Of those who came onto the bus to compete in Destination X, Christian “Biggy” Bailey was the least traveled of them all. The professional sports bettor from Tennessee found himself going toe to toe with contestants with jobs like flight attendant, pilot, and travel influencer — all careers that seemed to give a distinct advantage in a game that turned all of Europe into a game board. However, despite that disadvantage, he still made it all the way to the top three, besting nine other contestants, thanks in part to hitting the books and studying geography to prepare but also his strong social game. Biggy was a foe to no one — until that came back to bite him.
In the finale, Biggy finally learned that Rick Szabo and Peter Weber were in a secret alliance, and they conspired against him to narrowly stop him from advancing to the grand finale. Considering Biggy was one of the few people to work with Rick from the beginning, after he’d been labeled persona non grata, he was visibly devastated by the revelation. With that, he placed third in the NBC competition series.
So why didn’t Biggy see Rick’s betrayal coming, and what would he have done differently if he’d known? TV Insider caught up with Biggy Bailey to find out!
First of all, congratulations. Top 3 is a big deal. When you first joined the show, did you think you’d make it that far?
So I knew how competitive I am, and I knew going into the show how much I’d studied because look, to be honest with you, Amanda, before I got on the show, I knew nothing about Europe. The only thing I knew was that Italy looked like a boot. That’s it. I couldn’t tell you where countries were… nothing. So I studied about as hard as I could because I knew if I was the first one out, I would never hear the end of it from a lot of my friends and my family. So I studied, and just being the competitive person I am, I knew that I was gonna work as hard as possible, and I was gonna play a lot of the social games. So I was hoping I would make it far, but I mean, in a game like that, all it takes is one thing of bad info from somebody or missing a couple clues, and you’re toast. So I thought I would do well, but with it being pretty much based on the European geography, I knew I could have been in a little trouble because my knowledge wasn’t necessarily there.
So speaking of that, obviously, you hadn’t gotten to travel much before the show, but did being on it unlock your sense of wanderlust and desire to travel there?
Oh my gosh, yes. As soon as I get the opportunity to go back to Europe, I’m doing it. Actually, I was supposed to go with Ally [Bross] and Mack [Fitzgerald]. They’re gonna go back over, and they’re gonna visit all the spots that we actually went to on the show, and I was supposed to go with them. Unfortunately, something came up, but yes, I wanna go back so bad and be able to actually see things other than the inside of a bus, or the inside of blacked-out goggles. So yeah, ’cause it’s gorgeous over there. It’s just … the beauty is unbelievable. Beauty that I’ve never seen in my life, so I will definitely be making a trip back for sure.
You mentioned Ally and Mack. I understand that you guys have kept up, and you’ve also kept up with Shayne [Cureton]. Is there anybody else you’ve kept up with, and have you guys seen each other since the show?
Yeah, so Mack and Ally, they actually came in town last week. I hung out with them in Chattanooga. I saw Shayne pretty soon after filming. We all went down to New Orleans, hung out for Halloween, had some fun, and I keep up with Kim [Conner] ’cause Kim is absolutely hilarious — one of the funniest women I’ve ever met in my life, and I talk to Peter [Weber] every now and then, too. The bus was just full of so many good people. That’s what made it so hard. There’s so many good people on the bus. I wanted somebody I could hate, somebody that would be so easy to be like, “Look, dude, I’ll lie to you and I won’t even think twice about it.” That wasn’t the case. So yeah, I definitely try to keep up with as many of them as possible because just having shared that experience with them, it’s like nobody can really understand unless you’ve actually been there to experience it. So yeah, I definitely keep up with a few of them.
Speaking of being able to lie to someone’s face, you seemed really truly shocked to find out about Rick’s alliance with Peter. Shayne told me last week that he clocked it right away. What do you think it was about that she just didn’t see that?
You know, I have my blinders on to Rick. After episode one, after Josh [Martinez] outed him on the bus, I felt bad for him because nobody would talk to him, and I was really the only one that would talk to him. I don’t know if it was like the Southern compassion. I don’t know what it was, but immediately after that the blinders were on. I was like, “You know what? I’m gonna talk to this guy. I can tell he’s a good guy.” And from then on, outside of Mack and Shayne, to be honest with you, I probably talked to Rick the most. Not a lot of it was shown, but yeah, I mean, he was probably who I was closest to outside of Mack and Shayne, to be honest. So literally I had my blinders on to nobody on the show — outside of Shayne; I was gonna trust Shayne regardless — but everybody else, I was kind of like, I don’t know if I can 100% trust them, whatever. Rick, for whatever reason, I was like, “You know what? I can trust this dude 100%.” And that was my downfall. Having done this now, if I get another opportunity to do another show, I will be sure that I always am a little cautious. I’ll never just put 100% trust in anybody because that was, at the end of the day, I mean, that was my downfall, so it is what it is.
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I was gonna ask if you had known about Rick and Peter and JaNa [Craig], looking back, is there anything you would have done differently?
Yeah, wouldn’t have shared anything with Rick, from that point on, to be honest with you, ’cause we actually had — after Peter and JaNa came on the bus, and nothing against them, it was just the circumstance — we had already been on that bus for two weeks, eliminated three people and then those two come on, and we’re like, “So you’re telling me after two weeks we’ve eliminated … that’s kind of BS.” And again, nothing against them. I love them both as people, but just in the game, it was like, “Dude, this sucks.” So I brought everybody together, all the OG’s on the back of the bus. We’re all sitting around, and I was like, “Look, for now, let’s all team up, all right? Let get them going, and then we’re back to the regular game.” And everybody was, “Yep,” “in,” “in,” “in,” “in,” “in.” The only one that strayed from the plan was Rickm unfortunately, so. Had I done it over, I would have shared nothing with Rick the entire time because that was my downfall. That’s what cost me 250, so you live and you learn, Amanda.
Absolutely. You talked a lot about your grandmother and your family throughout the season. How is it that for them to watch you on the show?
Oh, they love it. Oh, they absolutely love it. I mean, they’re just eating it up. They send me pictures and clips, and it’s great. I actually had a watch party last night with all my family, all my friends. Some people got emotional, myself included, but I’m a family man. I have a very close relationship with all my family, and it’s just been awesome for them to be able to experience even a fraction of what I was able to experience. So that’s been awesome for them — just because nobody in my family has ever done anything like this. So to be able to have them experience that, kind of what I experienced, is just unbelievable. It’s awesome.
Looking back at the season, was there anything we didn’t get to see that you thought was important, or anything that you wanted to set the record straight that was on screen?
I mean, there’s a lot of things, honestly. I think a lot of my strategies in a few of the episodes… and you could kind of see it throughout the season, but I think my social games specifically — because I was safe from elimination for like five episodes in a row, I believe. So I think I played the social game pretty well, outside of that, Oh, what else, man? There’s just so much. I wish it could have shown more of our conversations — specifically, me, Kim, and Mack on the back of the bus. I’ve laughed hard a lot. I’m a laugher. I got a sense of humor, and I can laugh. The conversations I had with Mack and Kim on the back of that bus were the funniest conversations I’ve ever had in my life. I laughed harder than I’ve ever laughed. So maybe just that. And I understand you only got like 42 minutes of TV time. It is what it is, but God, we had some funny conversations and we became, God, we got so close.
Maybe you can request the footage.
God, I hope so because I’ll just sit and watch it for hours. I’ll binge all of it, I promise.