‘The Challenge: USA’: Alyssa L. on That One Vote That Sent Her Into Elimination & ‘Messy’ ‘Big Brother’

It only took one vote to send Alyssa Lopez home in The Challenge: USA Season 2.

In “Operation Hat Trick,” named after the vets’ big move, the focus turned from vets vs. rookies to Big Brother vs. Survivor. After Green Team won the daily and nominated Chris Underwood and Cassidy Clark for elimination, Johnny “Bananas” DeVenanzio, Tori Deal, Josh Martinez, Cory Wharton, and Faysal Shafaat put five names (Lopez, Sebastian Noel, Chanelle Howell, Tiffany Mitchell, and Desi Williams) in a hat and randomly picked one as their votes. That was the only vote for Lopez, but her ball came out of the hopper, and so she faced off against Clark and lost in Block Heads. (Each was locked in a cage that had to be maneuvered around the arena to pick up flags. Those flags then revealed a code to unlock the cage.)

Below, Lopez talks about that loss, why she wants to take time off from The Challenge: USA, and more.

It only took one vote, from Tori, to send you into elimination. Did you have any idea about the vets’ hat trick or involvement in messing with the votes at that point or by the time you left?

Alyssa Lopez: No, I thought it was a Survivor girl. I was trying to think of strategically what was the best, because just me, I like the strategic part of this game. I thought it was Michele [Fitzgerald] or Chanelle, but I did not think they were going to put names on pieces of paper.

Let’s talk about the Big Brother vs. Survivor of it and that switch from it being rookies vs. vets as the focus. What exactly happened? Is there anything you think you could’ve done to protect yourself once that happened?

It was when Chris came back because he made it very apparent this is not Big Brother. It’s like there’s always that stigma of Big Brother of being that people that are lying and sneaky when literally everyone’s doing that. So I think Chris coming back and making it apparent that he wants Monte [Taylor] and Tyler [Crispen] out was kind of when that divide slowly started. And we did have a little Big Brother meeting because we saw Survivor always meeting and we were like, “Wait a second, all of them are still here. We should probably do something about that.” So I think this game is a lot about adapting, and every time someone leaves, you think about the next challenge, the next elimination. You just are always thinking of something new and anything can change.

Switching to that elimination, it was a tough one and aligning the cage at each step was what really seemed to matter. Talk about going against Cassidy, and is there anything you think you could’ve done differently to beat her? There’s only so much you could do with that cage.

Yeah, I mean, I’m 100 pounds, so I’m really not going to be rocking crates around. But I think if I would’ve gotten the hang of my maneuvering sooner, I think I could have at least matched the time she got there or got there sooner because it shows that she gets three flags by the time I get only one or two because I was having a really hard time with my weight being able to roll these things. So then I just started throwing my body into it, and my whole body was falling in these crates. And by the time I caught up to her — because she couldn’t reach the screen — I was having that same problem she was having. I couldn’t reach the screen. Once I caught up, I understood how to move it. I think if I would’ve gotten that a little sooner, I may have had more time to figure out how to reach the screen.

Jonne Roriz, courtesy of Paramount

And one of my [flags] ripped, because you’ll see us reaching to try to reach it on there and hers are all square and my flag is just ripped up. I couldn’t even really reach it or see it.

For the daily, do you think you would’ve been better off not stopping when you were in the lead at another puzzle station?

I think it’s hard because usually if you have more people on your team, that’s a good thing. But this time around we had the worst case scenario. We had the most people, and the crates were proportioned based off your weight, and we had people like Fessy and Bananas and Chris. Those things were really heavy. So strategically it made sense for us to try to drop off two or three because we had so many. But looking back, seeing how Green Team did it, we probably could have at least caught up or been a little closer than we were and maybe could have won.

Is there anything that didn’t air that you think fans should know about? From the daily, the elimination, any conversations? Not even necessarily from this episode?

