Michael Bolton's nephew on emotional 'Claim to Fame' win: 'Everything was shaking'

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

“I actually didn't know to what extent everybody was really working against me,” Adam Christoferson, 40, tells USA TODAY. “I had no idea it was every single person after Episode 3.”

That continued into the final hour of Wednesday’s two-part finale, when this season's ejected housemates returned with the option of helping or hindering 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. “Face the music, face the storm. You did this to yourself.”

'Yellowstone' First Look Week:Jamie Dutton doubles down on family duplicity (photos)

Need a break? Play the USA TODAY Daily Crossword Puzzle.

All season long, Christoferson perplexed his castmates. Only in the finale did they peg him as a relative of Michael Bolton. (He's the Grammy winner’s nephew.)

In the last game, in which finalists worked to reveal a pixilated billboard of their opponents with helpful clues, ousted players ignored Christoferson’s requests for help and intentionally try to throw him off. “I’m not receiving help from anybody,” he observed.

While diving beneath velvet ropes, Christoferson was gashed in the head by a metal post. Christoferson began to cry and shake in frustration, thinking he’d be unable to finish the game, but got the OK to keep playing. He managed to be the only player whose billboard was not completely revealed.

Christoferson said he had no doubts about Mellencamp’s identity based on clues earlier in the season, and had Adkins’ kin narrowed 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 dad, who raised him on country music.)

“It's funny, because I'm in New England,” Christoferson says, “so I'm kind of a fish out of water up here, but it served me in the game.”

As the winner of the challenge, Christoferson had the power to pick the first player to be guessed that evening, and the person who guessed their identity. If he put himself in either position, then he’d be able to manage the final guess-off of the season.

Confidently, he targeted Adkins first. Then, only Christoferson and Mellencamp remained. 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 was looking at him and the whole earth was shaking while I was saying John Cougar Mellencamp,” Christoferson says. “Everything was just shaking. It was just wild.”

He says Mellencamp told him, “‘Just look, just soak it in.’ And I was like, ‘Wow, this is actually happening.’”

Christoferson says that within 10 minutes of being reunited with his wife on a ride home from the airport, he shared news of his triumph. Until Wednesday night, his secret stayed safe with her. His $100,000 cash prize went to buying a truck for his dad, an “amazing man, who gives everything he can,” says Christoferson.

He is also 10 friends richer, after meeting his “Claim to Fame” castmates. “I'm not the easiest one to get along with, and they were just so kind at times,” Christoferson says. Five even showed up as 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.”

Ben Affleckis 'not dating' RFK Jr.'s daughter Kick Kennedy, rep says

Being with relatives of other celebrities is what drew Christoferson to the series.

“I know having a celebrity relative impacts your life in a major way. I wanted to be around other people that have had that experience," he says. "At one point I actually cried when (housemate Naomi Burns) was telling me about a trip that she had taken with Molly Ringwald (Burns’ cousin) snorkeling. It just moved me so much.”

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

Christoferson remembers a limo arriving at the low-income housing where a young Christoferson and his mother lived to pick them up for a Bolton concert.

“It was very, very hard times for us,” he says. “I would just be looking up (at the stage) at this amazing experience, and my grandmother would say, ‘That's your uncle.’ And we’d get backstage and we’d take part in all of these amazing things.”

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