Nikki Garcia is off to the Scottish Highlands for The Traitors season 3, and her twin sister, Brie Garcia, has an idea of how she’ll fare in the castle.
“When I think of personality and athleticism and all that, I would say Gabby [Windey] from The Bachelorette,” Brie, 40, exclusively told Us Weekly on Monday, June 17, when asked who Nikki’s competition could be. “I feel like just seeing her on Dancing With the Stars too, she’s a tough one and she has grit. I feel like that’ll be Nikki’s competition.”
Nikki, 40, and Gabby, 33, have been cast on The Traitors season 3, alongside the likes of Chrishell Stause, Wells Adams, Lord Ivan Mountbatten and Ciara Miller.
“I’m so interested to see [Nikki on the show] because there’s two sides to her,” Brie told Us while promoting Candy Crush All Stars Championship. “She’s this tough girl and she’s really smart, but she also has a big heart. So I’m like, ‘How is she going to do in there and without me? How is she really going to do?’”
The former wrestler continued, “I cannot wait to watch. I’m like, ‘Is she going to be a Traitor? Is she not?’ I don’t know. I know nothing.”
Brie has briefly been able to communicate with Nikki during filming, telling Us that the separation is “awful.”
“We get one FaceTime a week and they have someone sitting right next to her,” Brie said. “So I don’t get to know anything. We only get to talk about the kids, really. … She will not spill anything and it’s killing me.”
Nikki shares son Matteo, 3, with husband Artem Chigvintsev while Brie shares daughter Birdie, 6, and son Buddy, 3, with spouse Bryan Danielson. With the twins usually living next door, they are raising their respective children side-by-side.
“She will probably agree with me, but she is way more strict than I am and more of a helicopter mom,” Brie said. “I won’t take my eyes off my kids, like, I am always watching, but I’m also kicked back. I’ll be the one at the park sitting on the bench watching where she’s following. [If the] kids go a little too far, I get up, I’ll move around and be like, all right. But I feel like I’m definitely a more laid-back parent and she’s a little more uptight.”
Brie and Nikki’s parenting differences became even more apparent as they signed up to coach their sons’ Little League team together.
“I definitely realized very quickly [that] Nikki is that type of coach, like, ‘Practice wins championships’ and ‘The more we practice, the more we’ll win,’” Brie recalled. “I have to say, ‘They’re 3 to 5 years old. Nikki, you got to [tone it] down.’”
Brie, meanwhile, is more about reminding Matteo, Buddy and their teammates to have fun and learning to support one another.
“Our first day I’m like, ‘I’m going to have to give a speech.’ I just kind of thought that and I came up with this thing about just cheering each other on and teamwork and this whole thing, but the kids were really listening,” she said. “All of their cute little 3-, 4-, 5-year-old eyes were so in tune to what I was saying and I instantly was like, ‘Wow, coaches have a lot of influence’ and [I understand] why kids get connected to their coaches in this place of wanting to learn.”
Brie also brought her competitive edge to Candy Crush All Stars Championship, which she hosted in Los Angeles earlier in June.
“Oh my gosh, it was so incredible. It’s this live finals event that Candy Crush puts on and it’s their top Crushers worldwide,” she told Us. “So these 10 finalists literally outbeat millions and millions of other [players] to compete against each other.”
Brie, who enjoys playing Candy Crush herself, gushed that it was “so cool” to see the players’ impressive techniques in action.
With reporting by Christina Garibaldi
