Big Brother’s Danielle Reyes changed the game—literally
Image: Screenshot: Paramount Plus TV Features Danielle Reyes
Danielle Reyes on Big Brother
The title of “game changer” is thrown around with wild abandon—hell, it’s the name of this series—but it’s rare that someone actually changes the game they’re playing. Big Brother’s Danielle Reyes is one of the few reality stars who can actually point to the moment they changed the machine in which they were intended to simply serve as a cog.
For 82 days in 2002, Reyes played a practically perfect game in Big Brother season three, making it to the final two of the CBS “social experiment.” The media buyer from Fairfield, California made strategic alliances, voted with the majority in all but two votes, and was generally beloved by most of her competition while they shared a home (a.k.a. studio on the CBS Radford lot) during filming. She was also great TV, providing biting commentary about her fellow Houseguests during her private Diary Room sessions shown to viewers at home. But when the evicted competitors voted for a winner of their season, Reyes lost nine to one.
How did it happen? Nowadays, all evicted contestants who will vote for the winner at the end of the season are sequestered in a “Jury House,” where they remain in the dark about any secret alliances and shady Diary Room confessions. But in 2002, Reyes’ competitors were allowed to go home and watch the entire season before returning to vote for a winner in the finale. They had recorded proof of every snarky thing she said in secret, every unkept promise, every underhanded manipulation. Producers loved her unfiltered confessionals, and Reyes paid for that attention by walking away with $450,000 less than the more amenable, but less strategic Lisa Donahue, season three’s eventual winner. The next season saw Big Brother’s first Jury House—because producers knew Danielle Reyes had deserved to win.
Adding a sequester house wasn’t the first significant change producers made to Big Brother. CBS launched the competition series in July 2000 with a format similar to that of the original Dutch series of the same name: Ahead of every eviction, all the remaining Houseguests nominated two fellow competitors for elimination, then viewers voted for who to send home. The interactive element differentiated Big Brother from Survivor (which premiered a month prior), but this was years before votefortheworst.com would popularize messing with reality show voting to keep unfavorable contestants. In the summer of 2000, the contestants just wanted to be liked. There was practically no talk of strategy and very little drama, as everyone was wary of upsetting the viewers at home. It worked out well for 21-year-old Eddie McGee, an amputee and cancer survivor, who won $500,000 as the season-one champ. But it wasn’t good for CBS or the viewers, who were left underwhelmed—especially when they could be watching Richard Hatch over on Survivor creating what we now know to be standard reality competition strategy.
When Big Brother returned for season two the following summer, it was a completely different game. Each week, a Head Of Household competition determined one person who would nominate two Houseguests for elimination and the Houseguests voted each other out. The Big Brother casting team also got themselves a Richard Hatch of their own: Dr. Will Kirby, a cutthroat strategist who spent the summer insulting his fellow Houseguests only to ultimately win their respect, as well as the prize money. Dr. Will was witty, strategic, and great TV—everything Danielle Reyes would be in the following season. But Reyes had the unfortunate luck of being on a season with a “bitter jury.”
“The way I feel about Danielle is that while every person was in this house, they loved her—until they got off and they [saw what she did] in the house,” evicted Houseguest Josh Feinberg told his fellow Jury members as they deliberated during the season-three finale. “That is brilliant: single-handedly controlling people’s exit from the house, and how loyal she was to Jason. [He] was the only person she ever said she would be loyal to. I just think she was the number one,” Feinberg continued. He was the only Houseguest aside from Reyes’ ride-or-die, the aforementioned Jason Guy, who seemed in her camp ahead of the final vote. Most of the other Houseguests could not separate their feelings of betrayal from her gameplay: “I loved her like a fucking sister, and she worked everybody on levels that we were not supposed to be worked,” said one Jury member. “Liberace could never play the piano as well as Danielle played us all in that house,” added another.
It’s infuriating to see a woman (Reyes) punished for actions that were celebrated when perpetrated by a man (Dr. Will) the prior season. But there was definitely a different vibe to season three’s cast: Re-watching that season’s finale (available on Paramount Plus), it’s frustratingly quaint how sincere the Jury comes across when discussing things other contestants said about them on camera. Their questions of “How could you say that about me?” seem to come from a place of true hurt rather than a play for camera time as they do when the same question is asked on a Housewives reunion over on Bravo. And when the Jury gets to address the Final Two, it’s clear their anger and hurt weighs on Reyes. “My Diary Room sessions were honest,” she tells her former housemates. “It was the emotion I was feeling at the time. What you saw in the Diary Room was the real deal.” By the time she gives her final statement, Reyes appears resigned to accept the way the Houseguests view her compared to “Lovely Lisa”: “I was on a mission. I had my game set. I did what I had to do. She’s good, I’m evil—that’s all I gotta say.”
