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ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Daniele, how did you feel watching your dad being so brutal to people?
DANIELE: Honestly, it was really hard. I had to play two games: my own game, and I had to play a game of damage control for my dad. I went around that house apologizing absolutely a million times to everybody because of the things he'd say and do. There were points where no one in the house would even look at me, because they'd be upset with him and I'd be guilty by association. How is that supposed to make me feel? I didn't do anything and I'm sorry but I'm not his parent, I'm not his mother, I'm not gonna step in. It's not my duty, it had nothing to do with me, take care of it yourself. I got to the point when I went upstairs and went off on everybody, because I was so sick of being blamed for everything he did. It wasn't me, it was him.

After you did that, you confessed in the Diary Room that that outburst was partly strategy to take the glare off yourself.
DANIELE: They didn't show the whole thing. Yes, it was strategy, but it's also your real emotions just at the right time with the right people. I'd been feeling it for absolute weeks, and I just wanted to get it out. It was perfect timing, every single person in the house was upstairs, and it was about doing it in front of everybody so everyone knew how I felt and just getting it off my chest.

Dick used the Power of Veto to save you over himself, and often said how much he wanted you to win. But in the final two, though you didn't campaign against each other, he didn't seem to be handing it over to you. Did you expect him to take a dive?
DANIELE: No.
DICK: It didn't matter who won. We both won everything. We won the whole game. It was just like, answer the questions, however the chips fall is how they fall. Am I gonna cry if my daughter wins half a million dollars? Hell no. Is she gonna cry if I win? Hell no. What's the difference? We won the game. We did something that two players aligned from the beginning have never been able to do before. And we're the best team that's played that game....

Well, you say, ''What's the difference?'' but there's a big, $450,000 difference.
DICK: But who cares?
DANIELE: Of course it's about the money, you come in wanting the money. I honestly believe nobody believes this, but the 100 percent truth is that we wanted to make the final two. We did that, we accomplished what we wanted, and at that point it didn't matter. I don't care that he won. We won, and that's all that matters.

Dick said you guys are the greatest team to ever play this game. Is that claim affected by the revelation that as America's Player, Eric only voted out Dustin instead of Dick because America ordered him to, and if it were up to him, Dick would have gone?
DICK: Am I still digesting that whole thing? Absolutely. Would I have been able to work it otherwise? Who's to say yes or no? What Eric went through the week before, he couldn't trust Dustin, no one could trust Dustin. So if it was played straight up, no one could have said if I'd have gone or wouldn't have gone. There was leverage that was played: I told Eric that he would be gone the week after I left or the week after that at the latest. Had I gone that week, and with Daniele winning the HOH as soon as I left, there was a strategy in place that would have split the votes, putting Dustin and Eric up, having Amber vote for Dustin, Jessica vote for Eric, leaving Daniele with Jen and Zach's votes controlling who stayed and who went. So if Eric did not win the POV, or someone else didn't win the POV and take him off, he would have been going home the following week. I explained that to him, and his first comment was, ''I don't respond well to threats.'' I told him it's not a threat, it's leverage; I would be a better ally than an enemy. So who's to say how the thing would have played out had the game been played straight up?

The producers clearly were hoping for a big reconciliation between you two by the end of the show, but while Daniele seemed slightly optimistic, she definitely never committed to bygones remaining bygones. What do you think your future holds now that you're out of that goldfish bowl and going back to your real lives?
DANIELE: I'm a very private person. This whole experience of being filmed 24/7 was really hard for me. There's obviously many, many things we need to discuss that happened in the past that I wasn't remotely about to bring up on national television, and have everybody know about things that have gone on between us. It's just a really hard situation, and we have been on really good terms before, and on really bad terms, and you just never know what's going to happen. With both of us trying and putting the effort in, it's definitely something, and definitely going in the right direction.

One last question for Daniele: Was your boyfriend at the finale party with Nick? Because I imagine that would have been the most awkward finale party ever.
DANIELE: [After a steely moment of silence] I'm not gonna respond to that comment.

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