‘No filters, no fame-hungry pigs’: Inside the original Big Brother

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It’s been 24 years since Gretel Killeen first welcomed Australia to Big Brother, guiding a cameraman around that iconic Dreamworld house we’d soon get to know so well. This was where a 22-year-old strip club manager called Sara-Marie would teach us the bum dance. It’s where we first met Chrissie Swan and also a grown man named Hotdogs. We’d just survived Y2K, it would be more than half a decade until we learnt what an iPhone was, and we were blessed with seemingly unrestricted access to footage of young Australians taking their pants off.

Big Brother was the beginning of a new era of TV. It created our first reality stars and some of the most memorable moments in live television history. It also tested the boundaries of how this new format could operate. The infamous “turkey slap” in 2006 – which was captured on the show’s livestream and prompted condemnation from then-prime minister John Howard – led to concrete changes in how TV watchdogs policed content and the ways in which producers thought about duty of care.

The show limped off our screens just two years ago, after stints at each of the commercial broadcasters, ending on Seven with its worst ratings to date. Fans were angry it had drifted from its roots, relying too heavily on Love Island-style dating drama and the social strategy of games such as Survivor.

Now the show’s original broadcaster, Network 10, is taking the series back to its original form. Returning to Dreamworld, this time with The Cheap Seats’ cultural correspondent Mel Tracina as host, the show will bring back live evictions, a live finale, a 24/7 livestream, public voting and a focus on “ordinary” people. There will be no influencers or F-grade celebs in sight, with producers recruiting people with “real jobs, real lives and no social media following”.

But can we really return to 2001? I spoke to some of the show’s most beloved housemates about their time on the series and how the world has changed.

Housemates from the third season of Big Brother Australia including Reggie Bird and Chrissie Swan.

Getting on the show

Blair McDonough, season one runner-up: For me, it was just about adventure – and getting out of university. I was blissfully 19 and blissfully naive. The application was one of the first downloads I’d ever done on a computer. I had to figure out the printer with this 20-page thing you had to post in. I’ll never forget one of the questions was, “What is it that you can’t live without?” I’ve got a thing with cutting my nails, so I said, “I just can’t live without my nail clippers”. I posted that in, and got a reply inviting me to a face-to-face day in Dandenong. A couple of months later I got the call-up to go to the Gold Coast.

Reggie Sorensen (formerly Bird), winner of seasons three and 14: I wanted to be on the show because I wanted a holiday. I’d been in the fish-and-chip shop, working seven days a week, 14-hour days for 12 years. And I’m like, “If I get one week on the Gold Coast, living in a bloody house somewhere, not doing anything, no big responsibilities, that’d be awesome”.

Sara-Marie Fedele, season one housemate: I saw an ad on TV to apply. I was like, “Oh, I did a Contiki tour by myself in Europe, so I’m sure I could handle this”. I was running late to the auditions, and parked in a no-standing bay because I thought it wouldn’t take long, and I wouldn’t get it. I walked in and said, “Sorry I’m late, but I’ve got things to do”. I wasn’t being up myself, but I actually was like, “Oh, if you want me, you want me. If you don’t, I love my life anyway”. I didn’t actually try. I was just being myself.

“I was just sitting in a house around a pool, talking to chooks for three months.”

Jonathon Summerhayes, a producer of seasons 1-6, returning as an executive producer this season: We never knew the twists until we met our housemates. We weren’t planning for twins until the Logans [2005 winners Greg and David Mathew] walked into my casting room. These identical twins who had the gift of the gab led to one of the best moments of live television when we did the first twin swap.

We asked them to swap clothing in the diary room, which they did immediately – I mean, right down to their jocks, which none of us were expecting. One tells the other, “You go out this door, you turn left, you go straight into the bedroom”. And the rest is history. He walked out, turned left, and went straight into the pantry. We were watching like the rest of Australia, thinking “is he going to get caught?” The reality gods were shining on us that day.

Gretel Killeen with 2005 Big Brother winner “Logan Greg” and his twin brother “Logan David”.

