(Courtesy of CBS)

Celebrity Big Brother has hit the scene! After every eviction, Parade’s Mike Bloom interviews the latest celebrity to leave the Big Brother house.

“Expect the unexpected” is a motto attributed to Big Brother since its earliest days. But the credo doesn’t just apply to the show’s infamous twists, one of which viewers can currently vote for to change up the upcoming Veto competition. But it also refers to how the houseguests (or “housegates,” according to Mark McGrath) should be prepared for their friends one day to become their enemies on another.

On paper, actress and poker player Shannon Elizabeth would be the best person to sense these shifting tides and move accordingly. As a devotee of the show and someone who utilizes strategy in her everyday life, she was ready to come in with weapons blazing and take on a game she’s eagerly anticipated playing. But perhaps she did not expect the gear her opponents were walking in with as well, as her competition and strategic prowess in the first week put a target on her back that led to a delayed plan to get her out of the house, finally coming to fruition after 17 days in the house.

Though Shannon created a charity against the poaching of elephants and rhinoceros in the wild, she was ready to tear through the game like a lion, hoping to mimic the hardcore gameplay, but the easy-going attitude of the show’s infamous “Chilltown” alliance. In true Chilltown fashion, she immediately sought a partner as soon as she walked through the door. Though she had an ingrained relationship with Marissa Jaret Winokur and a shared superfan status with Ross Mathews, she surprisingly chose notorious reality TV villainess Omarosa Manigault. Moving quickly, the two assembled an alliance of the female houseguests before the first Head of Household competition even happened. Perhaps if the allegiance had not been formed, she wouldn’t have felt as compelled to hang onto her statue, determined to bring home the win for her group. Her primary motivator for winning was the sole male hanging on and not “Falling” anytime soon, James Maslow. Shannon eventually won the first pot of the HoH key, and her alliance decided James would become the target. But one wild community card suddenly got thrown in: a power to recast the Head of Household via the gift bags the celebrities had been given. Chuck Liddell decided to open his bag to try to get the power on behalf of the guys, but Shannon and her group mounted a counter-strike, forcing a random chip draw that ended up with things staying in the women’s side of the court. Despite a change of hands, new Head of Household Keshia Knight Pulliam stuck to the plan and put up James and Chuck, the latter of whom had now been targeted for his gift bag grabbiness. Despite being in power, Shannon felt her alliance still had “responsibilities” to maintain the status quo, and so she broke franchise records by crushing the traditional spelling Veto competition. Though she held all the cards, she still felt wary of the people she was sitting at the table with, especially when Omarosa and Keshia came to her with a plan to remove Chuck and put up Mark after he showed his hand in telling them he would remove James with the Veto. Fearing Shannon would anger yet another member of the opposition, she chose not to use the Veto. But she still had her eyes on the twosome within her alliance and, fearing they would soon defect and were recruiting Chuck as an ally, she helped flip the house by bringing James into a final four alliance with her, Marissa, and Ross. Though Keshia had taken the HoH position from her, Shannon showed she was the one still in charge, as her gambit worked and she got the UFC fighter out of the game.

