'Big Brother 26's Brooklyn Rivera Calls Quinn "The Best Player in 'Big Brother' History"

Big Brother’s house is open once more! Every week, Parade.com’s Mike Bloom will be bringing you interviews with this season's houseguests as they get evicted from the game.

A little over a week ago, Brooklyn Rivera was at the top of the rock. The business administrator was in one of the most powerful positions in the game, a key cog in both the "Collective" and "Pentagon" alliances that were running the house. On top of that, Brooklyn bridged plenty of relationships with the outsiders, making her a favorite to win it all. But the past seven days saw her game go south, as a vote flip suddenly put her on the outside looking in. And her game was ultimately unraveled by a smooth criminal in Tucker Des Lauriers, who Brooklyn called out in a fiery speech shortly before walking out the door.

Through the first three weeks, Brooklyn nested nicely within the Pentagon, though both she and Quinn Martin knew they were at the mercy of a core trio. She also developed a complicated relationship with fellow married mom Angela Murray, as Angela targeted her multiple times during the HoH competition she would go on to win. Brooklyn was confident she would have the last laugh (as well as some meats and cheeses to boot), as the house was set to evict Rubina Bernabe at the Pentagon's orders. But, after Quinn told T'kor Clottey and Kimo Apaka about the secret majority, they flipped the game on its head. Brooklyn pulled Rubina aside during the eviction to warn her everyone would be voting her out, only to wind up with egg (and plenty of anger) on her face when Cedric Hodges went instead.

To say Brooklyn was mad at T'kor and Kimo for their flip would be an understatement. But unfortunately she wasn't able to channel that heat on the firewall, as Tucker walked away HoH. He put up Brooklyn alongside Quinn and Cam Sullivan-Brown, but assuaged her that Quinn was his target. However, there was yet another Veto plan cooked up by the wildcard challenge beast. After winning the golden power, he shockingly used it to take his biggest enemy down, putting fellow Pentagon member Chelsie Baham up. In his speech, Tucker outed both the Pentagon and the Collective, saying Brooklyn and Chelsie are the ones in charge. That only fueled Brooklyn's ire further as, during the eviction, she publicly called out Tucker multiple times, saying she can't wait for him to get taken out and telling everyone they're playing for second place. Despite her impassioned pleas, the supposed second-place competitors sent her out in twelfth.

Now out of the house, Brooklyn talks with Parade.com about the purpose behind publicly calling out Tucker, how she looks back on her reaction to the fallout of Cedric eviction, and why she feels Angela is "toxic."

Related: Everything to Know About Big Brother 26

We have to start with where things ended. Tucker made it clear that, had you not won the AI Arena, you would be going. But did you know the die was cast once you lost? And how did that feed into your choice to call out Tucker in both your campaigning and eviction speech?
People don't lie really well in the Big Brother house, especially on eviction days. I knew by looking at people's faces and the fact that they couldn't look me in the face, that if I didn't win that AI Arena last night, I was going home. So I felt like, "Hey, it's Big Brother. One last ditch effort to paint a giant target on Tucker's back. Get in their heads a little bit, make them start second-guessing, and stop being so freaking scared of him." It did take him five weeks to win an HoH, so he needs to remember that. He says he's big, bad comp beast, but he only won an HoH where it was hanging on a wall. So he's not good at everything. And I really hope that maybe I put a little doubt in people's minds. He's playing a single game, and his only gameplay is to blow everyone else's up and win comps. That's it. He has no other gameplay. No one wanted to work with him.

Well speaking of games being called out, Tucker led you to believe you were not the target up until the Veto Ceremony, where he puts Chelsie up, reveals the Pentagon and the Collective, and says the two of you are running things. And we saw the two of you get into a heated confrontation about that. What was your reaction to that ceremony?
I never thought I would be the target of a public house call out! hat was not on my bingo card at all when I was thinking about this game. But expect the unexpected! We are playing a game of Big Brother that has never been played before. Every single week, three people on the block, then also a replacement every single week for five weeks in a row. This doesn't happen in Big Brother. So people were playing really scared. I guess I can say I'm flattered now that he thought I was a mastermind and this puppeteer that was running things. I literally was never even supposed to be in the Collective! That was an accident. I just kept on getting asked to be in these alliances. Someone had to be the fall boy, and they painted it as me Week 4, and here I am.

