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

Observe the cereal box osprey, in its native habitat of the Celebrity Big Brother house. Its extreme rarity has made it a one-of-a-kind occupant of the house, but its erratic behavior has put it on the endangered list for quite some time. Luckily, its unique skill set and sense of quirky positivity have led it to fly out of some sticky situations. But all that changed on Day 24 of Celebrity Big Brother 2, when after a couple of pivotal competition losses, the cereal box osprey, and its human equivalent Tom Green, went extinct.

Tom’s first impression in the house, true to his reputation, was odd, cracking jokes about complementary grapes and O.J. Simpson. But his game got off to a quick start when he was put up as one of the first nominees, with Head of Household Ryan Lochte targeting him to protect his closest ally Jonathan Bennett. The string of bad luck continued Anthony Scaramucci revealed that he was actually a fake houseguest, departing the premises and abandoning his alliance with Tom and Kato Kaelin. Fortunately, his departure released another Veto into the game, which conveniently Kato was able to win and used to remove Tom from the line of fire. The dynamic duo continued their streak as they won the next three competitions and their new positions of power allowed them to form a new group with Lolo Jones, Natalie Eva Marie, and Ricky Williams. But nothing gold can stay, and nothing Green can stay put.

Tom’s first HoH reign came with an announcement of the mysterious “Power of the Publicist,” and the actor and comedian tried to do his best Sherlock Holmes to find out who possessed it. He and Ricky had a personal beef since the beginning of the game, and paranoid that the former football player was going to turn on him and Kato down the line, he floated out the idea of backdooring him. Natalie and Lolo were appalled at what he was proposing, and when Natalie won the Veto, she kept Tom’s initial nominations the same to maintain the status quo. But the results were anything but serene, with “Tomato” going after Natalie and Lolo for not sticking with the plan, escalating into a heated war of words. Though everyone voted unanimously at the next eviction, “Team Fun” was done. Tamar Braxton nominated Tom and Kato as a display of her new allegiance with their former allies, squashing any chances of “Tomato” going to the finals. Tom was shocked when the house chose to evict Kato over him, but he made good on his second chance when his dice rolling skills got him a return engagement in the HoH bedroom. A follow-up Veto win had him holding all the power in his hands, and it seemed like Ricky’s play clock had finally run down. But Tom’s complex thinking got him to brew up a completely unanticipated move, taking Ricky down with the Veto and putting up Lolo in his place. His actions led Natalie to walk out the door, making Tom as happy as that first sip of fun coffee in the morning.

But the evening would not be done, as double eviction put Tom on the chopping block that very night next to new ally Kandi Burress. For all of his challenge prowess leading into the night, he failed to deliver on the crucial Safety and Veto competitions, keeping his bum in the nomination chair by the vote. And when it came to the most significant threat left, Tom got fingered. With two votes to evict (and one “vic to evote” from Dina Lohan), it ended his eventful time in the game.

Now out of the house, Tom talks with Parade about the rationale behind his decision to take Ricky down, the paranoid “character” he played, and who he’s rooting for come finale night.

Last night was very fast-paced with the double eviction. After you lost the Veto, was there anything you tried to do last-minute to get saved or was your eviction a foregone conclusion?

Based on the dynamics of the house, I pretty much knew I was going that when I was on the block, there’s not much of a chance that I’m staying. There wasn’t really a big campaign. I knew I had to win that competition to stay.

I want to talk about your choice to use the Veto to remove your nomination of Ricky. It was shocking to both your fellow houseguests and the audience, considering the dynamic between you two the whole season. What led you to make that decision?

I love that people reacted to that, I haven’t heard much about it. There’s a lot of complexity to that decision. First of all, between Ricky, Natalie, and Lolo, there was almost no real difference for me strategically as to which one went home. They were the trio that was targeting Kato and me. The thinking was that as the game went on, I realized Natalie was probably the stronger player than Ricky. Ricky hadn’t won many competitions. Early on, when I initially was targeting Ricky, I was expecting to have been a stronger player in the competitions. By the time we got to this point, he hadn’t really won anything, and Natalie had. By switching him out, Natalie was still my target.