When Ross bowled over the competition to win the next Head of Household competition, Shannon was ecstatic. She had indeed made waves with Omarosa, Keshia and Metta World Peace, who were all blindsided by Chuck’s eviction. She didn’t improve her image to her former final two partner when she coached her allies on how to take Omarosa out of the challenge. When Omarosa had to leave the house temporarily for medical attention, she affirmed the plan to go after them with her new majority. Ross went along with it, nominating Keshia and Omarosa against each other. But Shannon had no idea there was a backdoor brewing, as Brandi Glanville and Ariadna Gutierrez went to him with an idea to get rid of Shannon after she had presented herself as such an active player in the first half of the game. The Drag Race judge ruminated over making a big move against one of his closest allies, all while Shannon thought her place in the game was as sweet as apple pie. When Marissa won the Veto, the stars seemed to align (quite literally) to go through with blindsiding her. But it was Keshia who pulled off the surprise, urging them to call an audible on the plan and instead evict her. With her breast milk supplies depleting, so did her chances of winning, as the rest of the house complied with her wishes and sent her to take care of her child. Shannon had dodged a bullet without realizing it, and despite a strong breeze blowing against her in both the house being against her and the giant fans outfitted with faces to boot, she put in an admirable effort in the next golfing-based Head of Household competition. But it was ultimately Ariadna who took the crown, and with Ross and Marissa’s true final four alliance in power once more, they decided not to let the opportunity to evict their desired target slip again. Shannon had meanwhile kept stock in her alliance at the beginning of the previous round; but when she saw Omarosa acting chummy with her supposed allies, as well as everyone’s sketchy behavior in response to her questions, she began to see the writing on the wall. Her predictions were confirmed when she was nominated directly against James, and the superfan fell into a superfunk, despondent that she had been deceived for so long and was primed to go. After Shannon was kept in the dark for so long, it was only natural that she would do well during her time at Chez Noir in the Veto competition. But despite yet another admirable performance, James proved to be the big blind, saving himself and putting Mark up in his place. She tried admirably to paint herself as a free agent to anyone that would pick her up. But everyone thought she was far too threatening to take her off the waiver wire, with everyone except Brandi voting her out.

Now out of the house, Shannon talks with me about her momentous relationship with Omarosa, how difficult it is to separate emotions from strategy, and who she gave a Big Brother lecture to before leaving.

Suffice it to say, you went through a spectrum of emotions this past week. Now that you’re out of the house, how are you feeling?

I haven’t seen the episodes, obviously. But a lot of people have been filling me in. Just being outside, seeing sunlight, breathing fresh air, and getting a Starbucks, has made a world of difference. The show can’t portray the fact that we didn’t get to see the sun for the last seventeen days. There was no backyard to hang out in to get that fresh air and clear our heads. So we were really locked in that house, and it becomes a real pressure for emotions. It was like being in a fishbowl with no windows.

A fishbowl with one big window where you can’t look out, but everyone else can see in.

Yeah. And I’ve been behind the walls before, so I know exactly what it looks like from the other side. And it’s odd. It’s so strange to think that there’s somebody a couple of feet from the other side of the wall staring at us.

So you just mentioned how you’ve been behind the scenes, and that ties into how much of a superfan you are of the show. We saw you extremely saddened after your nomination, even contemplating giving up on the game. Does part of that come from a sense of disappointment from both yourself and others outside of the house, since you know the game so well?

I felt like I was disappointing a lot of people. I was disappointing myself; I was disappointing the people that helped me in watching me get ready for the show. I didn’t know if the fans were receiving me well or bad. It was hard to say from that angle. It was just disappointing because I wanted to experience the classic game that I saw in every season. When I saw the Veto with the spelling, I was like, “(Moans.) I know this game. I love this game!” I was so excited before I even started that I was going to get to play it. The one game that I had in my head that I really wanted to play was the wall, which is what they played last night. I was even trying to pull some heart strings before the eviction. We had figured out that was what it was going to be. I said, “Guys, this is the one thing I really wanted to play!” I tried to play every angle in there, and nothing worked with them.

Let’s talk about those angles. On the show, Ross warned his alliance about the bombs you were going to drop after James won the Veto. Those bombs were in the form of you targeting the pairs in the game. What was your intent behind that?

Because that’s how the game’s played! If you leave a pair working together, how do you separate them? As a single person in there, you don’t want to team up with a pair, because if you’re in the final three, you’re out unless you win that final challenge. In classic Big Brother, everyone knows you break up the pairs early. You don’t let them get to the end. I was trying to remind people of that because a lot of people in there just didn’t know the game. That was hard, teaching them the game as they went. (Laughs.)

Do you think having a good amount of people in the house who had only seen the show a little or not at all helped or hindered your game?

