House of Villains Winner on Not Just Being Another Baddie: "I Was the Best of Both Worlds"

E!'s House of Villains promised to bring back 10 of reality TV's most notorious baddies for a battle to see who could be the most villainous of them all. But in the end, the winner was the person who made everyone like her the best. Tanisha Thomas, infamous for her stint on the second season of Bad Girls Club, won the final vote from a jury of her peers — including a vote from her biggest enemy in the house — to take the $200,000 grand prize. In the process, she bested The Challenge's Johnny Bananas, who seemed like he had the endgame of the competition completely under his control.

Tanisha's alliance with Johnny was a big part of how she made it to the end, but with the final challenge being a jury vote of the eliminated villains, it was her relationships with the rest of the cast members and her identity as the mom of a young son that helped her vault to victory. One of the four votes cast in Tanisha's favor came from the ever-notorious Omarosa Manigault Newman, who'd spent the better part of the season in a war of words with Tanisha. Omarosa even at one point claimed that, when Tanisha invited a gospel choir into the house to perform a wake-up-the-house song, Tanisha hit her on the arm with a tambourine (video evidence of the "incident" does not appear to back that claim up). Omarosa went on to spend multiple episodes on the phone with her lawyers talking about contract language and restraining orders in a futile attempt to get Tanisha kicked out of the house.

Tanisha persevered, though, and in the end, when Bananas was given the choice to pick one player to join him in the finals, his close alliance with Tanisha compelled him to bring her along, despite the fact that he knew how popular she was in the house.

Primetimer spoke to Tanisha about her victory, her feud with Omarosa, and why she's "the best of both worlds" when it comes to being a reality TV villain.

Were you surprised that you ended up with the votes by the end? Or did you know when it came to Anfisa’s tiebreaker vote that you had it?

No, no, no, I had no idea. In the house, Johnny Bananas really set his sights on Anfisa, and Anfisa is really great at her poker face. So I couldn’t tell what was going on there. I had no idea. I definitely thought if it came down to it, she would vote for Johnny Bananas, but in the end it was crazy when she voted for me. I couldn't believe it. I'm still in shock, months later! I haven't seen the episode yet, I watch with you guys in real time, so I'll get to see it this Thursday to see what happens, but I'm sure I looked shocked, ‘cause I was.

So I have to ask: how much contact did that tambourine make with Omarosa's arm?

Well, I think the tambourine incident was a very desperate attempt for Omarosa to try to knock me off my game. She felt upstaged — she even went into the room and talked about when someone's having a moment how you steal it, Reality TV 101. Her words, not mine. And I just think that she just couldn’t take that, no matter how much she tried to rally the house against me, they just would not go for it. So, you know, desperate times called for desperate measures. But clearly Omarosa did not do her homework when it comes to me. I’m an OG out here! She really wasn't ready for my type of energy, because I'm always on go, I'm always ready. At the end of the day, she couldn't beat me so she had to join me.

Did that all stop when the cameras stopped rolling, all the talk about lawyers and such?

No, no, no, no. And as a matter of fact, a lot of it got cut out. It was intense in the house. She wanted me gone. She had set her sights on getting me out of there. The tambourine never touched her. Those people [the gospel choir] were my guests, and she inserted herself in the middle of my performance. I'm here fighting for my life trying to stay in the house. She wants to fight for a feature or collab where all she had to do was ask. So it was just a little crazy, but it went nowhere. And at the end of the day, it was my moment. It was meant for me to win.

And then she voted for you, after all of that!

After all of that! You talk about crazy.

Did she say anything to you after the fact, or did you just have to live in the mystery?

Oh no, in the moment, I don’t know if it made air, she had started to kind of turn in my favor. And we had just finished fighting, hours prior to that we had exchanged words. And I'm like "Why would you help? Why would you vote for me?" I'm like, "You don't even like me." And she goes, "I like what you stand for. I love the fact that you're a mother. I love that you're here for your son." And I believe she did tell Johnny Bananas at some point that if he allowed me to stay in the house, and it came down to a vote, she would choose me, and I think she kept her word.

It did seem like that was something the jurors held against Bananas, strategy-wise — that he kept you in when he probably should have cut you, because you were too much of a threat.

But we didn't know! We thought it was going to be a physical challenge! I thought it was going to be an obstacle course. Nobody knew what the ending result was going to be. So in Johnny Bananas’ mind, as someone who competes practically for a living, please. I'm like, this is a walk in the park for him compared to me. We didn't know. We didn't realize, oh my God, this is going to come down to a house vote with our former housemates. With our former villains at that.

You’ve talked in the past about how much of a villain you really were. Some people in the house, did they take that more seriously than others, in terms of having to live up to this idea of being a villain?

I would say "live up to" when it comes to Bobby Lytes. Baby, Bobby is the moment. [laughs] New York had her moments when she was super extra. I could be as well. I think we all have a little villain inside of us. I think just the ones that were cast have a little bit extra. [laughs]

I see that [Bananas] went and did The Traitors Season 2. Here, he's your pal from House of Villains. Is [being on The Traitors] anything you would ever want to do in the future?

You know what, coming off a show with all this drama, I told my fans, "You guys make sure you tune in to House of Villains because this will be my last television." I did say that. However… I'm going to go where the money resides. So depending on the offer, these bills are not going to pay themselves. My son don't eat air, and neither do I. [laughs]

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Joe Reid is the senior writer at Primetimer and co-host of the This Had Oscar Buzz podcast. His work has appeared in Decider, NPR, HuffPost, The Atlantic, Slate, Polygon, Vanity Fair, Vulture, The A.V. Club and more.