'Big Brother 25's Jared Fields Explains Why He Told Blue About His Big Secret

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.

Jared Fields knows how to clean up messes. In his day-to-day outside of the Big Brother house, he eliminates pests. His mother is one of the greatest social strategy players ever in Survivor legend Cirie Fields. When he got a turn at the reality TV steering wheel, Jared initially proved the apple didn't fall far from the tree, getting himself into one of the most powerful positions in the game. But soon enough, he proved he was more skilled at making messes than disposing of them. In one big confrontation, Jared's entire game was outed to the house. And his efforts to clean it up worked about as well as Lysol wipes on a couch, leading to his blindside in the double eviction and subsequent elimination from the house.

After appearing as a Survivor loved one back in 2017, fans were happily surprised to see him appear on a different reality show in Big Brother over five years later. They were even more happily surprised to see the Fields field would grow wider, as Cirie was brought in as a surprise seventeenth houseguest. Jared lost his competition on Night 1, making him an immediate nominee. However, he wound up as one of the most safe people of the week, getting brought into the majority alliance while also feeding information about them to his mom and her allies. Through the first few weeks, he maintained a solid position in the middle of it all, alongside Cirie and adoptive sister Izzy Gleicher. However, the more comfortable Jared got, the more he talked. He revealed to his showmance partner Blue Kim that he was playing with his mother, and he revealed all of his alliances to fellow Survivor relative Cory Wurtenberger. And it was all done without his mom even knowing.

Day 44 is one that will live in infamy for Jared. After being told the house was flipping against Izzy, he decided to spread a lie about Jag Bains telling him about it to hopefully fire some shots. Unfortunately, all it did was promptly turn everyone's weapons onto him. What fired was a heated debate between Jared and Cory, as the former number one allies became number one enemies. Cory revealed everything Jared had told him about his alliances and lies, which got him in the hottest of water. Jared saved himself by winning a crucial HoH, but decided not to go after Cory in favor of Cameron Hardin. So he was stunned to find, in the double eviction, Cory go on to win HoH, and rally together nearly the entire house to send him out, stunned and shoeless. Luckily for Jared, he immediately re-entered, spending the week as a "Big Brother Zombie" with Cameron. Unfortunately, he quite literally dropped the ball, and Cameron crucially didn't, winning a spot back in the game and officially eliminating Jared. For a man obsessed with "body count," he was officially D.O.A.

Now out of the house, Jared talks with Parade.com about the confrontation that led to his downfall, why he didn't tell Cirie he had told Blue about playing with his mom, and his controversial comments throughout the season.

Related: Everything to Know About Big Brother 25

We heard you whisper something to Cameron after you were eliminated, before the backyard door opened. Was it anything new outside of what you were telling him the past week about working with Cirie should he come back?
That final moment for me with and Cam was just, "I respect the hell out of you. I love you so much. And please just honor exactly what we talked about, which was, to the best of your ability, try to protect Cirie as much as possible."

To that point, you said to Julie last night that you did everything you could to try to protect your mom's game. But we saw a couple of times where you were hiding information from her, or denying correct reads she had made. One of them was, of course, you deciding to tell Blue that you were playing with your mother. It was something that had all of us at home saying, "Jared, what are you doing?!" Why did you decide to reveal that?
It was easy for me to want to tell Blue the secret because Blue divulged a really big secret about her game outside of here to me that was just really personal for her, that she was a [brand] strategist in this game. And although it was nothing that I would ever use against her, I knew that it was something that could really kind of be crucial. Me and Blue were starting to develop a really tight relationship. And more than anybody else in the house, she really had her speculations early on about me having more going on than exactly what I was putting out there. And I knew that if I wasn't to let Blue in on a secret, somehow, some way, that I would lose a really close ally that I had in this game. And it would have made this game that much more tough for me.

Obviously, we had Izzy, and then we lost Izzy pretty early on. So after losing Izzy, I knew that me and my mom would have a really, really tough road ahead of us. So I figured that just for my personal game. And for my mom's personal game, it'd be best to let somebody in who I knew that I could trust at the time, and who I hope I still can trust moving forward. To kind of just let her know, "This is exactly why I'm so adamant on wanting to keep Cirie in the house." Because I knew that after a while, people were starting to catch onto that. And people did start to catch on to the fact that I was pretty overprotective when it came to Cirie, especially Izzy also. People realized that that relationship was really tight. And I didn't want people to start questioning and possibly wanting to sever it due to thinking that it was something that would have went too far. And Blue was definitely one of those people that I felt like needed to know.

Yet, you chose not to tell your mom about this reveal. It even got to the point where you had instead put the blame onto Izzy, and even at one point this week implied it may have been Cirie herself who did it. Why did you decide not to tell your mom about it coming from you?
So my mom was already getting really nervous about certain things that we both kind of connected on. She would say something along the lines of, "Hey, my son did something on New Year's Eve," and then I would follow that up and tell Blue another day, "Hey, I had a party on New Year's Eve." Then, one day, Blue actually approached me like, "Hey, it's so funny that you don't use the house toothpaste. Only you and Cirie have the same toothpaste. "So I started to already see that Blue was catching on and what was going on.

