Rick Devens might have won Season 28 of Big Brother, but he didn’t know about a specific rule before going into the game — Houseguests can’t lie about a power they have.
Devens had a Survivor-esque plan when entering the game, but that was all foiled when he was told by producers that Big Brother is a bit different than its CBS competitor. In Survivor, contestants can (and will) lie about almost everything, including advantages and immunity powers, even ones that do not exist, and they are allowed to, but in Big Brother, it’s a whole different ball game.
However, when Devens sat down the executive producers Allison Grodner and Rich Meehan for their pre-game chat, he found out that bluffing about advantages wasn’t allowed, according to Entertainment Weekly. Big Brother is all about lying, backstabbing, and manipulating, but not when it comes to powers.
“We did our debrief prior to him going to the house,” Grodner told the outlet. “We read him the rules, because we do that with everyone, and that’s a big part of the rules, right? You don’t use production as strategy. You don’t make up powers.”
The EP shared that upon hearing the news, Devens’ face changed and his mood “immediately dropped.” “He was so confident during the debrief — just so confident. And then when we said that, he’s like, ‘Oh, whoa, wait a minute,’” she said.
“He really wanted to do that,” Meehan shared. Grodner said that she knew it would be an issue for him, since he did that one Survivor, and he quickly readjusted how he would play the game with that rule in place.
Devens won the Diamond Power of Veto in the Timecapsule, which allowed him to not only take off a Houseguest on the block, but also name the replacement nominee instead of the Head of Household. He decided to take off his Survivor cohort Dee Valladares and put up Kamu Kirk, resulting in Kamu’s eviction.
As to why this rule is in effect, Grodner explained to EW that the rule has “always been in place.” “That’s just Big Brother,” she said. “There’s so much strategy on Big Brother, and the game is so long.”
“I mean, if you’re watching the feeds, half of the alliances, they don’t amount to anything. So imagine if you had to tell all that story, and then if you’re gonna let one person make up a power, you have to let all 16 make up a power,” Grodner said.
They believe that making up powers would alter the game as a whole. “Imagine if five or six people are making up powers, and then you’ve gotta tell all the story that isn’t real. So then you have all the actual story, all the alliance building, everything else, and then everyone will [make up powers] if everyone knows they’re allowed to do it. And then it becomes a game of who can make up the best power,” she shared.
To sum it up, the EPs want the Houseguest to play Big Brother, not a game of trickery, which they say is a different game. They have so many twists and powers in the long season that lying about them would cause confusion.
Big Brother, Season 28, now streaming, Paramount+