Australia has crowned Marley Biyendolo as the winner of Big Brother Australia 2021.
Speaking to POPSUGAR Australia on Monday morning, Marley said that he was “so surprised and so honoured” to have made it to the end of the game.
“Obviously it was my goal to make it to the end, but to be so confident, especially at the beginning, I think it’s too hard to realise that you actually could,” he shared.
Marley was proud to have played his game with honesty and integrity.
“I wanted to prove to myself and prove to Australia that you can be an honest person with an amazing heart, a trustworthy person, and you can succeed in this game and you can succeed in life,” he said.]
It’s been an absolutely wild season of Big Brother Australia this year, with so many twists and turns along the way that we honestly have whiplash.
There have been gruelling physical and mental challenges that have put the housemates through their paces, separating the weak from the strong.
Of course, anyone who’s been watching will know that it takes so much more than being a challenge beast to win the show, with social gameplay and strategy taking a front seat this season.
“The secret to Big Brother is to evolve,” eliminated housemate Danny Hayes told POPSUGAR Australia last week. “It’s not the big that eats the small, it’s the fast that eats the slow.
“I don’t care how big or muscular you are, if you’re not working your social game — if that’s not on point — you are going to go home.”
This is where players like SJ shone. Playing a “very very very social game”, SJ told us that she’d let housemates believe she was in an alliance with them to her own benefit, while maintaining a secret alliance with Danny.
“I wasn’t in an alliance with all that other lot that thought I was in an alliance with them, they were just using me as a number and I thought ‘fine, they can use me as a number for as long as they wish’,” she revealed, “but I was actually in an alliance with Danny, he was the only person, because he has the same life experiences and thought process that I do.”
A season of Big Brother wouldn’t be complete without twists and turns, though, and none were more hectic than the mirrored room, which saw Tilly and Ari sequestered in a room full of, well, mirrors, for days, before a game of chance saw Ari re-enter the house.
“The mirrored room was DISGUSTING!” Ari told POPSUGAR Australia, 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.
With another season done and dusted, we honestly can’t wait for the show to return next year. With applications now open, you can either follow Tilly or Ari’s advice.
“In a house with 400 cameras, there’s only so long you can fake it,” Tilly told POPSUGAR Australia. “The producers see through it, the housemates see through it. There’s literally no point, just be yourself.”
“No!” Ari disagreed. “Producers don’t want real, if you’re your real self, that’s boring!
“Be a psycho,” he reiterated, before adding: “I mean, I’m definitely a nutcase in real life, so draw on the parts of your personality that are a bit out there, and blow it up a bit.”
