‘Big Brother 28’s Drew Campbell Reacts to Devens’ Shocking Finale Betrayal: ‘I Can’t Be Mad At It’ (Exclusive)

Big Brother’s house is open once more! Every week, Parade’s Mike Bloom will be bringing you interviews with this season’s houseguests as they get evicted from the game.

Drew Campbell walked into the Big Brother house with aspirations as high as his hair. The surgical dental associate came into the game with a lot to chew on, immediately becoming one of the most central strategic pieces of the season. Throughout his 87 days, he consistently teased loyalty to a variety of people in the house, only to build a “lather, rinse, repeat” routine of making and breaking alliances. The commonality in the majority of his moves, however, was his affinity for the “icons.” After a few (hair) brushes with eviction, Drew locked in with the reality TV veterans. And, unfortunately, it would be one of them who ended his game. After building a father-son dynamic with Rick Devens, the Survivor player made the biggest betrayal of the season, cutting Drew just short of the Final Two. While he was one of the most active players of the season, the man who spent so much time looking in the mirrors of the house didn’t have the opportunity to reflect on his game to the jury.

Drew walked into the Big Brother 28 with the most youth and exuberance. And that not only applied personally, but strategically as well. The superfan endeared himself to the icons, bringin him and Barrett Pfeiffer into the immediate majority. At the same time, he was used as a double agent for the reality TV vets, ferreting information out of the other “side” of the house. Before they knew it, the “Jugglers” alliance of Drew and Barrett were trying to keep everything up in the air, maintaining a balance between the dominant “Toolshed” alliance and their friends Mallory Aurichio and Melody Morris. They’d spend the day scheming with the vets before adjourning for their nightly “F.A.P.” sessions. But when Drew stuck out his neck to protect Mallory when she was set up as the secondary target, the rest of the Toolshed thought Drew needed to be fixed. While Haley Thogmartin said he was a pawn when he was put up on the block the next week, the truth was, the icons were leading the charge against Drew, ready to double-cross the Crossovers.

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Fortunately, Drew was able to say the kid was still in it, as he won the first of his many clutch competitions to guarantee he wouldn’t see the eviction vote. Despite his safety, and the Crossovers flipping the house to save Melody, his standing with the icons wasn’t necessarily on the rise. That only occurred, ironically, the next time an ally nominated him on their HoH. Dee put up Drew next to Taylor Brown and LaTrice “Lala” Verrett, initially targeting him for playing both sides. All it took to finally get the icons to trust him, it turns out, was the umpteenth nomination ceremony argument. Drew called out his fellow nominees for leading an anti-icon plot among the reality TV newbies. And, while the accusation prompted screaming both inside and outside the house, it re-Dee-med him in Dee’s eyes.

With one very public gesture, Drew had chosen a side. “F.A.P.” was D.O.A. to him, opting to formally join the icon family. The only issue: His fellow middleman had picked a side as well, but on the opposite side. The Jumbotron engineer decided to get the vets out of the picture, and that started with blindsiding them by taking out Drew. Luckily, whether he realized it or not, a shot in the dark saved him from certain eviction, guaranteeing he would make jury. But, despite seemingly locking in his side, he was still trying to play up his role as the swing. He navigated an increasingly complicated relationship with Melody as the two engaged in a dichotomy of flirting and fibbing. He convinced Yash Patel to give a must-win Pressure Cooker veto to him, promising he wouldn’t go after him and Taylor. But, when the double eviction rolled around, to quote the skullet man himself, the “poop was in the pudding.” Drew sided with the icons once again, leaving half the house furious — and the other ecstatic.