Let's say your plea ends up not falling on deaf ears and you survive over Cam last night. You had a lot of targets to choose between, with Tucker, T'kor and Kimo, who you felt betrayed by, and even Quinn for outing the Pentagon. Who would you have gone after?
Absolutely Tucker would have been my ultimate target. We were convinced in the house that the AI Arena was ending this week. I was convinced it was ending Week 4. To know that it is still going on and there will still be three people on the block, I probably would have, if I was lucky enough to win HoH, used Joseph and one of the showmances of T'kor and Kimo. Because they are a Showmance, by the way. They're just the different type of showmance you've ever seen, but they're a pair. So I would have used Tucker, Joseph, and either Kimo or T'kor on the block and showed them a little bit of their own medicine.   

Let's rewind a week to when things start falling apart. During Cedric's eviction, we see you tell Rubina that the house is voting her out. And, after it doesn't go that way, you default to the story that T'kor and Kimo had "tricked" you by not telling you they were flipping. How do you look back on your approach? Because I would say it definitely kept eyes on you after the flip.
It did. I had two choices. I could lie and try to pin it on someone else. But I felt in that moment that I had got to say it very matter of fact. So I chose to be honest, and I chose to kind of lean into the emotion and try to really sell like, "I had no reason to do it other than the house was saying you were going home." It clearly didn't work. And at that time, I didn't know that the Pentagon had been exposed. I knew that potentially the Collective had. But at that time of the vote and the eviction, and even up to nominees and replacement nominees, I didn't know that the Pentagon had been exposed until the replacement nominee ceremony.

One of the reasons behind the flip came from your relationship with Makensy and Leah. You and Chelsie became close to them during Chelsie's HoH. But you seemed to distance yourself from them over the last couple of weeks, which allowed T'kor and Kimo to scoop them up as key votes to get out Cedric. Was there anything purposeful behind distancing those relationships?
Nothing truly personal. Other than you just start forming who you actually like in the house. And that was hard for me, I guess, to cover up there were people that I just enjoyed being around more, and it ended up being Chelsie and Cedric and Cam truly. Not just because they were in my alliance. I just started to blend and mesh with them. And as much as I tried at the beginning to keep a smile on my face and talk with everybody and hang out, there's just some people that are really annoying, and personally, I just didn't care for. Everyone's a great person. But game wise, that house 24/7, there's some people that I would have rather cut my hair with toenail clippers than be around more than I had to be.

[Laughs.] Well perhaps on that note, let's talk about your relationship with Angela. We've seen the two of you bond over mutual experiences over the past five weeks. But there were also moments of tension, like when she picked you twice for the HoH competition she won, which you did not take kindly. And, of course, everything with the charcuterie board this past week. What do you make of your dynamic?
You know what? Angela is a special breed of human. She's just lucky to still be in the house. She's a floater. I know she's won two HoHs, so that's hard to say "floater" when you won, but those are kind of accidents. The first one was pure luck. And then bad AI, I'll just say I have bad eyes, and she targeted me, and clearly she thought I'd be good at it. But the person you saw Week 1 in her calling people "crazy eye"s and bringing people's mama into the game, that's Angela. And so whatever she says from here on out is just a facade. And so people should take her for face value and the Week 1 Angela and run with it and get her out of that house. She's toxic.

To finish, give your rapid-fire thoughts on each of the remaining houseguests. Starting with Angela.
Toxic.
Cam.
Upbeat, quiet.
Chelsie.
Holy and hood. [Laughs.]
Joseph.
Who?
Kimo.
Sweet as pie.
Leah.
[Pause.] She's at the salon.
Makensy.
A Southern sweetheart.
Quinn.
Best player in Big Brother history.

Wait, we need to stop down. Elaborate on that for me.
I am telling you that boy--I should call him man, so he's not offended. That man is smart. He is playing an incredible game. A little messy, so you might need to control that a bit. I want Chelsie to win. Mark my words, I want my girl to win this. But who do I think is going to win? As long as Tucker gets kicked out, it's going to be Quinn. He deserves to win this game. He is an incredible super fan. He has a wonderful story, a bigger heart, and he is smart. He's the one that had the veto around his neck this week for a reason. I'll just say that he was going home this week if he was on the block. And he knew that, and he did what he had to do. 

Back to the exercise, Rubina.
Spicy Filipina.
T'kor.
Calculated, quiet.
And finally, Tucker.
Biggest mouth ever. [Laughs.]

Next, check out our interview with Cedric Hodges, who was evicted in Big Brother 26 Week 4.