It’s downright painful to watch Reyes retreat behind a corner when the Jury members finally enter the house to see the Final Two in person again. After revealing the nine-to-one vote (an outcome Reyes accurately predicted, with Jason Guy being her sole vote), host Julie Chen calls Reyes “a Will” and says she played a “good” game. “I can sit here and say that if I played the game honest, I probably would’ve got the $500,000,” Reyes tells Julie in response. “But if I did play the game honest, would I be sitting here? I don’t think I would’ve been.” It harkens back to what Josh Feinberg said during deliberations: “To knock Danielle for what she did to get to the finals is to not understand the game.” Yet he also did not vote for Reyes.
Ahead of season four, the Big Brother producers were candid about their fear that Reyes’ loss would cause future contestants to regress to the niceties of season one. “In Big Brother 2, Will was the most outspoken person in the Diary Room that you could imagine. He managed to insult everybody and he won!” producer Arnold Shapiro said in a 2003 interview. But in Reyes’ season, things went the opposite way. “Many people feel Danielle played the game the best and yet did herself in because of her Diary Room comments. This time, the Diary Room will not be a factor and people can speak totally candidly and uninhibitedly, which is what we want. The Diary Room won’t affect the vote.”
In the seasons since, there have been countless “expect the unexpected” twists and turns (some in attempts to counteract various scandals), but none with as much impact on the Big Brother game as the non-sequestered Jury in season three. As we look ahead to season 23 in just a few months, we have a mom from the Bay Area to thank—or curse—for the staying power of this frothy summer reality TV addiction.
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The one thing I have in common with reality show participants is that I am not here to make friends
See, now yer gonna make Pete Holmes sad.
Thank you for the coverage of Big Brother and of Danielle–one of my favorite all time players. I know BB is not very popular, and I know that the bad casting and tone-deaf producers are to blame for that–but I still watch this with my (grown) daughter every summer–it’s our “love to hate it, can you believe what they said/did” guilty pleasure.
I was in the same boat as you for many years – somewhere in the last 3-4 years I found myself giving up, as the editing increasingly moved toward focus on couples and romance and the house itself lost all sense of gameplay in favor of a hivemind (a hivemind often led and dominated by extremely unpleasant people). I hope the BB I loved might return someday, which had many fascinating characters, ugly drama but also friendships and bonds alongside that, twists and turns, natural storylines rather than people being fed badly stilted lines in the DR, etc.
Every year since BB 19 I say I’m done at some point. . . By the end of this last season, BB “All Stars”, I was never so happy to see someone so crushed as I was to see Nicole sobbing when Cody evicted her at the end. I may have one or two people to root for early in the season, but pretty soon I’m basically rooting for all of them to lose and go home! haha. Maybe it’s because the seasons are too long, but mostly because of the people they cast and, like you say, the bad lines they are fed in the diary room.
I used to defend the longer seasons, but if we keep getting casts and gameplay like the last 5-6 years, then I agree they are too long now. think the last season I watched closely is the season where Paul lost for a second time (I didn’t taper off because he lost – I just thought it was a gross season and I was reminded that I, as you mention, was only watching because of who I wanted to see lose). I keep hoping some changes will be on the way, and they are at least getting a new casting director, but they need a new producer too. It’s a shame the last all-stars was handled so poorly.
