The Circle season 7 winner speaks: 'It was definitely the best underdog story in Circle history'

Warning: This article contains spoilers for the The Circle season 7 finale.

Started from the bottom, now they're here.

Nicky and Jojo Scarlotta, a.k.a. the Scarlotta twins, entered The Circle season 7 as catfish "Gianna" and immediately became the first player to be blocked from the game. But thanks to the Disruptor twist, they became immune to getting blocked in the first round. After that close call, the twins worked hard to make alliances and smart decisions to avoid getting blocked again, and it worked better than they ever expected: After becoming Influencer three times, they ultimately won the entire thing.

"We had such an entertaining season, whether people want to admit it or not," Jojo tells Entertainment Weekly. "In my opinion, I think it's the best."

His brother Nicky adds that they're "feeling good" about their path to the end where they ultimately won $100,000, and Jojo agrees that it was the right decision to catfish as "Gianna."

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"Clearly the stereotypical New York persona could have rubbed people the wrong way, but we got different layers to us," Jojo adds. "We're not just over the top New Yorkers. We're pretty smart and we could use strategy to do certain things. We got layers."

Below, the Scarlotta twins break down their triumphant — and historical! — victory and reveal what's surprised them now that they've seen all the episodes.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Going from being the first blocked player to then winning the whole thing is an amazing underdog story. What was it like to go from being blocked to being the Disruptor and then dominating the rest of the season?

NICKY SCARLOTTA: It was definitely pretty surreal. We got hit with the worst possible case scenario on day one, so from here on out it's like, we've got to take risks and do what we have to do.

JOJO SCARLOTTA: Yeah, by blocking us, they definitely awoke something in us that we were like, "Okay, now we've got to show yous," and we became the most powerful player in the game after that.

NICKY: I would say it was definitely the best underdog story in Circle history.

JOJO: Yeah, there's no doubt about that.

How did that first blocking make you evolve your gameplay moving forward?

NICKY: It was so much of seeing what the next move is, instead of just sticking to one strategy, and playing off of what the other players gave us and being able to maneuver based off of stuff like that.

JOJO: Yeah, I think that would probably be our biggest strength, our ability to improvise. A lot of players went in with, I believe, they were sticking to strategy too much and they didn't know how to improvise as well as us, so I think that really helped us.

NICKY: Yeah, we think a lot on the fly, so it was kind of easy if we had to do something.

JOJO: We went with our gut, our intuition, and we were really good at sniffing out a lot of bulls--- in a sense for certain players and manipulation.

NICKY: And as we got to know the other contestants a little bit better, we were kind of asking the right questions to get the information we needed to see who aligned with who, which alliances were formed, who felt this way, who didn't like somebody. We were an Influencer three times and every time there was a blocking, we did it, and we kind of maneuvered it where the heat was off of Gianna, so we kind of slid under the radar for a long time, even as being as powerful as we were.

It's really impressive how you were able to fly under the radar while also being an Influencer three times. Those are two completely opposing ideas.

JOJO: Yeah, you know what's crazy? I was watching one of the episodes last night and you see towards the end people were starting to see how powerful we became and then they were really trying to take us down, but we coasted all the way to the end under people's radar and held the target off our back for a while that way.

You were Influencers with Kevin each time, and everyone was so outspoken about how they didn't trust him and that he breaks alliances. Did that give you more confidence knowing that you were both Influencers, but Gianna was for good reasons and Kevin was maybe only Influencer because people were rating him strategically?

JOJO: Definitely. After the first time with Kevin and the Influencer chat, we kind of knew what to expect from him. We knew his strategy would be all good, and then at the end he hits you with a curveball. He's trying to sell us obviously, but I think we did a better job at that.

NICKY: It was nice to have him in the Influencer chat where we kind of got voted by our peers, and like you said, he was thrown in by the Disruptor the second time, and then the third time everybody voted him high because everybody thought everyone else was going to vote him low. It's like we earned it three times when he was ... well, he earned it too, obviously, but it was nice to have somebody like Kevin who everybody was kind of throwing his name around, not liking his game for so long, so if we did make that decision, they would kind of blame him every time. It was better for us.