The idea was that it would maybe extend an olive branch to Ricky. I do like Ricky. We played chess together; he’s a good guy. I felt by doing this, it would be a positive move. The house was also a very divided place. There was a lot of negative energy flying around. I thought a surprise move like that would put more of a positive atmosphere in the house. The other thing is that there was a desire amongst the other people in the house to evict Natalie over Ricky. Ricky was someone who I had been targeting, but Kandi and Dina wanted to evict Natalie. Part of me was thinking, “Well, really focusing on evicting Ricky might not make the most sense.” It was possible it might not have worked; I might not have had the votes. To take a shot at a guy like Ricky Williams and then miss is a pretty dangerous proposition. Considering Natalie was the stronger player on paper, it seemed like it would be a better thing to do.

I’d be lying if I didn’t say that the surprise element wasn’t something that was fun to me. I like the idea of the misdirection of it all. Honestly, I just thought it would be funny to see the look on Ricky’s face.

You did a lot of thinking and planning in your times as HoH, which garnered comments from your fellow houseguests that you were overthinking and acting paranoid. Do you think that’s accurate??

You try to have fun. I like to “perform” my role on the show. You saw I was having a lot of fun in the house at night, doing comedic antics. The idea of being a paranoid character was a little bit of a performance. When I decided I wanted to walk around the house and interview everybody to see who has the power, that to me was a fun way of interacting with everybody. I thought it would be a funny thing to do.

The thing that’s really interesting–and it’s hard to understand unless you’ve been in a competitive environment like the house where you’ve been locked away for so long–is that everyone is on edge. Everyone is a little terrified in there. I don’t think I factored that in when I wanted to talk to everyone about the power. I was thinking, “Oh this will be funny! We’re playing a game. Someone’s got a magical power; this will be a fun thing to do.” I didn’t quite realize that people were not digging me asking them about the power. It wasn’t until the next day when I realized that people were paranoid about the fact I was asking them about it.

Your game got thrown in flux from the very beginning when you got nominated, then one of your closest allies in Anthony left as a fake houseguest. How much did you have to adjust your gameplay based on those initial events?

The reality of it is that Anthony leaving really impacted the entire game for me. I invested most of those critical first days bonding with Anthony, even more than Kato. I was spending all my time with Anthony Scaramucci. I identified immediately that he was a little different than everybody else. I responded to him from a conversational level. I was on The Celebrity Apprentice with Donald Trump, so I joked that we had both been fired by the President. I liked talking politics with him; he’s a more thoughtful person than everyone else in the house. And I thought that might be the person I would want to align myself with. I really did enjoy my time talking with him; I’m looking forward to reconnecting with him in the future.

When he disappeared suddenly, now I’ve missed these critical days where everyone else has grouped off into these mini-alliances. You have Jonathan, Joey, and Ryan, as an example. Kato and I were left over, but we had spent a lot of time talking. But that worked out great! We had a great team there, Kato and I. But we were missing Anthony, so we were missing some numbers.

As you mentioned before, there was a lot of negativity going on in the house. You faced accusations of bullying and intimidation for the way you behaved as Head of Household. How do you respond to those allegations?

People threw a lot of accusations around in the house. I, of course, wasn’t doing that. Those accusations were alluding to the interview day when I was asking people about the power, and I was just having fun. People got very critical of each other, and they’d use that as a way of trying to drive a wedge in people so they could gain influence. It’s all on video; there’s no evidence of me doing anything untoward like that.

A fair amount of those remarks came from Tamar, who celebrated your eviction last night by literally dancing as you went out the door. What are your thoughts on that?

I went into this season wanting to be super positive. Even though I knew it was a competition and people were going to be up in each other’s faces, I was trying to take the high road. I would be congratulatory to people, even those who were working against me. When I walked out the door, there’s this feeling that you haven’t seen the outside world in almost a month. Everyone always wants to look into the studio from the house, and I held the door longer for them longer than anyone previously did. I wish everybody all the best. Emotions run pretty high, and I think people can get wrapped up in what’s going on, behaving in ways they otherwise wouldn’t. I didn’t know anybody outside the house, so I don’t know what they’re like in real life. But I tried to play the game.

You told Julie after leaving the house that you were rooting for Lolo going into the finale, surprising given the conflict between you two. What was your thinking behind that?

It’s really weird; I don’t even know why I said that. I think I was so surprised to be out of the house, and everything was happening so fast. All of a sudden there’s all this energy and people, and Julie’s there talking with me. I think I hadn’t quite acclimated to the fact I was doing an interview at that point. Even though I said that I don’t think it’s actually accurate. [Laughs.] That’s not who I’m actually supporting; it makes no sense if you watch the show because I just put her on the block. I would say I’m rooting for Kandi for sure.