I wish they showed me and Alyssa Snider‘s friendship a little more because I felt like she was my little sidekick and she always came to me for advice. Any move I made, she would back and do it, and she was a great person to have. I think me leaving, she definitely was hurt because I was that voice for her on our team or just in the house in general.

If you’d won, would you have defected or stayed with Blue?

Stayed with Blue because Blue is the best team as of right now. I had a lot of friends on Green, so I know Green would never vote for me, and Red is chaos. So for my own mental health, I would’ve went back to Blue.

[Also], Blue has majority of Survivor people because first of all, I have Tori and Bananas, who I went after, on my team, and then I have Chris, Sebastian, Desi, and Cassidy on my team. That’s a lot of Survivor people. So I’d rather be on that team because when they’re safe, I’m safe, and they can’t vote me in because I’m on their team.

Jonne Roriz, courtesy of Paramount

Do you think Big Brother needs to switch gears somewhat in strategy because of what’s going on?

I think what’s hard is there’s a lot of Big Brother people, but some of them are MTV as well. We have Josh and Fessy, and it’s like we don’t know where their heads are at. And the thing is, Big Brother can never just stick together. I feel like Survivor has a better way of doing that and kind of hiding behind other people’s moves, and Big Brother, we get cast being loud and being these personalities. So if Big Brother can just stick together, then I think they have a really good shot. But a lot of the times, we’re a little messy.

Two of the Big Brother people were part of that hat trick!

Exactly. And notice how no Survivor person was in there. So it’s like we don’t really have true, loyal Big Brother people on our side.

And we saw Bananas voted for Faysal.

And Fessy’s in there with them all. I don’t know. Again, Big Brother is just a mess, and you can’t move forward if not all your people want to together. So it’s hard when Survivor is all rookies other than Michele and Desi, but they’re like core Survivor, and we have some Big Brother people that would rather be with the vets.

Would you do another season of The Challenge: USA?

Yes, but I think I would take a break because last season, I really trained physically. I really wanted to prove it to myself. Any house I go in for the show, I’m always going to be the smallest girl. So I feel like I really trained last season. This season, I did not at all. I didn’t mentally prepare. I didn’t physically train and prepare because my business really took a lot of my time. So I would want to be in a position in my life where I have my business managed well and I can also have that time to train and be mentally prepared because I don’t want to just jump into it just to jump into it because of the FOMO of it. I’d rather be prepared to go.

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How do you feel about that hopper considering it’s how you got sent into elimination?

Yeah, it’s funny because the way I go out, I would rather, than get voted in or get five hopper balls because it’s like I leave and I wasn’t doing anything strategically wrong. Out of the five eliminations, I had one vote last episode and one vote two episodes ago. There’s people that are getting four votes, five votes, six votes. I literally only had two votes out of five elimination. So strategically, I was doing something right, and if I would’ve left because I was voted in like how Amanda was voted in — nine balls or whatever it was — I would’ve been like, damn, what could I have done differently? This time around, it’s like I literally couldn’t have done anything different than crossing extra fingers to make my luck not be as bad as it always is. So it was kind of like it’s bad luck, and that it is what it is.

Because the elimination was very much one of strategy, if you could have chosen someone to face off against, who would it have been?

I’m literally the smallest girl in the house. Anyone would have an advantage going against me. Tiff’s a little smaller, but I wouldn’t have wanted to go against Tiff, you know what I mean? So if I had to choose who I think would’ve been a fair shot, maybe me and Tiff, but no matter what, I’m the smallest girl any elimination or challenge I go into.

So is there an elimination from this season that we’ve already seen that you would’ve rather done?

The first was that dunk one — oh God, no. The second one — absolutely not. Imagine me against Tori in that, can you imagine? Maybe Bananas and Paulie [Calafiore]’s. I’m pretty good at cornhole, so I feel like I would’ve hit the target well, and I can keep my arm up for a while, so maybe that one.

The Challenge: USA, Thursdays, 10/9c, CBS (and Sundays, 9/8c, through August 27)