Big Brother Canada Exit Interview: Kenny Brain

Kenny Brain was the second houseguest to be evicted in this season’s first double eviction episode of Big Brother Canada. Following Sarah’s eviction, the houseguests quickly completed in a new Head of Household competition with Neda winning and nominating Sabrina and Rachelle for eviction. Arlie ended up winning the POV and used it to take off Rachelle, leaving Neda to nominate the 25-year-old model from Halifax. Kenny was then evicted in a 5-1 vote.

I spoke with Kenny about coming out to the other houseguests, why he couldn’t work with Jon and which remaining houseguest has the best gameplay.

How was the overall experience for you?
Honestly, it’s been the best experience of my life. I know that I will probably not be able to top it. It was up and down, obviously, and every stage in between. But overall, amazing.

You finally came out to the rest of the houseguests this week. Had you not done that, would you have regretted it?
Yes, absolutely. Once I realized that hiding that I was gay held no weight in the game and that it wasn’t affecting my strategy, I wanted to tell them. I just needed the right time. Had I left and not told them, it would have probably been the biggest regret in my game.

Canada is a lot more open to diversity. Why did you decide to keep this a secret for so long?
In the last season, showmances and flirting played a factor in the game. I didn’t want to close down certain avenues which could have possibly helped me move forward in the game. I left that door open. When I realized that it wasn’t a factor, it started to feel like it was weighing on me and I had to tell them.

Can you share more about your coming out experience in the house? Can you share with us the support you received from the rest of the house?
Honestly, the acceptance and reaction that I got was phenomenal. It was beautiful. It couldn’t have gone better. I felt like the game was put aside for a moment and everybody was just happy and accepting in every way. The reactions were hilarious. I mean, Rachelle was just blown away! It was super funny. Jon’s reaction was really funny as well and so was Adel’s, “So is this your real voice?” I jokingly told him I was going to turn into this whole new person. Overall, they literally could not have handled it any better. There were inquisitive about my past, future and present. I was so proud of everybody in the house.

Rachelle’s reaction was my favourite.
Oh my god! Well, even after… She said “I don’t even care. You’re still my type!”

Do you feel that aligning yourself with Andrew cost you the game?
I don’t feel like it cost me the game, but I don’t feel like it helped me very much at the same time. He was a very physical guy and I could have still used that, but his social game in the house wasn’t that great. In hindsight, I feel like I should have been able to bounce back from it.

What went wrong between you and Jon? Why couldn’t the two of you get past it and try to work together?
Well, now I’m kind of rethinking my last answer because my relationship with Andrew is probably what killed my relationship with Jon. I shared over and over again how I wished that Jon had walked into that house with me, so it could have been the “First Six,” or Jon was included in the “First Five.” I liked Jon and I wanted to work with him. He’s a smart guy and I think we could have done some damage in the house! I think Jon felt like he was taking a back seat to my relationship with Andrew, even though I was telling him over and over again that it wasn’t. He was turned off by my alliance with Andrew. He told many people that he felt secondary and I felt like that was the demise.

Who do you feel has the best gameplay at the moment?
I feel like Arlie does. He’s been playing it as the underdog, playing both sides, throwing challenges and just shaking things up in the house but doing it in a very smart way. I had my suspicions about him, but he was playing it well enough to the point where I didn’t call him out on it! I think he has a really great chance of winning.

Were you surprised at all that Andrew and Sabrina were nominated by Canada?
[Laughs] Not really. Sabrina is extremely emotional, high strung and can be kind of wild. Andrew can be a loud, boisterous person as well. Adding to the fact that they were members of the “First Five,” who basically dominated the game, I feel like Canada not only wanted to shake up the house, but possibly put up two people who were rubbing them the wrong way.

Allison came to you after Sarah’s eviction saying she had your back yet she did nothing to stop your eviction when she could have with her special Power of Veto.
I think it’s a smart move that she didn’t use it. She could have been buttering me up in case she though I was on the jury, but I do feel like she came to me from a genuine place. I feel like she’s on the bottom of her alliance and I don’t feel like she truly wants to work with them. If I had stayed in the game, I do feel like she would have flipped back over to me. I think that she did want me to stay and was giving me the heads up. If she wasn’t, it was still smart on her part to make me leave with a positive thought about her.

How much did being on slop this week affect your gameplay?
Oh my god, slop is just terrible in every way, shape and form. I would literally just space out in the middle of conversations and forget words altogether. I don’t want to blame it on slop, but I also want to blame it on slop!

What if I told you that Neda actually got rid of your ketchup, mustard, sugar and maple syrup for your slop!
I want to kill her! She is obviously playing a lot harder than I initially thought. The only game move I thought she was had was attaching herself to Jon. Good for her! I knew that somebody had thrown out [those items] with the intention of making slop more difficult for me to eat and make me more weak, but I was so determined not to show them any more weakness that I ate more slop because of it. I think it kind of backfired in a way because I was eating more because of it.

I think that’s when a lot of the viewers finally felt that Neda was playing this game.
Yeah, totally!

Jon has won HOH. What are your thoughts on that and do you have any predictions on how this week will turn out?
Wow! If he’s smart, he’ll go after Arlie. He’ll put up Arlie and Rachelle because he knows that Rachelle is going to go against him and Arlie is probably his biggest threat in this game.

Are you rooting for Arlie?
Yeah, I’m rooting for Arlie. I absolutely think that he’s played an exceptional game and he never brought emotion into it, which I obviously can’t say I did myself! He’s made a really good case for himself if he finds himself in the final two. So, I’m hoping that he does.

What’s next for you? Where do you see yourself? You’ve got your modeling thing going, but would you want to work in television?
It’s kind of hard to right now because of the haze of just being in the house. I’m kind of in shock. I would love to see what kind of avenues would open up for the modeling and if TV presents itself, who knows!

What was it like seeing the fan reaction last night?
Surprisingly, I almost cried! [Laughs] It was great to see that there are people out there rooting for you. When you’re in the house, you lose sight of that because your whole world is inside of that house. To walk out and get a reaction like that, it feels amazing. It was a really good feeling.

Click here to read the exit interview with Big Brother Canada’s Sarah Miller.

Big Brother Canada airs Wednesdays, Thursdays and Sundays at 9 p.m. ET, The Big Brother Canada Side Show airs Thursdays at 10 p.m. ET and Big Brother Canada After Dark airs nightly from 2 a.m. to 5 a.m. ET on Slice. Viewers can watch live feeds of the house at BigBrotherCanada.ca.