Big Brother runner-up Derek Frazier believes he didn't receive a single jury vote to win the show's 23rd season over Xavier Prather because the jury members were "jealous" of him.
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Xavier, a 27-year-old attorney from Kalamazoo, MI, won Big Brother's grand prize of $750,000 in a unanimous 9-0 jury vote against Derek, a 29-year-old safety officer from Philadelphia, PA, during last week's Season 23 finale.
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Although Derek was a member of six-person "The Cookout" alliance and had a strong social game, he never won a competition and finished the game in second place for a prize of $75,000.
"I came in this game by myself and I made it clear to each and every single one of them, I don't owe them nothing and they don't own me anything. And they voted exactly how I expected them to," Derek told Entertainment Weekly in a recent interview.
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"Xavier definitely did earn it, I'm not taking that from him. I did my portion. I think the problem was you had jury members that I felt were jealous because they didn't want to give me credit for things that I did, because a lot of the things I did was behind the scenes."
Derek elaborated, "A lot of things executed, a lot of people going home and to the jury would have never happened if I didn't do the things that were supposed to be done."
Derek said he thinks the jury looked at him as "the friendly one" or "Mr. Entertainment" in the Big Brother house, which may have resulted in them not viewing him as a threat during the game or a strong competitor in the end.
"But that's my game. That's what I did," he insisted. "So at the end of the day, you guys sat there and I sat at the end. So I did my part, you guys are the ones who are out of the game."
Derek went on to reason of his loss, "The problem is the jury itself was intimidated by me because of the fact that I was loud, entertaining, always in your face, sending these people home one by one."
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"And I told them, 'You guys have to look at yourself. I told you guys to send me home. I was on the block three times, you guys could have sent me home and never did,'" he elaborated.
Derek said going into the live vote on Wednesday night's Big Brother broadcast, he expected to see one or two votes in his favor.
Derek assumed he had definitely secured a vote from Britini D'Angelo, who was part of his original "Jokers" team, as well as his buddy Kyland Young.
"I knew I was not going to get anybody else but those two," Derek said.
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On Azah Awasum's vote, Derek claimed of the third-place finisher, "I wasn't expecting Azah's vote and I didn't want it."
He explained, "The fact that Azah was willing towards the end to tell me that she's not going to vote for me after me saving her, after me protecting her, telling people, 'Hey, I'll go up as a pawn instead of Azah?'... And I felt like she was sleeping half of the time."
Derek added that Azah had a crush on Xavier and fell into his "mystical spell."
Once Derek's back was against the wall, he felt Azah failed him when they had "rolled" together since the beginning of the game.
"I don't deal with people like that," Derek noted.
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But Derek noted he doesn't have a bad thing to say about Xavier, who made history by becoming Big Brother's first African-American winner ever.
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"We came in this game Day 1, brother to brother saying we're going to work together and get to the end and we made that happen. I did a lot for him, he did a lot for me," Derek said of Xavier.
"But you know what? I'm okay with it. I'm A-okay with taking second place because like I said the other day, I wanted to come on, make my statement, be myself, have fun and make it to the end. And I did that without winning a comp."
Derek also confirmed to EW that if he had won the final HoH competition, he'd honor his Final 2 deal and take his "ride or die" ally, Xavier, to the end.
However, if the Final 2 houseguests ended up being Azah and himself in the Big Brother finale, Derek believes he probably would have won the game.
"If it was me and Azah, I think I would have gave her a little bit more of a run for her money," Derek shared.
Derek explained that he kept his expectations low during the game and so actually making it to Final 2 was exciting and a huge accomplishment in itself.
"When I made it to two, I was A-okay with the outcome because I looked at it as that, there's so much more in life and Xavier put in the work and he dealt with the same stress, the same emotion that I did," Derek said.
Derek is therefore apparently happy overall with how he played and how the season concluded.
"If I won a couple more comps, I probably would've gave [Xavier] a run for his money. But the fact that I didn't win no comps, and that jury was really big on competitions more than social, there was no way," Derek recalled.
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"So for me, I already knew walking in there what it was going to be. I just wanted my second place. And I wanted to be able to say, Hey, as me being a Black man, I made it to a runner-up of the first time in Big Brother history. And I'm A-okay with that."
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Another member of Xavier, Derek and Azah's "Cookout" alliance was Tiffany Mitchell, who was voted "America's Favorite Houseguest" and won $75,000 for the honor.
Derek's big "Cookout" alliance was also comprised of Kyland and Hannah Chaddha.
Although fans have to wait until next summer for the next edition of Big Brother, CBS is airing a new Celebrity Big Brother edition in Winter 2022.