JOJO: It worked out in our favor a lot. I think that was the first time they had people as Influencers three times together, right?

NICKY: I remember the third time that happened, literally they kept our genuine reaction of f---ing laughing. We were laughing because like, what else could you do? "I guess we got to do it again."

Did you two ever disagree on a game decision or a chat?

JOJO: I would say there really were rarely.

NICKY: Yeah, there weren't really any disagreements for the most part. The best part of having someone else is being able to run through the messages before you send them and get a different perspective. Before we sent anything, we would confirm it with each other and if it was something we were like, "Eh," we would redo it. But for the most part, 95 percent of the time we were on the same page.

Who did you see as your biggest competition?

JOJO: At first I thought it was Kevin, just based off of just how much weight he held in the game and being rated the first Influencer. We did not like other, so we thought Kevin was our biggest threat.

NICKY: And Madelyn for sure, because Madelyn seemed to make it like she was in the middle the whole time, meanwhile she would start everything and lie. And she was also so popular with so many players, so for a while it was like Madelyn could definitely be a big threat. At the end, we kind of had a feeling it was between us and Jadejha, but I didn't know how crazy she was going where she started the group chat with Madelyn and Tierra after the Darian thing. Definitely didn't know that was happening.

JOJO: And that caught us a little off guard because honestly, the proof's there, we fought for Jadejha multiple times. You can't save everybody, and unfortunately, Darian and Garret had to go, but Jadejha, we made sure because our alliance with her was so strong that we stuck to our word and we fought for her tooth and nail a couple times.

Do you regret not getting her out? If she made it through Madelyn's secret Influencer blocking, do you think she could have won instead?

NICKY: Actually, that's a great question. Possibly yes, because when we blocked Garret, he was rated the lowest, so it's obviously the lowest threat.

JOJO: We kind of weighed our options there and we felt blocking Jadejha would have the worst effect on us for our overall rating towards the end, so we made an easier decision, and that would've been the one time Kevin didn't catch heat in the chat. That would've been us catching it all.

What do you think of all of Madelyn's lies now that you've seen the episodes??

NICKY: I didn't realize how much she lied about the whole Darian situation. Kevin got Darian out because of Madelyn's lie, and then we also were compromised because Kevin lied to us and said Darian wanted to get us out too. The whole pot got stirred because of Madelyn. And it didn't end there. Throughout the whole season she kept lying and lying.

JOJO: And even with Andy in the beginning, looking back on it now, she put us in the group chat with Rachel to get Andy out. We already weren't really too fond of Andy since he blocked us on night one, so we really didn't have a problem, but she really manipulated her way throughout all the way to the finale. So in a sense, she played a good game. But you see a ton of times when she's like, "I'm going to lie." Literally, she would say it and she'd make up a lie as a message. So she did what she had to do to get to the end.

NICKY: That's for sure. It is a game at the end of the day and she was manipulative, but she played a good one and that's why she got very far. But I don't know if I could lie like that.

JOJO: We were the opposite. We got to where we got based off on our word and our extreme loyalty.

How did you feel when she was crying at the finale while talking about how she lied to make it to the end?

NICKY: I felt bad, but at the same time, she also did say, "It is a game." You know what I mean? She kind of is the villain, but at the same time she did do it to herself, so it's like, how bad could you really feel?

JOJO: She was responsible for her actions, but at the same time, on like a personal level, I'm sure she felt bad doing everything that she had to do to get rid of the people, because they were in it to win it too. It was sad to see her cry. You don't want to see nobody cry, but once again, that helped take the heat off us and helped us win.

What surprised you the most after watching all the episodes?

NICKY: I felt bad for Garrett.

JOJO: Yeah, I felt so bad blocking Garrett because we love Garrett as a person, he's a nice guy. And just thinking back on it, if maybe we would've looked into things a little more, we probably could have made a different decision about his blocking.