And I knew that my mom would get really paranoid that, if Blue knew that, it would probably be a problem for her for whatever reason. But my mom did not have the same relationship as I did with Blue. She didn't spend the time to kind of vet Blue out to see if she can even trust Blue as much as I could. And I think at the end of the day that I just really wanted to protect her from the paranoia of thinking that somebody knows somebody's always gonna say something and then end up hindering her game by targeting the wrong person who may be the only person in the house right now to want to help.

Arguably the entire house turned on you after your fight with Cory in the Have-Not room. I can reveal that he was unhappy with the way you were teasing to him and America that you may use the veto to put her up during that week, and so he decided to air out everything you had told him about all of your alliances. Walk me through your perspective during that confrontation.
The fallout with me and Cory was something that was actually initiated by Cameron. Cameron told Cory about a piece of information that I gave him, and ultimately it was the downfall of my game. In those last couple of weeks leading up to my eviction, I actually was already on a train of not trusting Cory. I was going to be going after Cory regardless, and Cory just kind of got ahead of me on that one. One thing that I do regret is just not putting Cory up. But besides that, I think everything was meant to happen the way that it happened.

Unfortunately, my protection of Izzy was pretty much a big part that played into that whole argument of me and Cory. If I were to just let it go and just say, "Hey, we're going to be voting out Izzy and keeping Felicia," and kind of supporting people more on that, I don't think that argument would ever even happen. But people saw that I was really adamant about keeping Izzy. And I think once Izzy made her rounds with America, and kind of had that little fallout with America, too, it also played a big part in why Cory was just like, "You know what? Jared is already saying he doesn't trust me. He's really close with Izzy. I know a lot of information that Jared may have given me, and now it's time for me to let it out. Because now I'm against them."

Now I’d be remiss if I didn’t get into some comments you made in the house. When asked about your lie about Jag during that fight with Cory, you told Matt that he must have misunderstood, and he was understandably very hurt, feeling like you used his disability against him. You also, at one point, called America the R-word when you were angry with her, and said to Blue that Matt would automatically win if he sat in the Final 2 because of his disability. A lot of this language can be perceived as ableist. Can you explain your perspective behind these remarks?
For starters, for Matt and me, and Matt had a conversation about this after, and he completely understood. Matt also told me that when we were in this argument, he felt like he kind of just needed to pull out something to make yourself essentially feel better about the decision. But regardless of how he felt, or how I felt about it, at the end of the day, disabilities are something that I would never use to my advantage inside of his game or outside of his game. I still do understand intent versus impact, regardless of what I intended to say. And I know that it's something every day moving forward that I need to work on to make sure that it's just never excused. And there's never even a line to be blurred there.

I have no space for that in my everyday life. I coach kids with disabilities every day, and it's just something that I would never want to be. I never want to put on somebody else to make them stressed out or make them feel as if they're anything less than anybody else in his house. So it's something that I definitely wanted to put out there and make sure that people understood. That's just not who I am. And regardless, there's no space for that in my life moving forward. And honestly, even before this, there was just no space for that.

Additionally, you have certainly made a lot of comments about women this season. You talked about your desire to only date someone with a certain “body count,” though the reverse doesn’t necessarily have to be true. You said at one point that you “only started seeing women as people.” Suffice it to say, these thoughts can come across as misogynistic. What are your thoughts on that?
So when I said, "I'm only starting to see woman as people" was, as a young kid, sometimes you get brought up, especially having a single mom and a single dad. I have 11 different brothers from 11 different moms, and I feel like that a lot of the values that I was taught being brought up were actually negative values. Once I was able to get away from those things, and be able to grow into my own stuff as a person, I was able to see everybody as people. Not only just women, but men also and understand that everybody has their own perception. Everybody has their own perspectives. And everybody is allowed to do the same exact thing. No one person is better than the other. No one gender is better than the other gender. And it was a learning experience. That's why I loved having Blue and people like Izzy, who was able to kind of just sit me down and be like, "Hey, listen, this is what you thought. This is maybe how you were brought up. But this ain't what it is."

It was a lot of teaching moments for me in that house to understand that everybody is people, regardless of what they may look like, what their gender may be, what their skin color may be. And the same thing for me. I feel like a lot of times throughout my life, I was looked at as somebody who may have been less than just because of the color of my skin. And that's something that I never wanted to impose on anybody else moving forward, regardless of the reasoning behind it. Whether it's gender, whether it's sex, whether it's skin color, whether it's anything. So I definitely want to make sure to just clarify that I see everybody as people, regardless of small, short, white, Black, brown, yellow, purple, green, red. It doesn't matter to me. I love them all. And I'm one of those people who just wants to make sure that everybody's involved and included. I learned every single day. It's just more about myself and more about some of the things that you might have learned that you thought were values growing up is just not it. People are different, and you can learn something from people every single day. You just have to be open to learn.

Give me your rapid-fire thoughts on each of the houseguests. Starting with America.
[Pause.] Lover
Blue.
My girl.
Bowie Jane.
[Laughing, in an Australian accent.] "Oh naur!"
Cameron.
My boy.
Cirie.
Mama dukes!
Cory.
The brains
Felicia.
Mama Fe!
Jag.
Jag-meister!
Matt.
Matty Ice-Pick.
And finally, Meme.
[Laughs.] My cousin that I never had.

Next, check out our interview with Izzy Gleicher, who was evicted during Big Brother 25 Week 6.