It’s only been a week since Big Brother 24 premiered, but viewers and former contestants are already sounding the alarm on the poor treatment of a Black contestant.
Taylor Hale is a personal stylist from Detroit and one of 16 people competing for the grand prize of $750,000. Per the show’s rules, she has committed to spending up to 82 days in a fluorescent-lit home on a soundstage in Los Angeles. The 27-year-old may now be rethinking that decision. Cameras from the 24-hour live feed have caught her sobbing quietly in her bedroom while her housemates conspire against her with months of filming still left.
Only two episodes have aired on CBS so far, but fans of the show have already compiled snippet upon snippet of whispers broadcast on the home’s Orwellian live feeds, which air around the clock on Paramount+, showing contestants trash-talking Taylor about being “aggressive” and having an “attitude” with very little evidence of said behavior.
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In one clip, contestant Matthew Turner says Taylor looked at him “dead-eyed” and told him, “You’re always on your bullshit,” after he confessed to forgetting his mask sometimes.
In another clip, contestant Monte Taylor recalls Taylor confidently strutting around the house in a gown that she called her “finale dress.” He accused her of having a problem connecting to people, although he hedged his assessment by acknowledging her as a “strong Black woman doing her thing in life.”
These passing encounters have swelled into a narrative that trades on racist stereotypes to paint Taylor as a combative and dishonest housemate who simply needs to go.
The Twitter account Big Brother Daily, which boasts 389,000 followers and keeps fastidious track of the house cameras, claims contestant Paloma Aguilar said Taylor “scares the shit out of everyone.”
Contestant Terrance Higgins has also complained about Taylor’s behavior, saying she has the type of “attitude that gets you kicked out of the house.”
Taylor’s online defenders say the criticism is founded on colorism. Indeed, claims of her allegedly “aggressive” behavior are so thin that you’d be forgiven for thinking the house has fallen into mass hysteria, which wouldn’t be hard to believe considering their sequestered living arrangement.
That’s partly why Derek Frazier, who took home $75,000 as last season’s runner-up, doesn't blame the show’s producers for the cast’s behavior.
“You really don’t know what a person’s gonna be like until you get into that pressure cooker. It got to me, it got to so many people,” he told The Daily Beast. (Derek was criticized for calling a female contestant a bitch. “I’m a gay man. I call everyone bitches, but I was wrong. That was not right for me as a Black man to do,” he says.)
Tensions aside, he says he hasn’t been able to trace the source of the animus against Taylor.
“That’s the part that kind of scares me, because I haven’t seen that. Right now I’m not working, so I have the free time. I’ve been watching since day one how she talks, also she opened up and cried to them,” he said. “I think [they’re] just trying to make a storyline.”
Kyland Young, also from last season, agrees that he’s seen no negative behavior from Taylor.
“Usually I do watch and I’m like, ‘OK, I get somebody does this, rubs someone the wrong way.’ This is an instance where the more I watch, I’m like, ‘Wow, I do not think she’s doing anything wrong.’ But it’s kind of tricky too because the nature of being in the house, you’re playing a game,” he told The Daily Beast. “I remember having conversations with people in the house while we’re playing, ‘Hey remember, they’re probably not a bad person, but our brains are conditioned right now to find the worst of people.’”
It could be the simple story of a frenzied house turning against an intimidatingly confident and beautiful former beauty queen. (Taylor was the 2021 Miss Michigan USA.) The issue is complicated by the fact that a majority of this season’s contestants are non-white, and Monte and Terrance, both Black men, have hit out at her on camera.
“The Big Brother in me is like, strive and get off the block,” said Derek. “But also, because of her mental health and how she’s been treated, I don’t think she deserves [it].”
He’s also careful to note that strategy is a big part of the game, especially when a cash prize of almost $1 million hangs in the balance.
“It’s about lying and manipulating and getting through the game, but there’s definitely another way of playing it by being a bully. Judging someone based on how they look, their characteristics, how they talk,” Derek said. “To me that’s, like, mean girl stuff.”
There could very well be examples of Hale’s unfriendly behavior that haven’t reached the public, but instances of racism are painfully familiar to any longtime Big Brother viewer. And sensitivity training before filming, which producers have now acknowledged takes place, is not enough to root out the systemic and deeply ingrained unconscious biases of the outside world.
A casting director for the show called the Taylor situation “really disappointing,” according to Variety, though that’s as much as sources close to the show are saying for now. CBS did not respond to a request for comment from The Daily Beast.
The controversy is all the more confounding considering last year’s breakthrough alliance that led Xavier Prather to become the show’s first Black winner. Dubbed “The Cookout,” the group, which included Derek and Kyland, joined forces to make history that doesn’t seem to be repeating itself.
Xavier chimed in on the Taylor controversy over the weekend.
“Members of the black community (especially black women) and other people of color stand no chance in the Big Brother House due to the perpetuation of micro-aggressions and unconscious biases which plague our society,” he said in a lengthy note shared on Twitter on Sunday.
“Change is a MUST! Until then, I know my fellow Michigander will keep her head high and stand tall like the Queen that she is,” he added.
Former contestants Hannah Chaddha and Azah Awasum also spoke out against Taylor’s treatment during an appearance on fellow Cookout member Tiffany Mitchell’s podcast on Monday.
Referring to last season’s alliance as “the perfect cocktail,” Hannah said Taylor’s isolation appears unjustified.
“I haven’t heard one game-related reason as to why these people, especially her brothers and sisters, want her to go. It’s very heartbreaking,” she said, adding that she actually hopes she leaves for the sake of her “mental health.”
Azah agreed, blaming a lack of darker skin tones on the show for the colorism she perceives as she keeps up with the latest season.
As Taylor continues to be rapidly ostracized, her fellow players, all of whom are cut off from the outside world, are well aware of how this is playing out beyond the house’s fake walls.
In the live feed, contestant and Elvis impersonator Daniel Durston said of Taylor, “The minute I saw her, I knew it was going to be bad news,” wedging in a strange anecdote about meeting “every race and culture possible” while touring the country and having enough “intuition” to perceive someone’s “energy.”
Daniel, who gets to put up two of his housemates for eviction as Head of Household, has also been filmed complaining about not being able to put Taylor on the chopping block because of the optics, according to ET Online.
“Dude, if people think I’m fucking racist when I leave this house, I’m fucked,” he told Monte.
Paloma preemptively defended Daniel against such claims, saying, “A lot of people are like, ‘It’s fucked up to put two Black people on the block or vote two Black people out of the house, like Taylor then Terrance, but I don’t see it that way.”
By Sunday’s episode, Daniel cooled off on Taylor and decided to put white contestant Michael Bruner on the block, though Michael later used his veto to keep himself safe, moving Taylor back up.
Kyland believes last year’s strategy may have spooked some of the contestants.
“Are people subconsciously worried about another Cookout, which is why there’s two [Black] people on the block right now?” he asked.
