The Challenge: USA’s Tiffany on ‘Big Brother’ Betrayals, Shan and Desi's Shade
A surprise exit. Big Brother 23 fan favorite Tiffany Mitchell was eliminated alongside Love Island partner Cashel Barnett in a wild episode of The Challenge: USA on Wednesday, July 13.
The phlebotomist, 41, and model, 30, were thrown into the arena against James Wallington and Cayla Lee, who lost the daily challenge, in a decision made by winners Tyson Apostol and Justine Ndiba.
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Tiffany and Cashel knew they had become a house target of sorts, but didn’t necessarily expect their names to come of out some people’s mouths. “To see my sister Shan [Smith] throw me all the way under the heaviest bus,” Tiffany exclusively tells Us Weekly of what surprised her when watching the episode, which you can watch in our interview above. “Girl code is you just don’t do that, and you don’t do that where no one even can hear you. I got chicks’ secrets that I don’t fool with today, but I’ll never go and tell anything about them.”
Shan and some of the other Survivors were seen discussing Tiffany’s relationship with Love Island alum Melvin “Cinco” Holland Jr. “That’s just not cool especially on TV, but we talked about it,” Tiffany says. “We’ve hashed it out. I don’t get it, but what can I do about it? It’s not cool. I didn’t know that Shannon and Desi [Williams] were dragging me, and Desi doesn’t even know me. So really, she shouldn’t say anything about me at all, period.”
Cinco’s ex-girlfriend Cashay Proudfoot also had some not-so-nice things to say, but that was less shocking to her. “I did know that about the Love Island girls, it was pretty obvious,” Tiffany explains. “They had it in for me from minute one. So it was no surprise that they were waking up thinking about me, eating and thinking about me, and sleeping and thinking about me, talking about me, dreaming about me, speaking of me in their dreams and sleep talking about me. It’s me, me, me. It’s the Tiffany show, so no surprise.”
Cashel agreed: “In the same way that Tiffany’s name was in their mouth, [it was] nothing but mud-slinging and s—t-talking about me. … I feel no allegiance to people who are gonna talk bad about me.”
As for her Big Brother 23 castmates, the Detroit native explains that they planned to protect each other in the game. “It wasn’t unspoken,” Tiffany says. “It was definitely spoken that Big Brother was going to stick together. We knew that we would be a target because there were so many of us. We knew we probably wouldn’t all make it to the end, but there was no service, no purpose to go in and attack each other or go after each other in the beginning when we knew we would need numbers on our side.”
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That didn’t exactly happen though. Tiffany says she wanted a “clean slate” with everyone after the show last summer and “just get to know people more outside of Big Brother and see how we vibe.” Of her friendship with Alyssa Lopez, she says, “We got along. We don’t have, like, a close relationship where we are chatting every day or we’re best friends where I’m planning to hang out with her. But if we all get together, we get together. I didn’t have any issues with her, but she always seemed a little sketchy to me.”
As for Tyson and his decision to throw them into elimination, Tiffany says, “I think Tyson is going to play the whatever gets in his hands less dirty. And if I was a house target that everyone was cool with going, why make waves? However, I do understand Tyson’s personal decision. … I was not one of the stronger women there. So he still had the opportunity to get paired with me, not knowing how I would fare in a challenge with him. So if he’s looking at his long-term game of who he may get paired with next, and it’s me, and he’s not confident that I’d be a strong person to pair with, then he can say, well, I probably wanna get her out before I get paired with her and she brings me down.”
The Challenge: USA airs on CBS Wednesdays at 9 p.m.