It helped me to know the game, but it hindered me that there were people who didn’t know the game. If everyone in there knew the game, then it would be easier to play it. In poker, I like to play the pros more than the beginners. You don’t know what the beginners are going to do because they don’t know the game. But if you play the pros, you know what they’re supposed to do. You can read how they’re reading you. But there’s beginner’s luck; they just throw stuff against the wall and seeing if anything sticks. They don’t know what they’re doing, so that makes it very hard.

Speaking towards those super fans, do you feel that Ross and Marissa were right in targeting you, especially so early on?

I kept saying that I felt they were giving me way too much credit. I only won two challenges. Ross won one, Marissa won one, Ari won one. I only [have] one more than you guys. Plus, we hadn’t even gotten to the challenges where I think they were really going to excel: memory, true/false, remembering numbers in the house. That was their thing. I kept saying to them, “You guys, that’s not my thing. When we get to that, I’m not going to be very good at that. It’s good for me to team up with you because I can help you with strength and you’ll help me with memory.” I didn’t expect them to turn that early; I didn’t think they would. Having James and me playing on their side for them seemed like a really great scenario to me. Except for the fact that, if we did get down to the final four, they could easily get pushed out. I had it in the back of my mind that they must know that. For them to go up against James and me in a final four would be tough. But I thought we would get further than we did.

So did you have every intention of sticking to that final four alliance? If so, who were you eyeballing as your final two partner?

There weren’t a lot of people I minded sitting next to in the end, if I got to the finals. I was sticking to it. I was trying to be a team player this whole time. If it was me, James, Ross, and Marissa, I wanted to sit next to James in that group. Ross and Marissa had such a strong social game, and it would be everyone in the house we kicked out who was voting. But James didn’t have a good social game! (Laughs.) I would be playing better against James in that final two than Ross and Marissa.

Let’s rewind and go back to the very beginning of the game. It’s safe you to say you and Omarosa had an eventful relationship in your time in the house, beginning when you make this alliance with her. What caused you to want to join up with her?

She sought me out. She pulled me aside and said, “We’ve got to stick together, let’s work together. I know you’re a fan, I’m a fan.” You want to keep your enemies close. I saw how she came out on stage. She was definitely going to be a force to be reckoned with, and I would rather that force be on my side than against me. When people ask you to be in an alliance in that house, you don’t say no. (Laughs.) If you say no, then they know you’re working with someone else, and they’re going to come after you. So you have to say yes. But as the days went on, I could feel that she had already turned on me and was lying to me with the stuff with Keshia. I threw out a few questions that I knew the answers to see how she would answer, and she lied to me. So I knew that was over anyway.

What did you make of her goodbye message to you, where she seemed very gracious and apologetic?

The thing with Omarosa is she has her character, her persona for TV. She’s made a whole career of being this reality show villain. So she plays into that. She would talk about how one of her mentors would say, “You never go out on stage without a full face, fully done-up, and fully in character.” That’s what she was doing. So when she would take her makeup off, take the big dresses off, and let her guard down, she’s actually a very sweet girl. She’s a minister, and she’s married to a pastor. There has to be good in there; there’s not just this character. She was one of only a few people who had her Bible in there. I know she was reading it yesterday because I kept walking by the room and she was reading it out loud. She kept saying to me, “When this is over, I still want us to hang out. I still want us to go to Thailand together. I still want to see you. You’re a great girl.” It was in those moments where I felt like I was seeing the real her. She didn’t have to say that. She’s definitely got these two sides, and the real girl that she keeps trying to hide from the world is the girl that I think the world would really embrace.

On the note of your eviction, what did you think about Brandi being the only person not to vote to evict you?

I figured they had a conversation about somebody throwing me a vote because they felt sorry for me. But it doesn’t mean anything. There were two people who I felt my emotions kind of bothered; they felt really bad that I was upset. And that was Brandi and Metta. I figured the more I could play up to that and make them feel bad, maybe they would consider keeping me.

