Rick Devens Breaks Down His Season 28 Game

TVLINE | There was a moment in the jury Q&A when you seemed to have a strong reaction to Taylor saying you had advantages in the game. What were you feeling or thinking in that moment?
That perspective was interesting to me, and she wasn’t the only one who shared it. A lot of these newbies were going, “Wow, they came in with such crazy advantages in this game,” and I’m going, “What? That there were two other people that might want to work with me because we’re outnumbered 14-to-3?” I don’t know that that’s a huge advantage. Obviously we were the first three to get a chance at the time capsule. That’s because we came in as icons. But my argument is, I made a pretty big splash Week 2. When I won HOH against the entire house, made a circus of the nomination ceremony, put up the biggest threat in the game… I feel like if we were all newbies, America might vote for that guy to go in the BB time capsule anyway. One of us was gonna win Week 1, but then we had 11 more weeks to worry about. If these newbies thought we had such huge advantages, they could have taken us out at any time, and they never did. And so, the fact that three of the newbies got to go in the BB time capsule and two came out with punishments, I’m just like, listen, sour grapes, OK? I think it was a big disadvantage. I thought half the cast was gonna be “icons” to make it fair, so that was my reaction to that. Like, elitism? What? Because I played “Survivor”? I don’t know.

TVLINE | Let’s go back a little earlier in the season. You had two very close calls with eviction, the most recent one being Drew choosing between you and Dee. Did it feel to you like you were safe all along? Or were you genuinely surprised when he cut Dee?
I woke up that morning thinking, “I’m done. He’s gonna keep Dee. I’m toast.” And then he came to me and he said, “Hey, if I keep you, will you throw the first part of the final HOH, which is gonna be endurance?” And I said, “Yeah, absolutely,” you beat me at endurance all season. Endurance has never been my thing on “Survivor” or this. I will absolutely throw this because I can’t get to the end without getting the Final 3. And then I said, “Did you ask Dee the same thing?” And he’s like, yeah, I was like, “Oh, what did she say?” And he said, “She said, ‘I’m gonna pretend like you didn’t ask me that.'” So at that point I started feeling like, I think he’s gonna keep me. I think I’m gonna be his dude, and felt really a lot more confident about it. I would have thrown that too, in a heartbeat. Unfortunately, he fell off and then Taylor whipped the crap out of both of us.

TVLINE | The other close call — and I don’t know how much you’ve heard about this elsewhere — came in Week 8, when you volunteered to go up as a replacement nominee against Lala and Taylor. You ended up winning the Blockbuster, but did you have any knowledge that the house was planning to flip and send you home if you had stayed on the block? What do you make of that in hindsight?
You know, I guess we’re all learning together that it’s a bad idea to volunteer to be the pawn, right? No one’s ever said that before about “Big Brother”! [Laughs] Dude, I was so naive. Was Drew gonna turn on me? Because Barrett was gonna turn on me. He told me he was gonna vote against me, and I was so nice. I was like, “Barrett won’t do that.” Barrett’s my dude. We’re great friends and we’re in the Crossovers. So Angela and Dee were coming up to me and going, “Dude, you’re in a lot of trouble. You’re screwed.” And I was like, “Guys, calm down. I got this. No worries at all,” and I was totally wrong. But I was telling them, I was like, “You’re just gonna make me paranoid.” Listen, nothing you can say is gonna make me work harder at this Blockbuster. I want it no matter what. So let me just go get it and thank goodness I did because I would have looked really stupid, Nick. I mean, I still looked stupid, but at least I got away with it.