Life in the Big Brother house can’t be easy at the best of times. Cameras watching your every move while you’re living with a group of strangers who are both trying to win you over and pick you apart over everything you do and say? Sounds thrilling and terrifying at the same time. So I can’t imagine how tricky it must be navigating it all as a Big Brother intruder.
Jules Rangiheuea — one of the intruders who entered the Big Brother house in the show’s fourth week — got on the phone with PEDESTRIAN.TV to chat about starting her game after alliances were formed and what it’s like to live in the BB house full time.
“I felt like I was treated differently because of the frickin’ ‘intruder’ tag,” Jules said.
“They weren’t even willing to learn about me as a person, it was ‘the intruder’. So it was definitely an uphill battle from the get-go.”
Jules said that as soon as she saw fellow intruder Brenton Parkes, she knew how the rest of the house would react — they were both tall and athletic. Physical threats.
She said as an intruder you have to hit the ground running because everyone immediately wants to know how you’re going to play and who you’re going to play with. And as the age-old reality TV saying goes: last in, first out.
“You have to back yourself,” she said.
“Because everyone wants you out. No one sees you as a person.”
The reception she got when she stepped foot in the Big Brother house as in intruder seemed pretty overwhelming, which was an immediate strategy play by OGs Tim Dormer and Tully Smyth. Jules didn’t notice until it was too late.
“I was actually bloody none-the-wiser,” she said.
“I was just really grateful. But the first person that took me under their wing was Tully, and I think it’s because she’s had such a rough trot in her previous season that she just got it. She also entered the house late [this season] so she definitely took me under her wing.
Jules said she was claimed by an alliance when she got into the house. The Newbies “didn’t make any effort” when they saw she was swept up by their rival alliance.
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Even something as simple as choosing where she slept had an effect on how other housemates viewed her strategically as a Big Brother intruder.
“You make your bed and you quite literally lie in it,” she said.
“That’s probably my naivety coming through. Tully said ‘oh I’ve got a bed right next to me’ and I just thought ‘what a lovely house this is, they’re just setting me up with a bed’. I didn’t realise that is signed, sealed and delivered. If you sleep next to the OGs, you’re an OG.”
One thing Jules found challenging about living in the Big Brother house was the fact that everyone was switched on all the time.
She said she found herself being hyper-aware of what she was saying and how she was talking with people. She knew her every move was being dissected and judged by the rest of the house.
“The paranoia seeps in so fast because every corner you turn you hear ‘shh she’s coming’,” Jules said.
“Then you start thinking ‘oop maybe I shouldn’t have eaten that extra apple’. People just take everything so serious.
“I actually found it quite hard to have fun because you’re always in strat chat and you’re always paranoid. Even if I said ‘hey!’ I’m like ‘fuck that hey went for too long’.
“That’s the vibe, you’re so hypersensitive about your behaviour.”
The biggest adjustment for Jules was having to be conscious about how much she could talk openly to the other housemates because whispers and rumours were rife in the Big Brother compound.
“I’m so used to having an outlet with no judgement,” she said.
“It was more having to alter my behaviour to be less open, which is something that I really love about myself. Even though I lived in a house of strangers, I’ve never felt so alone in my life.”
Big Brother Australia airs on Seven Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday nights from 7.30pm and you can catch up on 7Plus.