Life in the house

Blair: In the show’s beginning, everyone was still finding their feet, so we were a lot more free-range compared to later years. I remember laughing and sitting around a pool and playing basketball and giving each other shit. I had no agenda. I hadn’t even lived out of home before. I hadn’t lived with another girl apart from my mum. I hadn’t lived with a gay guy before. It was all these new experiences, so that really took up a lot of my bandwidth. As the show went on, you could hear the crowd from the backyard on the live shows. And we started thinking, “People wouldn’t scream like that if this wasn’t something.”

Sara-Marie: In the later years they had things like Friday Night Games to occupy them. We had a pile of magazines. That’s all we had. We couldn’t have pens or paper, but we all knew every single magazine. Blair would say, “What’s on page 36?” of a certain magazine, and we would know the exact story on that page because there was nothing else to do.

Blair McDonough in Big Brother Australia season one.

Reggie: My first season was just a big fun holiday, and the second one was torture. It was like Survivor in a warehouse.

Jonathon Summerhayes: I remember getting the call from the original EP, Peter Abbott, to come and work on the show. I was a natural history producer, so I was making documentaries on sharks and dogs. He offered me the unofficial title of “officer of psychological warfare”. Thankfully, that was never a credited role, but that’s how he sold it to me: “You are there to change the mood, bring them together, pull them apart, change the environment”. I spent a lot of time talking to psychologists, finding out how people ticked. We always thought the boredom was our friend. When housemates get bored, something would always kick off. It was like a runaway train. Once the housemates were on board, and that train left the station, you’re running ahead, throwing the track down.

Sex, nudity and controversy

Blair: Things like Big Brother Uncut [a late-night companion show that featured explicit content including full-frontal nudity] didn’t really bother me. I just wanted to stay true to what I thought was fair and reasonable and polite. Mum and Dad had a couple of rules. My dad’s one was “don’t have sex”, so I stuck to that. You signed all these disclaimers and bits and pieces. You’re going into the bathroom with cameras … but I had nothing to hide. And with someone like Sara-Marie around, and us being as close as we were, it made any anxiety or fear just melt away.

Sara-Marie: I didn’t know about Big Brother Uncut before going into the house. Someone recently sent me the video of me cooking fish fingers, and I was so drunk in that. We got cask wine and would walk around drinking it from coffee mugs. We still had rules on alcohol, but I think ours was maybe a bit more lenient than other seasons. At the after-party, a producer told me I gave the man who did the audio a full-time job because I swore so much; he had to beep me out all the time.

Reggie: You do forget there are cameras there. I’ve heard about Uncut, but I haven’t watched it. I remember when I went back to Tassie, I was in Harvey Norman with my sister and someone yelled out, “Reggie, show us your map of Tassie!” I was like, “What does that mean?” My sister went, “You’ve got no idea what’s been shown of you.”

Big Brother Uncut, hosted by Gretel Killeen.

Sarah Thornton, incoming executive producer: We’re not making a Big Brother Uncut this time around and the show’s on much earlier, so there will be a level of censorship for the time slot. There are modesty screens in the bathroom. There will be a livestream, but we are going over it with a fine-tooth comb. Obviously, it will be moderated. There are legal and taste and decency considerations. But our ambition is still to deliver the most raw and uninterrupted access to the house that we can.

The world has changed [since the infamous 2006 “turkey slap” incident]. I’ve been working in television for 26 years and the way we treat welfare, consent and behaviour has changed exponentially. We are better at recognising and managing those situations, and we have specific staff members dedicated to welfare who are on site 24/7.

Jonathon Summerhayes: We are leaning into the immediacy again. That’s what fans want. Merlin Luck’s eviction [in which he refused to speak on stage, carrying a damaged sign he had smuggled into the house reading “free th (sic) refugees”] was the classic example. No one ever thought that was coming. I was at home watching it on a Sunday night and my phone did not stop ringing. Everyone was saying, “What are we going to do?” And it was like, “Well, we’re not switching over. I’ll tell you that”. Gretel [Killeen] handled it like a true pro.

