“I Proved to Myself That I’m Not Dumb” – RealityNewsOnline’s Exclusive Interview with Big Brother 11’s Winner, Jordan

As we watched Big Brother this summer, one thing we certainly noticed was Jordan’s ability to talk. We saw it again last night in her final words to the jury. Let me tell you, that’s the real Jordan – as you’ll see here in some of her answers! But that certainly made sure she let us know what she was thinking.

Reality News Online: Hello, Jordan, and congratulations!

Jordan: Thank you so much.

RNO: Thanks for taking the time to talk to us here at Reality News Online. So word is that until you got on Big Brother, you hadn’t watched an episode of the show and didn’t even know who Julie Chen was. Is that true?

Jordan: (Laughs) Yes, two months before the show, maybe even a month and a half before, I had to borrow a friend’s computer and YouTube everything so I had a gist of what it was. It was right before we were sequestered, I was like, “I gotta learn her name,” and I didn’t know what her name was. I never had watched the show before so I had to learn everything. Now if somebody else was to say they didn’t know who Julie Chen is, I would probably look at them like they were crazy.

RNO:So what made you want to be on the show, then?

Jordan: I actually was spotted at work and someone approached me about it. I was supposed to meet me at the casting call in Charlotte. I told her I would show up and I never even showed up because I was like, this is probably fake or I’m not going to get picked. She called me the next day and asked me to meet her and do an on-camera interview. I was like, “All right,” but I didn’t think I’d make it. I remember there were some girls in there looking really pretty and I was like, “No way I’m going to get this.” They called me and I made it to the next round and I made it all the way through the end – I just acted myself, I didn’t tell them what I thought they wanted to hear. I was just myself and acted myself the whole game and it got me to win the money.

RNO: Did you ever think you had a shot at winning?

Jordan: Heck, no! I didn’t think I’d ever win this money. The first couple weeks were rough. Braden left and he was in my alliance; Laura left and she was in my alliance; Casey left… Everybody just started dropping like flies. I was like, there is no way, I’m so not going to win this. Then after Jeff used the Coup D’etat, the power was in our hands, then after Jeff left it got a little worse and then it got better.

RNO: In your final comments to the jury, you indicated that you purposely pretended to be weak and naïve, but were really playing the game all the time. Was that really your strategy, or were you just using what happened already to try to make yourself look better to the jury?

Jordan: No, I mean I was at some things trying to be naïve, I wanted people to think I was just clueless about a lot of things. I was myself but some things I think I overexaggerated a little bit. Michele had a PhD and was smart, and then there’s me, somebody who everybody thinks her favorite word is Gucci and is completely clueless about everything, so we’ll just evict Michele and they’ll overlook me.

RNO: I ask because the Jordan we saw on the show and on the live feeds did not seem to be the type who would make up that sort of scheme – that sounds more like something Ronnie would do! In fact, Kevin told me a little while ago that he liked you and all, but thought the person he met there was “dumb as rocks.”

Jordan: (Laughs) I don’t think I was dumb as rocks. I mean just ‘cus I didn’t know the difference between a nectarine and a peach. Now I did make a comment and I was going to say this in my final speech but I didn’t because I was getting flustered and I wanted to make sure what I said was good, the comment I made about 90210, I knew it was the ZIP code and I knew if Kevin or Natalie got HOH, they’d be like this girl is dumb, I definitely wouldn’t pick her [to go home]. I proved to myself that I’m not dumb. Jeff knew that too – people who really know me know I’m not a dumb person. The good thing about Big Brother is in there you can say some things and it won’t matter about what you say. People can go in and say, “I’m a doctor,” or, “I’m a lawyer,” and it doesn’t matter because it’s not real. The nectarine and peach thing was real, but that’s another story. The 90210 thing – everybody knows that’s the ZIP code; I was playing that so they’d think, “She’s so innocent and dumb,” but I’m really not. And I’m not a serious person, I’m a goofy person.

RNO: Natalie told me a little while ago that while you beat her fair and square, she does feel she played a better game, strategically, than you. How do you respond to that?

Jordan: I think everybody has their own opinions on how they played the game. My way of playing the game was to not lie and to be nice – I did lie to Kevin at the end but I had to in case he won HOH then he would take me. I thought my strategy was just as good as hers. She lied a lot more than what I thought. She put a lot of blame on Michele for lying when she lied a lot too.

I actually won the money so I proved that my strategy must have been not that bad if I won! You don’t have to win the most competitions, be the strongest or the smartest – it’s a lot of things, how you connect with people, how you control yourself. A lot is just being nice – that wasn’t fake, that was for real. My thing is make people feel the way you want to be treated. Even when people were rude to me, I still treated them with respect.