‘Big Brother 26’ winner Chelsie reveals when she realized she could manipulate Makensy
Chelsie Baham started “Big Brother 26” with a downgrade but ended it with the ultimate upgrade: She won the $750,000 on Sunday with a 7-0 vote over Makensy. The win felt like a formality as the 27-year-old dominated the backstretch in all facets of the game — she won comps, was steps ahead of everyone else, and coaxed people (ahem, Makensy) into doing her dirty work without losing their trust. She sealed the deal with her pitch-perfect answers during the jury Q&A and with her final speech, but in the moment, she actually thought she would come up short.
“I thought it was going to be 4-3 Makensy, to be honest with you. So the the fact that I kept seeing my name, I thought, ‘OK, am I dreaming right now? Do I need glasses? Am I actually seeing ‘Chelsie’ come out of these keys one by one? I am shooketh.’ So the fact that it was unanimous, honestly, I am shocked. Do I think it was a game well played? Yes. I just didn’t think I would have that pull with the jury,” Chelsie tells Gold Derby (watch above). “There’s a part of me that was like, ‘Makensy just won another competition and she took me to the final two.’ She could’ve used that to her benefit in her speech and really took me out. But when I heard what I was saying versus what she was saying, I felt like I had a better sway. I was crossing my fingers and hoping for the best. But I really didn’t know how the jury was going to lean.”
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A pivotal moment during the Q&A came when Makensy answered that the biggest move she made on her own was targeting and evicting Leah. The following question for Chelsie opened the door for her to take credit for the move as she manipulated Makensy into putting Leah up as a renom. “I was not going to let all my hard work go to waste!” Chelsie says with a laugh. “The jury set that up really well for me.” That week was the “trickiest” for Chelsie to navigate as the she risked Leah staying and targeting her had she not been evicted, but by that point, she also knew she had Makensy under her thumb.
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“I realized that during my HOH when she used the Veto on Angela. And I didn’t even have to work that hard to do it. And that’s when I knew there may have been some insecurity in her game and decision-making,” Chelsie says. “And that’s what it was — just insecurity, not knowing what to do, so she heavily relied on me to help her with those decisions. I just helped her make decisions for me in the end, not her. So I realized that during one of my HOHs, and during her HOH when she had that and the Golden Power of Veto, the end result was still what I wanted.”
Chelsie was also happy to own up to her deception and manipulation in her answers and speech. “It’s not about who played the most honest game. It’s about who played the best and most respectful game. And that’s what I wanted to get across. Nobody can say they played an honest game in the ‘Big Brother’ house. But people can say, ‘Yeah, I deceived, but I had a respectful game that no matter what I did, people can respect the moves that I made because they’re strategic. That’s what I tried to get across in the Q&A and speech.”
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