Big Brother 26’s Tucker Des Lauriers knew that his ally Angela Murray was openly campaigning to get him out this week, but he still saw a path forward with her in the game.
When asked what it would’ve taken for him to turn on Angela, 51 — because her plotting his demise wasn’t enough — Tucker exclusively told Us Weekly that he would’ve waited until the “top five” to take a shot at her.
“I could have got her there,” he said on Friday, August 30, one day after his elimination from the CBS reality series. “Lying and deceiving is a very hard thing for me to do. In [the house], some people are very good at flicking that switch on … I wanted to play this game as truthfully as [I] could until [I] made it down to [my] core six or so. … Some people had a long, hot blade that they were looking forward to stabbing people in the back with. Me, I had a little dull butter knife and I was shaking, scared to do it.”
Tucker, 30, shocked the house during week three of the game by winning the power of veto while on the block and then using it on Angela instead of himself, even though they weren’t closely aligned at the time. He continued to boldly put himself in harm’s way from that point on and volunteered to go on the block this week even though his ally T’kor Clottey was Head of Household.
“I very much reluctantly volunteered,” Tucker told Us. “I told T’kor that I did it because it didn’t feel right to not offer it to someone that was in my alliance when I offered it to two people that I was not in an alliance with. … Also, T’kor’s energy when she wins something and her emotions [are] the most contagious emotions I’ve felt from anyone. I’ve never cried tears of joy so heavily for somebody like that. I’m a very empathetic and emotional person, [and] I know she is too. We’re both artists at heart.”
While Tucker said that he wanted T’kor’s experience as HOH to be “all rainbows and unicorns,” he can also admit that her reign was a failure as he was not her intended target.
“I think she was scared to play the game as were the others. They were scared to put someone up for, for very valid reasons, because they didn’t want to put a target on their back,” he said. “But little do they know that everyone in there has got targets on their back. And the more that you’re not aware of that and you’re just trying to not put targets on your back, you probably have a lot more than you think. I would much rather know exactly who is trying to get me.”
Tucker made for an unusual pawn on T’kor’s part. With six competition wins on his resume, it was too tempting to vote him out when he failed to win in the BB AI arena on Thursday. (Makensy Manbeck emerged victorious, leaving Tucker and Angela on the block together.)
Tucker knows that proving himself as a comp beast early on made him vulnerable, but he wouldn’t change a thing.
“I was playing a different game. I think that Big Brother can be played a lot differently than it has been in the past seasons, and didn’t know that would be my strategy until I got in there and met everybody in there and saw what was going on around me,” he said. “I just stayed true to myself and my abilities and had a blast doing it. … I told T’kor that I don’t regret anything and that I’m someone that was raised [with] ‘To thine old self be true.’”
After telling Big Brother host Julie Chen Moonves on Thursday that he “like[s] to play games,” Tucker has his sights set on another reality TV competition.
“Put me on The Challenge!” he told Us enthusiastically. “I would love to go on The Challenge. I can’t see myself not winning that.”
Big Brother airs on CBS Wednesdays, Thursdays and Sundays at 8 p.m. ET.
