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Claim to Fame winner Adam Christoferson scores, uncle Michael Bolton

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Claim to Fame winner Adam Christoferson scores, uncle Michael Bolton

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It’s a good thing for the recently crowned winner of “Claim to Fame” that ABC’s summer competition series isn’t a popularity contest.

“I didn’t really realize how much everyone was really working against me,” Adam Christoferson, 40, tells USA TODAY. “I had no idea it was everyone after Episode 3.”

That continued until the final hour of Wednesday’s two-part finale, when this season’s evicted housemates returned with the option to help or hinder the three finalists — Christoferson, Mackenzie Adkins (daughter of country artist Trace Adkins) and Hud Mellencamp, the son of singer John Mellencamp — in the final challenge.

“Right now, Adam is Target No. 1,” Raphael Miguel Curtis declared in the episode. The nephew of Oscar winner Jamie Lee Curtis blamed Christoferson for his elimination. “Ocean the music, face the storm. You did this to yourself.”

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Christoferson amazed his fellow cast members all season long. It wasn’t until the finale that he was seen as a relative of Michael Bolton. (He’s the Grammy winner’s nephew.)

In the final match, in which finalists attempted to reveal a pixelated billboard of their opponents with helpful clues, the ousted players ignored Christoferson’s pleas for help and deliberately tried to shake him off. “I’m not getting help from anyone,” he noted.

As he ducked under velvet ropes, Christoferson was cut in the head by a metal pole. Christoferson began to cry and shake in frustration, thinking he would not be able to finish the game, but was allowed to continue. He was the only player whose billboard was not fully revealed.

Christoferson said he had no doubts about Mellencamp’s identity based on clues earlier in the season, and had narrowed Adkins’ relatives down to two country giants: Trace Adkins and Alan Jackson. Seeing the black hat atop Adkins’ head on her billboard sealed the deal. (A cowboy hat tip to Christoferson’s father, who raised him on country music.)

“It’s funny because I live in New England,” Christoferson says, “so I feel like a fish out of water here, but it’s helped me in the game.”

As the winner of the challenge, Christoferson had the power to choose the first player to be guessed that night, and the person who guessed their identity. If he found himself in either position, he would be able to control the final guess of the season.

Confidently, he focused on Adkins first. Then it was down to Christoferson and Mellencamp. Once again, Christoferson took matters into his own hands, choosing to reveal the identity of his closest ally in the game. “It was him and me from the beginning, so I looked at him and the whole earth shook as I said John Cougar Mellencamp,” Christoferson says. “Everything just shook. It was just wild.”

He says Mellencamp said to him, “Look at this, just take it in.” And I thought, “Wow, this is really happening.”

Christoferson says he shared the news of his triumph within 10 minutes of being reunited with his wife on a ride home from the airport. Until Wednesday night, his secret remained safe with her. His $100,000 prize money went toward buying a truck for his father, a “great man who gives it his all,” Christoferson says.

He also made 10 friends after meeting his “Claim to Fame” castmates. “I’m not the easiest person to get along with, and they were just so nice sometimes,” Christoferson says. Five even showed up when he scattered his grandmother’s ashes in Santa Monica Bay, he says. This season’s contestants stay in touch with a group chat that Christoferson describes as “just hysterical.”

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Christoferson was drawn to the series because he was with family members of other celebrities.

“I know that having a famous relative affects your life so much. I wanted to be around other people who had had the same experience,” he says. “At one point I actually cried when (roommate Naomi Burns) told me about a trip she had taken with Molly Ringwald (Burns’ cousin) snorkeling. It really touched me.”

Christoferson’s fondness for Bolton is clear in the finale, praising his uncle for being “the hardest working man I’ve ever seen in my life. He taught me that if you chase your dreams and work hard, you can build a great life.”

Christoferson remembers a limousine arriving at the council housing where the young Christoferson and his mother lived to pick them up for a concert in Bolton.

“It was a very, very tough time for us,” he says. “I was just looking up (at the stage) at this amazing experience, and my grandmother said, ‘That’s your uncle.’ And we went backstage and participated in all these amazing things.”

Now, as the winner of “Claim to Fame” for Season 3, Christoferson has seen his own hard work pay off.

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