Christmas Abbott: Returning to ‘Big Brother’ was ‘traumatizing.’ Would she do it again?

If Christmas Abbott looks like she’s just come from a workout — hair pulled back in a messy bun, a black tank top, dark-colored horn-rimmed glasses — well, it’s because she has.

“It’s all bodyweight,” she says of the exercises she just did, as she settles into her chair for this Zoom call. “And people think that bodyweight is fluffy Instagram stuff. It’s not. My legs are like, ‘YOOOOOOOO! Stop shaking!’”

Abbott — the 39-year-old former professional athlete, former reality TV star, and former(-ish) North Carolina resident (we’ll explain the “ish” in a few) — explains that she had just filmed back-to-back-to-back workouts for her online fitness app. And it’s obvious where the shoot was — there’s a big softbox light against a wall behind her.

“They give you a beautiful glow,” she says, pointing out that you can see the reflection of another one in her eyeglasses. “It’s kind of like once you’re well-lit, you want to always be well-lit,” she adds, laughing. Then: “Anyway, we’re not gonna talk about lights today.”

Nope. But she has a pretty good idea of what the topics of conversation will be.

After all, in the nearly three months since Season 22 ended — since she walked out of the “Big Brother” house at the CBS Studio Center in Los Angeles having (again) gotten so close yet so far to winning the half-million-dollar prize — Abbott has been the focus of a steady stream of tabloid headlines.

Just a sampling:

“Fan Interrupts Christmas’ Instagram Live & Calls Her Racist.” “Da’Vonne Rogers Explains What’s ‘Unfortunate’ About Christmas Abbott Being ‘Ignorant.’” “Memphis Garrett, Christmas Abbott spotted together in Florida.” “Big Brother’s Memphis Garrett and Christmas Abbott Are Dating.”

After last summer/fall’s “All-Stars” season ended (but before it was revealed that she was officially in a relationship with Garrett, who she met upon entering the house), CBS twice scheduled the Observer for interviews with Abbott that failed to materialize.

In fact, she almost entirely avoided the media, opting instead to control her message via Instagram Live broadcasts and — in December, after she and Garrett came out as a couple — by appearing on separate podcasts co-hosted by fellow “All-Stars” houseguests Nicole Franzel and Nicole Anthony.

But on this particular Wednesday morning, she’s ready to talk. And it’s clear, practically from the start, that she’s ready to talk even about sensitive subjects.

‘A very turbulent relationship’ no more

Prior to walking into the “Big Brother” house last summer, for the second time since 2017, Abbott had been in Raleigh for more than 10 years. Her son Loyal, born in October 2018, lived with her full-time, while Loyal’s father, Ben Bunn, resided in Tampa, Florida.

Now, Abbott and Bunn have a bit of a, um, history.

There’s certainly a lot more to the story, but these are the basics: When Abbott was eight months pregnant, she allegedly drove to a gym to confront a woman Bunn had been seeing, Samantha Morse, and repeatedly rammed her car into Morse’s following a fight in the parking lot. Abbott was arrested and later pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor offense.

But in the first few minutes of our interview, Abbott explains that Loyal had been staying with Bunn in Tampa while she was on the show, that she went straight to Tampa after leaving the “Big Brother” house 85 days ago, and that she’s currently living with Bunn’s mother and co-parenting with Bunn — who lives half a block away, with Morse.

“Coming home from ‘Big Brother’ really, really made me want to bring my family together as much as I possibly can,” Abbott says, “and since I’m a little bit more mobile than he is, I made that sacrifice. And it’s not a sacrifice. It’s a plus for me. So yeah, we both were like, ‘Hey look ... we’re gonna be in it together for the rest of our lives, so let’s be who we know that we can be for each other.”

“To go from a very turbulent relationship on all accounts,” Abbott continues, “to where ... he takes Loyal to daycare in the morning, I pick Loyal up in the afternoon, we sit down for about a half an hour every evening and recap Loyal’s day and just catch up (on) all things Loyal, and then we repeat the next day, we take him to the park on the weekends — for us to go from that crazy little whatever-that-was to being able to legitimately and beautifully co-parent ... I’m really proud of that progress.”

She adds: “That incident was a very isolated incident for both of us. We both were just in a very different place. I had all kinds of crazy hormones going through — and I’m not justifying what I did. I did what I did. He did what he did. All parties involved owned up to their participation. Which, when you’re working with an adult — and they’re actually being an adult — then this is how you grow, right?”

Abbott says that if she hadn’t been invited back to “Big Brother,” she would still be living in North Carolina. She says she’ll return to Raleigh eventually, but has no immediate plans to leave Florida.

Of course, Loyal and her desire to co-parent harmoniously with her ex isn’t the only thing keeping her there.

Her new man lives there, too.

‘Reverse-engineering’ a relationship

At the time he and Abbott went into the house together last summer, they both had been in relationships with other people for a few months.

It’s worth noting, though, that Garrett gave a pre-season interview in which he said he hoped one of the returning “All-Stars” would be Abbott, believing they would get along and admitting she was attractive.

Sparks did end up flying. It’s just that fans didn’t really get to see them.

“There wasn’t even flirting,” Abbott says. “There was just a little bit of like chemistry, energy, in the very beginning. So I was like, mmm, he needs to stay away. I can have him in my alliance, but keep him away. Because we were both dating somebody on the outside world, and those relationships were like very new. Regardless, we wanted to respect and honor our partners and ourselves and each other. That’s the kind of people we normally are, (when we’re) not on Big Brother. So nothing happened in the house. We just had really great conversations. ... He ended up becoming my best friend.”

