- POPSUGAR Australia
- Celebrity
- Big Brother Australia’s Ari Shares Why Danny and Marley Are “Lying Snakes” Like Him
Big Brother Australia’s Ari Shares Why Danny and Marley Are “Lying Snakes” Like Him
It’s been an explosive time in the Big Brother Australia house this week. First, we saw Sid Pattni blindside Tilly Whitfield, only for Big Brother to send her into his mirrored room and await her fate.
Then, we saw Ari Kimber blindsided by Danny Hayes and Marley Biyendolo, a move he was NOT happy about.
Chatting to POPSUGAR Australia, Ari shared that he’d gotten “a little inkling” that he might be evicted after seeing Danny talking with SJ, Sid and Marley, but put his fears aside when Danny and Marley assured him he was safe.
“Both of those boys shook my hand and said ‘You are safe tonight, we are not voting you out,’” he revealed. “Obviously, I lie and backstab people all the time, but I don’t claim to be super trustworthy, where these two boys say that their handshake is their word and that they’re so loyal.”
Indignant, Ari continued: “So, I was very surprised that those two people blindsided me because all they do is preach about how trustworthy they are,” he said. “In fact, they’re just lying snakes like me!”
Having been nominated so many times throughout the season, Ari told us that he’d “a thousand percent” gotten used to it, even come to like the feeling of “nerves that run through your system” in the lead up to elimination.
“The spots in between where I wasn’t nominated I was kind of bored,” he said, laughing. “I prefer being nominated!”
Calling his elimination “the biggest low of his life”, Ari said it was “an emotional rollercoaster” to then find out he was headed to the mirrored room.
“I’m such a competitive person and I do NOT deal well with losing so in that moment I was like ‘I have lost’, you know, borderline suicidal, so to go from such a low to such a huge high, it was literally the best feeling in the world,” he said. “I felt like I’d just been told I was gonna live forever.”
Of course, in the Big Brother house, nothing is easy, and Ari told us that the mirrored room was even harder to deal with IRL than it looked on TV.
“The mirrored room was DISGUSTING!” Ari exclaimed, revealing that the pair were actually in there for five days.
“I had a headache constantly, the lights did not turn off, the smell of the metal mirror–it smelled like paint–ugh, I hated that room so much. But I mean, Tilly was great company,” he added.
As we saw in the episode, the pair ended up going head-to-head in a simple game of fate that saw Tilly sent packing, a twist that left Ari feeling “gutted”.
“When Tilly left I was so upset,” he said, rubbing a little salt in the wound as he added: “If they’d been offering money to leave I was going to happily take the money and leave, I was ready to go. Tilly wanted to stay so bad.”
As the revelation of his return to the game sank in, however, Ari “went from being sad for her” to realising that he hadn’t exactly left on a high note.
“I was like ‘oh shit, I didn’t hug anyone, I didn’t say goodbye to anyone, all these people are going to be so filthy with me,” he recalled.
Turns out, his housemates weren’t mad about it at all, a move which Ari thought may have been a strategy to keep him onside.
“I think that on the show they air my bubbly, princessy side, but I’m actually a very controlling, vindictive person,” Ari shared, “So I think the people I was close with knew that I would be coming back and I’d be absolutely furious because I’m quite a spiteful person”.
When we spoke to former housemate Mel McGorman about her own blindside, she was quick to say that Ari was one of the best housemates that Big Brother Australia had ever seen, so obviously, we had to ask Ari if he agreed.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, he did.
“I think Mel is definitely right in calling me the best player in the game,” he mused. “There were so many evictions in that house that I orchestrated.
“I think I’m probably the sneakiest housemate,” he continued, revealing that he “would scatter [his] items throughout the house so that [he’d] have an excuse to walk into a conversation.
“There were literally days where the whole house confronted me for creating rumours and I was able to wriggle my way out of it and be their friends again,” he laughed.
“So, thanks Mel,” he said, adding: “I have to say, evicting Mel is my biggest regret in that game, I really like her and I wish we could’ve gone to the end together.”
Whether he means it or not, we’ll never know.
Big Brother Australia continues at 7.30pm on Monday, on Channel 7 and 7 Mate.