Australia’s first reality stars

Blair: It was absolutely insane. I had security. I did appearances in nightclubs for three years, every weekend. I was working on Neighbours within two weeks. And that saved my life. It saved my life to have that responsibility and focus. I was working for over 15 years, reliant on entertainment, and then you get older and balder and less appealing, and then you’ve got to figure out something else to do. I have a company in chemical distribution now. It’s been a journey.

Reggie Bird, winner of Big Brother Australia season three.

Reggie: It was absolutely crazy. When I flew back to Hobart, thousands of people were up on the hill with a human “Go Reggie” sign. I had water cannons come out over the plane. That hadn’t happened since The Beatles were in Australia. It took me at least two years to try and get a normal job because everything was so crazy; 22 years down the track, I still get stopped. The second time I won, in 2022, no one gave a shit. It was bizarre.

Sara-Marie: It was very full on when I went out on stage and there’s a whole thing of people with bunny ears and pyjamas. People felt like they knew me. I don’t think people knew what to do with us when we got out. It was the first time people were famous just for being themselves.

The thing that blew me away the most was people asking what it was like being “fat and happy”. I didn’t even think of myself as being fat or overweight. It was a bit of a shock. Then I got paid to lose weight, and then I ate more, and my weight began to fluctuate. I never worried about my weight until after Big Brother.

Mia Freedman, who was the editor of Cosmopolitan magazine, put me on the front cover. I was only a size 14, but the idea of someone like me being on the cover back then ended up being such a thing, they did a double cover with Britney Spears on the other side. Crazy times.

I rarely did any nightclub appearances. Blair says he got to buy his house because I gave up so many of my nightclub appearances. We were paid very well – $10,000 an hour – to appear somewhere. It was very different to now.

I was able to do a book, a pyjama label, a single, more TV appearances. I feel very grateful. But the last 10 years, I’ve just enjoyed being a mum. There’s so much more than just to be known. I remember when we were out in Perth one time, my daughter got a photo with some footballer and I said to her, “I was more famous than him”. She said, “No way, mum. You were never more famous than that.” Sometimes people will say, “Do the bum dance”. And you know what? I still will do it for them if it’s an appropriate place.

Can they recapture the magic?

Sarah Thornton: There was a sense of magic and wonder and curiosity about people and the world in those early seasons. And I think over the years, we’ve grown a little bit cynical about people – and especially the people who are on TV or our social media feeds. What we’re trying to do now is return to that: there’s a real nostalgia for the way TV allowed people to be themselves.

Blair: You hope there’s some sort of authenticity to it, right? That’s what made seasons one, two and three work. Audiences felt like they had a real relationship with these people.

When you have people looking for fame, that agenda tarnishes things. If they can steer clear of those fame-hungry pigs and find people who truly want to have an adventure, it might work. I wonder if audiences have the concentration to let things organically evolve any more, though? It’s a different world out there. You can’t imitate The Beatles, right?

Sara-Marie Fedele and Blair McDonough in Big Brother Australia season one.

Reggie: I hope they bring back real people having real conversations. And I hope they don’t have all that bloody “strat[egy] chat” crap that we had to do in the 2022 season. I hope it all goes back to where you’re not allowed to speak about nominations.

Reality TV now is all so staged. Look at Married at First Sight and the people who go on that show. Nothing seems genuine. I hope Big Brother has brought in some people from Tassie because they’re a down-to-earth bunch of people.

Sara-Marie: Reality shows are made-up a bit too much now. There’s no way you can get out of bed looking that hot and sit on the couch without anything rolling out.

People do different shows for different reasons, and a lot of people have been very successful continuing on from reality shows to their social media platforms. But I think everyone’s ready for no filters. I’m ready to go back to the old-school way.

What are your thoughts on the return of Big Brother? We’d love to hear about it in the comments below.

These conversations have been edited and condensed for clarity.

Big Brother will return to Ten, 7pm on November 9.

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