Claim to Fame's chaos-maker Miguel reveals he's never even seen an Antonio Banderas movie

Warning: This article contains spoilers for Claim to Fame, season 3, episode 3, "The Wolf in Boy’s Clothing."

After adding a welcome dose of pure chaos that took Claim to Fame season 3 from mild-mannered guessing game to strategic scheming, hot mic meltdowns, and broken alliances, Miguel found himself taken out on episode 3, but not without one final reveal nobody saw coming: his celebrity relative is Oscar-winning actress Jamie Lee Curtis.

Miguel is actually Raphael Curtis, grandson of late Some Like It Hot star Tony Curtis, and nephew of the Freaky Friday actress. Although he and his partner-in-crime Dedrick — whom he blindsided by nearly eliminating in Wednesday's guess-off — previously convinced the entire house he was related to Antonio Banderas, Miguel has one more bomb to drop: he's never actually seen a Banderas film.

"I know, I know, it's crazy," he tells Entertainment Weekly after his elimination. "Everyone's like, oh, you look just like him. I'm like, yeah, I've never even really watched him in a movie before."

Below, Miguel, a.k.a. Raphael, shares with EW what was real and what was strategy, the true reason he chose his fellow Wolf Pack member Dedrick in the guess-off, and what his famous aunt will think about his gameplay if she watches the show.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Hi Miguel, or I should say Raphael. You only lasted for three episodes but you made such an impact. Sometimes it felt like watching Survivor or The Traitors with your gameplay. Did you go into this show planning to use so much strategy and cause so much chaos?

MIGUEL/RAPHAEL CURTIS: Yeah, I did. I definitely went into it with a lot of strategies in mind. The one that I ended up going with was actually just portraying myself as more of an anxious and emotional person throughout the show. I did play that up a lot more on the show than I actually am in person. There were a lot of topics that I did talk about that were actually emotional for me, but some of the things I played up and kind of acted my way through it a little bit more.

Back in the premiere, you had that emotional breakdown on a hot mic after your low performance in the talent show. Was any of that also staged and acting?

For the hot mic during the premiere episode, that was not staged. I genuinely did get quite stage frightened during that episode, but that's just me because I kind of hate getting on stage in front of a bunch of people, especially because a lot of my talents are more along the lines of slow burn talents.

Everyone was totally blown away to learn that your relative was not Antonio Banderas, but in fact Jamie Lee Curtis, your aunt. Has she been watching the show?

I don't know if she's been watching the show. I don't know if she's catching up on it or if she's really even interested in watching it to begin with. I don't really know if she's watching. I hope she is, but no confirmation yet on that. I haven't really asked her about it really or reached out in regards to that, but I'll probably end up finding out eventually.

How do you think she'll feel about your gameplay and your appearance on the show if she is watching?

I think she'll be happy with it. I think she'll be happy with the way that I performed certain things, yeah, I think she'd enjoy it.

Viewers did not find out about your scheme with Dedrick until after you pulled it off. Walk me through why you recruited him for the Wolf Pack and how you got him to go along with your plan.

I feel like me and Dedrick, we personally got along a lot better than I did with the other contestants. Not to say that I didn't get along with them or anything, but I feel like with certain people you kind of click a little easier. So with me and Dedrick, that click was almost more natural and instantaneous, so that's why I gravitated towards him a little more as a teammate. We were just discussing little strategies and things we might do, and that's when I had the idea of just throwing wrenches in the machine and just throwing people off entirely, and I mentioned it to him. I was like, we need to figure out a way to do that. I feel like that would be a really good thing to do for us because ... there's still a bunch of contestants left. We have to go about thinking of how we're going to get other people to leave or to go. So we just sat at the dinner table and I kind of explained a little bit of a plan to him, and then we went through with it and ended up working a lot better than expected.

You said you went by the name Miguel to make people think you are "more Spanish" than you actually are. Was Antonio Banderas always who you wanted them to guess, or was that something that came up organically and then you kind of jumped on it?

It's something that had actually stemmed from my real life, where one of my neighbors one day, when I was maybe 18 or 19, mentioned to me that I looked like Antonio Banderas, especially when I pulled my hair back. So I thought about that while I was on the show. I talked to Dedrick as well in regards to celebrities that I may look similar to, and he said, well you really do look like Antonio Banderas' relative. So I was like, well, crap, we're going with that.

I noticed that Antonio Banderas was sitting right behind your aunt when she won her Oscar last year and was going wild cheering her on. Have you ever met him or heard stories about him?

No, actually. Admittedly, I've never even seen one of Antonio Banderas' movies, I don't believe. So I don't have any. I know, I know, it's crazy. Everyone's like, oh, you look just like him. I'm like, yeah, I've never even really watched him in a movie before.

You're right there with Jill, who had never even heard of him. I think you both need to have a movie day to go and watch something of his.

Yeah, I'm not really one for movies and stuff like that, so I kind of was a little bit uninformed. I of course knew who he was and everything, but no, I definitely hadn't seen any movies with him in it.

Tell me about deciding to choose Dedrick at the guess-off, which blindsided him since he was your fellow Wolf Pack member. You made a comment that you had to "actively hide my s----eating grin right now." Was that because you knew picking him would be such a surprise moment, or because you thought you were right?

It was a bit of both in that instant. I thought I had made a pretty educated assumption as to who he was, just simply based off of one of the reactions he had given when someone said something. They had mentioned some name and he reacted pretty actively to it. So I was like, well, it's curious that Dedrick all of a sudden is giving such an energetic response to something that normally I feel like he wouldn't even have acknowledged like that per se. So that was one of the reasons as to why I originally was so confident about choosing him. My whole issue was I really liked Dedrick, so I came to a point one night where I thought to myself, one of us is going to have to end up getting rid of the other person, and I'd rather not do that. Getting more and more invested, being friends and on a team with him, I already enjoyed his personality the way he was, just the conversations we had and just his attitude in general. But I knew that it was going to hurt a lot more if I waited longer to pull that Band-Aid off and be like, okay, this is still a competition. So I feel like I pulled that earlier just to make it easier for me because I really admittedly didn't even want to do it. I was confident in the fact that I thought I knew who he was, but throughout the whole thing, I still felt awful going through with it.

His identity is not yet confirmed on the show, but it seemed nearly everyone else in the house was making up their minds that he is related to Michael Jackson based on clues in the house, his stories, and the fact that he called himself "Mr. Jackson" on night one when you were not around. Why do you think you missed that?

Honestly, I think throughout the house I was just kind of doing my own thing, because I'm more of an introvert, reserved sort of person. So I do kind of value my privacy. A lot of the times, I would just be in my room. ... That's kind of what led to me not getting as much information as I probably should have.

You spoke a few times about needing the money and that this was more than a game to you. Can you elaborate on the circumstances and how everything is going now?

So things are going a lot better now. The circumstances were pretty dire. When I originally went on the show, I wasn't really doing very well financially, and getting on the show was definitely a big opportunity to kind of mitigate those things, help my mom out, and just be more of that support figure that I wanted to be.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

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Claim to Fame airs Wednesdays at 9 p.m. ET/PT on ABC.