Going into the Final Five, Drew felt in a good place, locked in with the icons and Melody. Unfortunately, it was his closeness to the latter that not only had him up on the block with her, but as the primary target. After winning yet another necessary veto, he lost his best friend in the house, voting to keep her in a final gesture of loyalty. When Drew won the final veto of the season, he had to finally turn against an icon. And, while Devens was the bigger threat on paper, the incredibly close relationship between the two had Drew snuffing out the Survivor winner, confident he would have a better chance of getting taken to the Final Two. And that was true, for about six of the next seven days. In a last-minute vote flip becoming of Big Brother 28, Taylor made an eleventh-hour pitch to Devens, saying between her, Lala, Barrett, and Melody, he would not have the votes to win against Drew. And so, after winning the final HoH, he committed an act of hair-esy. One week after declaring on national TV that he would bring him to the Final Two, Devens was the one to go back on his promise this time, sending an emotional Drew out of the house mere minutes before he was crowned the winner of the season.

Hours after the Big Brother 28 finale, Drew talks with Parade about his reaction to Devens cutting him (and his vote for him to win), his controversial comments about Taylor and Lala, and his complicated relationship with Melody (and if he plans to pursue anything with her after the show).

Related: Meet the Full Cast of Big Brother 28

Hey, Drew. How are you doing right now? I can imagine a lot is going through your head.
Super fine! I mean, it sucks. I would rather have won, of course. But I’m doing great!

Let’s start with where things ended. You clearly had an incredibly emotional reaction to Devens voting you out at the Final Three. Talk to me about what was going through your head as he stood up there and made that speech.
Well, it’s not a good start to any speech when it starts with your name. [Laughs.] You know what I mean? So Devens is a really smart guy, and he definitely wanted to win this game like we all do. And the best way he could do it was take Taylor. She didn’t make a lot of game moves. I fought really hard to get there. If I was him, I would have done the same thing. I would have taken Devens out. So I can’t be mad at it. He made the right move. Do I wish I sat next to him? Absolutely. But I think he made the right move. Could I have beaten him? I don’t know. Would have been close. But in this game, you don’t want close; you want certainty. So that’s why he took Taylor.

How valid do you think Taylor’s claim was? If he had taken you, would you have those four votes to win?
I don’t entirely know. I could see a world where I definitely get Melody and Barrett. I could see Taylor being butthurt that she got out and voting for me. And if Taylor’s going that way, maybe Lala would have, and maybe Yash would have. It would have been close. So I think Devens made the right move.

And, when you left, were you always going to vote for Devens to win?
I could never vote Taylor. She didn’t do much in this game besides sit on the block. I’m sorry. She did win that HoH at the end that put us in a tough position with the crossover. But Devens played a really great game, and I was not going to be a bitter juror. He beat me fair and square. He gets my vote. He deserves to win.

Let’s get into your relationships with the Final Three. Let’s stay on Devens, because the two of you developed a complicated, yet close bond as the season went along, even compared to a father and son at points. Talk to me about your dynamic.
Well, I was kind of teasing him at first because he was the oldest guy in the cast, and I was the youngest. So I was always like, “You’re my father figure.” But also I learned a lot from him when it comes to these games. He has experience, so he was passing down that wisdom. I was trying to keep him in the loop with the young lingo, and it just kept growing and growing. And he’s a really great guy. I have nothing bad to say about him. He will always be my Big Brother dad, but he’ll always be Judas to me.

[Laughs.] Gotta squeeze the Big Brother 10 reference in there!
Exactly, I have to.

Well, I want to talk about your relationship with Taylor, and Lala by extension. Troughout the season, you said things like, during the Kamu vote, “Taylor’s gonna get in their face. Lala’s gonna get in their face.” Or comments about them cooking and cleaning, like “If it’s Hide and Go Veto, I hope Taylor and Lala are still here so they can clean the house” or “Let’s send Lala to jury, ‘cause then Lala can make us food.” There’s been some discussion about how these comments can be perceived as microaggressions. Talk to me about your feelings about the two of them.
Yeah, so definitely not the way I was interpreting those comments. Lala and Taylor, they crushed the house. They were the only reason I ate that whole summer. Thank God they were in that house. The only reason I said they’re going to get in their face is because Melody and Mallory were really close to them, and they did have some sort of influence over them. So I was trying to make sure that wasn’t going to happen, so that vote would go the right way. Taylor and Lala, great people. I love them. I don’t have anything bad to say about them. And genuinely, if they weren’t in there, I wouldn’t have eaten.

One of your other closest relationships was with Melody. Though it was a complicated one, as, while the two of you got very close, there were many points where your games completely diverged. Talk to me about navigating a relationship with someone you really care about while also feeling like, “I’m the worst thing for her game.”
Oh yeah, it was super fun to navigate this game with Melody, if I want to say “with.” We were never on the same page, probably not in the same book. But I had her back, and I felt like she had mine. It was really fun. Everything I did that would benefit my game would probably hurt hers, and everything that she did that would benefit her game hurt mine. In a way, I saw it as a good thing because we’re on two different sides of the house, and we could do each other’s dirty work. But I love playing the game with her.

I’d be remiss not to ask, since both the fans and your fellow houseguests noticed a lot of flirtation between the two of you. Do you have any plans at this moment to explore anything outside of the show?
Melody’s a great girl. She was super fun to hang out with us in this super fun to hang out with in this house. Made me laugh. Made me cry. I don’t know what is in store for us. She lives in Arizona; I live in California. But only time will tell.

There was a lot of talk throughout the season about your loyalty to the icons. And at several points in the endgame, you were in the middle position, and showed your desire to keep them in towards the end. Why did you decide to stick with the icons for so long?
The only reason I did it is because I’m a loyal person when it came to longevity and it came to this game. I started with them. I was ready to finish with them. Yash and Taylor, we had a rough pass when it came to stuff. I put them on the block; they put me on the block. It would be hard to go and call bygones be bygones. With the icons, I felt like we had history. And I thought maybe that history would take me further in this game than switching up on them.

You said at one point in the Diary Room, “I feel like all I’ve done in this game is seal my friends’ fates.” How difficult was it for you to separate the moves you were making from the people you were betraying, especially considering how in the middle you were of everything?
Yeah, I honestly feel like you shouldn’t separate your feelings from the moves you’re making. You made relationships with these people. You love these people, and it hurts to see them go. But that means you felt a feeling for them. And when Mallory left, it hurt. But that meant I really did love Mallory, and it sucked that I was the one to win that Block Buster and she would go home. Same with Barrett. I loved the kid. I don’t know if he was working with me the whole time. But it hurt my feelings when he left too because those were my people; I hung out with them the whole time. And separating emotions, you can do that. It gets you far. But I like to wear my emotions on my sleeve. I’m Latin. What am I supposed to do?! [Laughs.]

What is the one move you are the proudest of, and the one move you regret the most from your time in the house?
Okay, the move I am honestly the most proud of is convincing Yash to throw the Pressure Cooker after 13 hours. I claimed myself to be the biggest liar in the house, and the fact that he went along with that, even after knowing that, it was pretty cool. I felt like I played Big Brother. The move I regret the most, genuinely, I regret voting Mallory out. It wouldn’t have changed anything. She still would have left, but I wanted her to feel that she had three friends in this house and not just two.

I want to finish by addressing one of your Diary Rooms, where you emotionally say, “Why’d you bring a 22-year-old kid in this game? I’m not emotionally mature enough to be here!” Considering you’re at such a formative age, what do you take away from this experience, if anything, into your life moving forward?
Honestly, I felt like I came to this house a kid, and I truly felt like I grew up in there. A lot of the houseguests will say the same thing. I felt like I got a speedrun on growing up. It was super fun. It’s honestly going to be showing my emotions more. I did that a lot, probably too much. But I felt what I felt and I let it out.

Related: ‘Big Brother 28’ Runner-Up Taylor Brown Explains the Fake Promise That Got Her to Final Two (Exclusive)