What was your thinking behind flipping the house to get rid of Chuck in the first eviction? I know you’ve seen seasons where people have made big moves early on and paid for it later. You never want to go full Devin, Shannon!

Well, Devin went a little crazy! (Laughs.) Devin wasn’t about flipping. Devin was losing his mind in the house, I remember. I didn’t feel like that was what was happening. I felt like there was an alliance going on behind our backs which seemed like Keshia, Omarosa, and Chuck. We all had a meeting, and Keshia specifically said, “Nobody alert the guys as to what we want to do.” She wanted me to use the Veto, so she was like, “When we use the Veto, I want to see the look on their faces. Because they won’t be expecting it. I want to put Mark up to teach him a lesson. We’re not getting rid of him, but I just want to scare him.” Then she went behind that and had a conversation with Chuck after we all promised her we wouldn’t talk to Chuck. That’s the reason. We did what she said, and she didn’t do what she said. She didn’t stick to it, so there’s something shady going on. If we get rid of James, he could be a potential ally on our side, and we’re keeping an enemy on the other side. Why are we doing that? That’s why I went everyone and said, “Look, if we do it the other way around, there are fewer numbers on the other side against us, and we’ll gain a strong ally.” That’s why we flipped it.

Let’s talk about the previously-mentioned emotional aspect of the game. On paper, you would think someone of your experience would merely say, “Game respects game,” but things did not seem to be that way when you were in the house. How difficult was it for you to separate your emotions from your gameplay?

What was hard for me was that I didn’t have a friend in the house to be my outlet. Everybody was paired up. If Ross was upset, he could just sit with Marissa somewhere and let out his emotions to just her, and vice versa. I didn’t have anybody in the house like that. Metta and I had a great long conversation the night before I left. In that conversation, I revealed everything that had happened in the game to him. I had nothing to lose at that point, so I’m like, “Here’s what happened, here’s why we flipped. Here’s the stuff you’re going to have to do without me here. Let me teach you the game and Big Brother 101 as quick as I can. I didn’t have that person, so it was hard. Even at the moment, I would sit there and feel a tear coming down my face. I had no one to talk to. Then I would remember that people could see me and I needed to pull it together. So I kept trying to bottle up it, even though it didn’t really look like I was doing a good job. There was a lot more that wanted to come that I kept trying to hold in. That becomes really difficult.

You had a bit of a tempestuous relationship with Big Brother this past week, saying at one point that you regretted your time in the house and wouldn’t be able to watch the show again. Overall, has this been a dream come true for you?

It was so much fun. I was very lucky in that I think I got to do every challenge. Some people in there haven’t played a Veto yet, and I got to play every Veto. Even the second HoH, I shouldn’t have been able to play because I won the first one, but with that twist, I still got to. For me, that was the fun part. The hard part was the social aspect and all the downtime we had. There were days upon days where we would get up early, and there’d be absolutely nothing to do except cook and take a nap. Not being able to go outside and get sunshine and air made it harder. So that is a very difficult aspect of the game. But the game part was incredible; it was so much fun.

You have such a strong sense of gamesmanship. Who do you think at this point is positioned to go all the way?

I mean, Metta’s doing a great job staying out of everything. (Laughs.) Every week, he asks to go home. Now finally, he’s not changing his strategy, but he’s actually playing. He and I talked about the scenario of him going home last night in my place. He had actually said to me, “I would give up my spot for you because this is your dream and I don’t even want to be here.” In the end, the girls wouldn’t let him go because they wanted me to go. That’s the thing. Nobody’s letting him leave because there are larger targets in the house. So Metta’s going to win this because you’re not letting him leave! The plan originally was to let him go third. But I think getting that message from our loved ones last night, his wife was like, “Baby, you need to win this.” So I said, “Metta, did you hear that? Now you need to stay, play, and win.” I think it really helped him to see and hear her. So I hope he goes all the way.