Of all the great, brutal injustices in the history of the world, it is shocking how little I care about this one
I watched this season, along with following feed recaps and watching live feed footage when I could (my connection was not good). The Shapiro era of BB was much better-edited than what would come after he left, but I was very annoyed at the time because one of the houseguests, Marcellus, was edited as mostly being a fun, likeable figure on TV when he was a pretty awful person in the house. This helped to obscure some of the reason why Danielle lost – some of the people in the house who felt closest to her would leave and find out some of the conversations Marcellus would have with her about them. There was, as happens every season, something of a cool kid clique in the house, split into two couples and an unpleasant, bitter sidekick. They would come up with ideas like peanut butter bikinis, and were nude on the live feeds often enough that the cameras started switching away and the producers likely asked them to tone down. Danielle, who was, as she often reminded people, a happily married mother, was part of the group that didn’t usually participate in this stuff. She was, as she called herself, classy. Roddy, the charismatic and (on the surface) mostly calm and likeable leader of the clique, would say that no one who is actually classy needs to remind people how classy they are. For this and other reasons, Danielle called him “the devil,” and spent the entire season dismantling his clique until he was the last one left. That season was mostly the cold war between them – they both won, and they both lost, as she outlasted him in the game, yet he helped make sure she had no chance with the jury. One of the main moments I remember from the finale is when Danielle, after being shamed and frozen out by a number of jurors, knows he is next up. Instead of joining in, Roddy goes into ‘nice guy’ mode and asks her a harmless question about the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches that were a staple of the early seasons. Danielle is so relieved to not have to get into something with him that her entire body releases tension.I didn’t agree with the Dr. Will and Danielle comparisons at the time, and I still don’t. Yes, it’s easier for a charismatic, young white guy to have an edge, but there are huge differences in personality and how they played the game. When Will was in a large alliance, he was hated by many in the house. Only after he was the last one standing did he manage to slide through, as the main alliance turned against each other. Danielle, on the other hand, not only had a large alliance, and was seen in a positive light, but chose to keep people (due to her loyalty to them) that she knew had a good chance of beating her in front of a jury. She had the chance to get rid of Lisa (who beat her) and did not. She knew she would probably lose to Jason, but wanted to go to the end with him. Will was also very honest about himself – he would say, explicitly, he was not a good guy, that he hated everyone. When one of the housemates returned for the jury and had started his own charity called “Bunkymania,” trying to get Will to agree to donate possible winnings, Will said he would not be giving any money to charity. People knew what they were getting. Danielle was not open about her game. And of course the response to that is, “It’s a game!” That’s true, but people who spent months thinking of her as a good friend or as a mother figure would be shellshocked to return home and see just what she thought of them (and BB is a deeply ugly, personal game, so the comments could often cut to the bone). The closer comparison to me would be Russell Hantz, although Danielle was much more entertaining and less repulsive as a person. Russell also got a great deal of talk about how he should have won in spite of playing a game which did little to win over jurors. (the biggest difference is BB producers did not bring her and her family on to their various shows and try to shoehorn some kind of win for them) Danielle did return about 4 years later, trying to play a different game, less loyalty and more, as she called herself, “Black Widow.” She did a much better job with the jury this time, but she was one of many betrayed and thrown away by the Chilltown (Dr. Will/Mike Boogie) alliance. A good friend of hers, Erika, was HOH, but was manipulated into nominating her as a veto replacement. There was a truly brilliant and yet very depressing moment (which used to be on Youtube – no idea if it is now) called “Ding Dong Dani” where Danielle, drunk and trying to confront Erika, rings the doorbell to the HOH room over and over and over and over as Erika hides away inside. My other strong memory of those few days was her sitting outside, drunk, and smoking, muttering to Janelle (like many that season she saw Janelle as her nemesis but came around by the end), over and over, “They will not have my [jury] vote.” So hard to watch, but also enthralling to watch. A reminder of how much more compelling the live feeds are to what the TV episodes were becoming. Erika ended up in the final 2, and, similar to Danielle, tried to play a mastermind card (unlike Danielle, she was NOT a mastermind). It was full circle seeing Danielle vote against her. Danielle even had a knife-twisting moment where, IIRC, she gave a little speech as she put her key in implying she had forgiven Erika, but then she did not vote for her. Danielle was apparently asked back for last season’s All-Stars, but had to decline because of work. From what I’ve heard, she was lucky.
Danielle not winning is one of reality competition’s greatest injustices, but also was a very typical Icarus lesson. It’s not like she was unaware of how a black woman would be perceived while being deceptive and then sassing the people she manipulated. Just a little bit of sugar in her only-in-the-confessional ‘tude might have changed the outcome.
Danielle was a loathsome faux-Christian hypocrite who got exactly what she deserved
I remember watching those early seasons and don’t get me wrong, I fully believe Reyes had race and gender against her but she did herself no favors with her biting commentary versus Will’s sort of ‘above it all’ white-guy-MD-ness. They were both charismatic but Reyes came across as untrustworthy when you dug into her diaries. I agreed she should have won on her ability to manipulate people but to be fair with her, she wasn’t going to win because she came across as more cruel than Will ever did.