Here for the showmance! Big Brother stars Kyland Young and Alyssa Lopez are just some of Derek Xiao and Claire Rehfuss’ biggest supporters after Us Weekly broke the news of their off-screen romance earlier this month.
Derek, 24, and Claire, 25, had a connection while living under the same roof during season 23 of CBS’ reality series — but it wasn’t until they were evicted and sent to the jury house that their relationship took a romantic turn.
“I think that we both really felt the chemistry once we got to jury house and could really connect with each other,” Claire exclusively told Us of the pair’s love connection on October 14. “We would stay up late talking every single night and we just really developed a bond.”
The start-up founder explained that he knew from “week one” that Claire was his type, although it wasn’t until their late-night chats in the jury house that things started to click for him.
“I guess I just never let myself explore that beyond just a friendship. I mean, you saw what happened to Alyssa and Christian [Birkenberger] week one. For me, despite getting taken out very early on (laughs), I did want to win that game,” Derek told Us. “I knew that if I let myself, I would just fall for Claire in the house.”
The duo, who both live in New York City, have since cultivated their relationship and gotten beyond the friendship barrier.
“I think both of us had like a little bit of a crush, or at least saw maybe there’s some potential there, pretty early on in the game,” Claire said, noting she’s “really happy” they fell for each other mostly off camera. “When you’re starting our relationship, it’s a lot of pressure to try to have that on camera and to be really vulnerable and to be really open. It would be a whole other thing if you’re worrying, how are people going to perceive this? I just think that that would have really limited our longevity and how real we can be from the very start of our relationship.”
Claire added that their romance didn’t surprise everyone in the house, especially Alyssa, who was her roommate in jury.
“She was like my confidante. Everyone else was also helping us try to get around the jury house managers. So everyone in the jury house basically knew what was happening,” the Al engineer explained. “It wasn’t like a dirty little secret in the boat house or anything. It was very fun.”
Alyssa was one of the first stars to congratulate the lovebirds on their relationship once it was public, commenting on Derek’s Instagram post, “FOREVER YOUR THIRD WHEEL 🥲💞.”
Kyland, for his part, joked about what to call the new couple. “So do ya’ll prefer ‘Daire’ or ‘Clerek?’ Just wondering for username of the stan social media accounts I’m making…” he wrote via Instagram in October.
Scroll down to see which Big Brother stars past and present showed the couple love over their relationship: