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Da’Vonne Rogers Explains Why She Gave Nicole Franzel The Winning ‘Big Brother’ Vote Instead Of Paul

By Victoria Miller
Published on: 06:06 PST, Sep 22, 2016

Da’Vonne Rogers somehow became the deciding vote for the winner in the Big Brother 18 finale, and now she’s getting hit with some backlash over the fact that she voted for Nicole Franzel to win the show’s $500,000 jackpot instead of her boy, Paul Abrahamian.

In an interview posted by Rob Has a Podcast host Rob Cesternino, Da’Vonne explained that she originally thought the Final 2 was going to be Paul and James Huling. If that had been the case, Rogers says, she would have given her vote to Paul.

Instead, when Paul decided to bring Nicole to the Final 2, Da’Vonne did a switch-up and voted for the Big Brother veteran, whom she admits she doesn’t actually like.

“I didn’t want to vote bitter,” Rogers explained. “I wanted to vote better. And she played a great game—from on the inside. I don’t know what the outside looked like.”

In a separate backyard interview posted by CBS All Access, Da’Vonne defended her decision to vote for Nicole.

“She played a hell of a game … I thought more people were going to vote for her. I was shocked that so many people voted for Paul. I tell people that Big Brother is not a popularity contest, and even though [Paul was fun], she played a hell of a game.”

Rogers made it clear that while she was previously angry at Abrahamian for putting her on the block the week that she was evicted from the game, she later forgave him and his HOH move didn’t play into her decision.

While her key was just one out of nine in the Big Brother finale box, Da’Vonne Rogers has had to deal with the most viewer backlash over her vote, which cost Abrahamian the game and put him in second place with the $50,000 runner-up prize, a fraction of the winnings that Nicole received.

Some viewers feel that Abrahamian was robbed of the Big Brother grand prize and that Da’Vonne Rogers is to blame. Others are questioning why Da’Vonne said she didn’t want to see Paul in the jury, then went and gave her vote to his opponent anyway.

But Da’Vonne took to Twitter to tell fans that Paul lost the game for himself when he foolishly decided to take Nicole to the Final 2 instead of James. Rogers also pointed out that she is being unfairly blamed, reminding Big Brother fans that if host Julie Chen had pulled out her key first instead of last, that person would have been the deciding vote instead of her.

Of course, it doesn’t help that the Final 2 houseguests consider Da’Vonne’s vote to be the decider. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly Radio, Abrahamian said he was most surprised by Rogers’ decision to choose Nicole, which he didn’t see coming at all.

“I was a little bit shocked,” Paul said of the final results, which was 5-4 in Nicole’s favor.

“I was really shocked by Da’Vonne’s vote. I didn’t really understand why she did that. I know she didn’t necessarily like Nicole throughout the game and even though she went out on my HOH, it was discussed that it was what the entire house wanted.”

The jury’s Q&A session with the Final 2 houseguests may have been what did the BB18 front-runner in. In a post-show interview with Zap2It, Franzel said she heard that Da’Vonne may have favored her Q&A answers, and it may have been enough for her to flip her vote at the last minute even though they were never Big Brother besties.

“[Paul] is so smart and so good at speaking, if you can’t tell by his speech, but his speech he had time to prepare and the Q&A he didn’t,” Franzel explained. “But I did hear that [Da’Vonne] switched her vote after the Q&A and speeches, so maybe that is how I won.”

No matter how it unfolded, Da’Vonne’s surprising vote proves once and for all that in the game of Big Brother, you must always expect the unexpected.

You can see Da’Vonne Rogers talking about why she voted for Nicole to win Big Brother at the 53:45 mark in the video below.

[Featured Image by CBS]

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