. Things in the house were shifting and I was getting a little bit of power, at least on the social aspects. If I had the opportunity to be back in the game, I feel like I could have played and really truly had a chance to win the entire thing. For that to fall apart because Cliff bought a game 7 LeBron just hurt.
How quickly did you realize there was no way you were going to win with how good Cliff was in that competition?
When he got one pretty quick, I still felt like I have a chance because they gave us a couple of minutes to practice just to get a feel for what it would be like to do it. And during the practice, I did fairly well. I went into it feeling very confident. But when he got three balls within like a minute or two, that’s when it felt like the writing was on the wall unless I just pulled something miraculously out. And at that point, I just lost my nerves and I couldn’t get one ball in it.
You pretty much figured everything out in terms of who was aligned and paired up with whom. Is it frustrating you never got a chance to act on that power and information?
Very frustrating. I went into the game as a photographer from Atlanta, but I have vast experience in sales working with people, reading people as part of the sales game. So my game of reading people and reading body languages and seeing how people move through the house — it was working and it was going to get me far if I had a chance to really be in it. So it was very frustrating to know that I never had the leverage of voting, never had the leverage of winning a competition, just didn’t have the leverage of being in a house and truly playing the game to get more information from the visuals.
When we are watching the show, it seems like the people who are the controlling power in the house are not being so cool about how powerful they are and seem to be excluding other people. How was it for you in there?
That was very frustrating. I wanted to develop friendships and bonds that people had a chance to develop in the house while I was gone. And to come in and kind of be on the outside and to not be able to build those immediately and have the Alphas and the people leading the house, that was very frustrating. The first few days I was excited to be finally in the house, but then immediately felt like, “Oh my gosh, this is way worse than I thought it would be.” But I stuck to my guns and maintained a mostly stable mindset and things really started to get better right before my eviction was final.
There was a lot of talk about bullying in the house. Do you think there was bullying going on?
The Camp Comeback this year has never been done before to keep people who were evicted in the house. So I think it’s a natural mob mentality thing to ostracize. Like Ovi said, “You don’t have the leverage of a vote, you can’t win a Head of Household competition so you don’t deserve to be in the conversation.” I understood that and I didn’t let that dictate my emotions. It was unfortunate on some emotional aspects, especially for Ovi. We saw his emotional outburst and I tried to coach him to not do that and to just maintain a degree of friendship with everyone in the house, like going along with it. But I understood why they had to do it. I got it. I didn’t agree with it, but it had to be done for their game. I guess.
In light of how they acted and how they treated you, whom would you have wanted to align with had you gotten back in?
Sam. Sam seemed like he did not buy into a lot of the things that were happening. He didn’t buy into all the things being kumbaya. He really didn’t like a lot of the people in there and he started to share that with me. I know he was playing a game wide open. I know he was working with a lot of other Camp Comebakers and staying positive with everyone. But I just felt like I could’ve come back in and worked with him because he is a veto comp beast. He’s going to Fiji! So Sam was someone I really wanted to work with.
It was pretty striking that the first three people put in Camp Comeback were all people of color. Was that just coincidence, or do you think race played any issue in terms of you all being targeted as those first three people out of the game?
Based on my awareness and reading people and seeing how Kemi and Ovi worked the social game, and based on me being banished and just losing the first comp, which felt like the lucky comp, I don’t think it was racial. I think the cards fell the way that they fell. Like, what if Sam didn’t win that veto and save Cliff? What if I didn’t get banished? I wouldn’t have been there. And if Kemi didn’t whisper every time she talked in a house, she probably wouldn’t have been evicted. So it didn’t feel racial to me based on my read on the game.
Related content:
- Kemi says Bella and Nick preyed on weaker people in the Big Brother house
- Evicted Ovi weighs in on if there is racism in the Big Brother house
- Meet the cast of Big Brother season 21
- Ranking every Big Brother winner (from first to worst)
Julie Chen hosts as the houseguests battle it out.
