“There Was Sort of a Mob Mentality in the House” – An Interview with Big Brother 10’s Steven

We didn’t get to see a whole lot of Steven on the show. He was practically invisible at first (to the point that we heard him say he wasn’t coming out as being gay for a little while, and then poof, people just knew!) and then suddenly the target was on him. Now he has a chance to talk to us and tell us what went on.

RealityNewsOnline: Hi, Steven, and thanks for taking the time to talk to us here at RealityNewsOnline! Let’s start at the beginning. Did you have a specific planned strategy coming into the game?

Steven: My strategy was sort of to just go in and be everyone’s friend. Being a gay guy, I kind of had a strategy to get on the girls’ side, which is usually pretty easy. But also as a bullrider and a guy who is into sports, I thought I could appeal to the masculine side of the men in the house. I wanted to get in there and get on everyone’s good side and then go from there.

RNO: How did that strategy change once you got into the game?

Steven: I think my initial strategy worked pretty well. I definitely was on everyone’s good side. Everyone liked me in the house. Unfortunately, I made one wrong decision and that was to make an alliance early with someone who the rest of the house wanted out. Once I became affiliated with him, it was almost impossible to undo that.

RNO: How much Big Brother had you watched before coming into the house?

Steven: I watched the entire Season 8 and aside from that I had only caught one or two episodes periodically. Compared to everyone else in the house, very little.

RNO: Once it became obvious that Brian would be leaving – and maybe even sooner than that – why didn’t you create some better alliances or relationships with the in crowd?

Steven: That was probably a fatal flaw of mine. It was really hard. What I considered the “in crowd” was Libra, April, and Ollie – they were the big three. They were difficult to be friends with. Libra is a very controlling person, she is very difficult to be around for more than 10 minutes at a time and has an opinion on everything. Ollie is really hard to read. You feel like he’s a snake – he’s listening and pretending to be your friend but stabbing you in the back when he can. April is just about the same as Ollie.

I liked them but didn’t really like hanging out with that. I probably should have sucked it up and tried to be close friends with them, but instead I grew closer to Keesha and Angie and Dan. I hoped that me and Keesha and Angie and Dan and maybe even Michelle and Renny and Jerry could have sort of tried to take control of the house. But it just never worked out.

RNO: Why didn’t it work out?

Steven: There was sort of a mob mentality in the house – you were with the mob or you would be persecuted. I tried so hard to break it up and made a frantic attempt before the POV meeting to get Libra out of the house. But it appeared from within the house that the people who were pulling the strings were too powerful and nobody wanted to break that up. Everyone was so afraid they would be targeted the next week.

RNO: I know you were asleep when Jessie invited everybody to his HOH room, but why didn’t you go see it sooner than you did?

Steven: I was having a bad day. Emotionally it was probably the worst day for me in the house. I didn’t want to show a bad side to everyone, so I thought the best way was to stay in bed and sleep. When I finally did wake up, they were all missing and I got up and then went back to sleep, which I guess was a big mistake.

There had also been a small event that had happened earlier that I don’t know if it made it to the show. Immediately following Jessie winning HOH, I tried to congratulate him and he walked by me and didn’t even acknowledge me congratulating him. I wasn’t too thrilled wit him at the time, so why should I go help him celebrate?

RNO: Considering the vote count, I’m presuming you knew that you were going home?

Steven: Correct. I knew immediately following the POV meeting that I was definitely leaving.

RNO: What was up with your final speech?

Steven: (Laughs) I wanted to go out with a bang. Everyone in the house had gotten to know me as a clever, funny person saying funny, random things. And they really liked it. I made a lot of people in the house laugh and I wanted to go out that way.

RNO: You even got a reaction from the Chenbot.

Steven: Yes I did. I kind of got a little scared after I said, “Suck it, bitch,” and saw her face and was immediately frightened. When you’re in that house, Julie Chen is your god. When you see her face and you get a disapproving look, it’s frightening.