“Now, when we got out of the house,” she continues, “there were definitely some feelings happening. But it’s kind of like beer goggles. You don’t know if it’s the situation, or if that’s real real. We needed to get out of the house, reconnect with our lives, then let the dust settle and see if this was ... just Big Brother goggles. Over a pretty short time, we figured out that we really enjoyed each other’s company.”

As she explains it, they “reverse-engineered” their relationship. They built trust and friendship and learned how to communicate first, then started dating, instead of the other way around.

They came out as a couple just over a month after the season ended.

Like Abbott, Garrett — a 38-year-old restaurateur who was also making his second run at “Big Brother” (he was first cast on the show 12 years ago) — also has a son. He and his ex-wife co-parent River, age 5, in Fort Lauderdale.

Though Fort Lauderdale and Tampa are nearly four hours apart by car, Abbott said last month on the “Hello, Friends!” podcast that “we see each other frequently. Every week.”

But now let’s turn to the former fellow houseguests she hasn’t seen or spoken with since they left the show.

On the issue of race

“I have reached out to both Da’Vonne and to Bailey ... in multiple ways, and I haven’t had a response back,” Abbott says. “That’s their right, and honestly that’s fine. I would still love to hear from them so I can hear their experience, and I can understand even more.”

If you’ve made it this far, you’re probably a “Big Brother” fan and you probably already know the backstory surrounding Abbott’s famous fight with Da’Vonne Rogers and Bayleigh Dayton a little over a month into the season.

But, a quick refresher, because it is complicated:

Abbott, as head of household, had said prior to nominating Rogers and Dayton for eviction that she wondered if she would be “shot” or “cut” if she indeed nominated them. Because Rogers and Dayton are Black, fans widely viewed those comments to be loaded with racial connotations. Microaggressions, at least.

Then she nominated them.

The nominations did not appear to be malicious, but the optics weren’t fantastic, given the national conversation on race that was taking place last summer, combined with the fact that “Big Brother’s” producers have historically seemed lax in addressing bias. (During the most recent season, four out of 16 total contestants were Black; in 22 seasons, the show has never crowned a Black winner.)

Anyway, later that week, Abbott, Rogers and Dayton had an explosive argument, with Dayton at one point arguing that if she had erupted like Abbott did, “I would be labeled a ghetto ass Black.”

It was ugly.

“Quite frankly, completely honestly, it did not cross my mind,” Abbott says when asked whether she thought about how it might look to be targeting the only two Black women in the house. “The race or the gender — I’m gonna go ahead and include gender here — the race or gender of my nominees ... it was not (about that) at all.”

She says she was nominating them simply because they gave her information that led her to believe that they would be coming after the houseguests she was aligned with.

Abbott also says she thinks people are not seeing the bigger picture: “I was working with David (Alexander, who is Black) for the entire time. I was also working with Kevin (Campbell, who is half Black and half Japanese) for the entire time. I tried to flip the vote to keep David. So what I don’t understand is why are we only looking at this one moment, that actually was not a race issue?”

“Now we look at the aftermath, OK, I can see where that was perceived,” she continues. “But I don’t care if it was anybody else — if you’re coming after me or my alliance and you tell me, then I’m gonna put you up. And I did put other people up. You know? I also tried to work with Kaysar (Ridha, who is Muslim) on a regular basis. So we’re ignoring all of these other little things, and we’re using this as your example. We’re like, ‘We’re gonna make an example out of you. And this is why.”

But, Abbott says, “I want to learn more, and I have been in a process. I want to be able to be a contributor to equal rights, for race and gender, and economics. That is important to me.

“So this has been a hard lesson. I’m trying to see where this is supposed to lead me.”

And one does have to wonder: Will it lead her back to “Big Brother” again?

Second time? ‘Much more challenging.’

The first time Abbott was on the show, in 2017, she broke 10 bones in her foot, dislocated four toes and severed ligaments when fellow houseguest Jason Dent slipped and fell while running around with Abbott on his back.

It happened on Day 13, but she lasted another 11 weeks and ended up finishing third.

“When I broke my foot ... it was tough in the beginning, but then emotionally, I just shut down,” Abbott says. “I blocked it out. I dealt with what I needed to deal with in the game, and that was fun, ’cause I didn’t have somebody at home. I didn’t have a child.”

By contrast, her second season was much tougher — because this time, she did.

“I made that commitment, and I had to remind myself that I wanted to do ‘Big Brother’ this season because I wanted to see where I would get with a full working body. And two, this was for my family.”

But, she says, “Emotionally before I was in that house I was breaking down. The day that I had to leave Loyal was traumatizing. It was actually so emotionally disturbing that I had a nightmare about being separated from him every single night from the day that I left until when I won HOH — and then they came back two weeks later.

“Almost for three solid months I had a nightmare every single night. That, as a parent, when you can’t have contact with your child, or even just know that everything’s OK, it wrecks you. It consumes you.

“So this time was like tenfold much, much more challenging and difficult,” she says — also because she knew better what to expect this time.

“First time you’re like, ‘OK, I can handle this. ... I got it.’ Second time, you know what to dread. That down time. That in-your-head time. That knowing that people aren’t gonna be honest and truthful to you. And that ultimately you’re fighting to be the last person there. That’s some pretty heavy stuff to willingly walk into. Social isolation — as the world is experiencing — is emotionally tough already. And then to not have any information about your family at all? Wooooo.”

So would she go back into that house a third time, if asked?

“Oh yeah,” Abbott says, smiling. “It scares the living bejesus out of me to say that. But yeah.”

“(Some) people are like, ‘I’m never doing that again.’ I’m like, ‘Cool. I’m gonna go. I’m gonna do it again.’ ‘Big Brother,’ when you have an All-Stars again, give me a call — ’cause I’ll win this time.”