‘A big target in the house’: ‘Big Brother’ host Julie Chen Moonves reveals how Angela Murray’s manic gameplay is changing season 26

If you’ve been keeping up with Big Brother 26, then you already know that Angela Murray is one of the most prominent ⏤ and problematic ⏤ houseguests of the season.

Her outbursts, sobfests, bullying sessions, and other abominable shenanigans have resulted in social media feeds everywhere being flooded with memes and outcries for her to get evicted already. When she’s not fighting with other houseguests ⏤ notably Matt Hardeman, Lisa Weintraub, or Quinn Martin ⏤ Angela has surprisingly lucked into what many would call a successful Big Brother journey thus far. She’s secured two Head of Household wins, and during the weeks she wasn’t in power and found herself on the block (four times!), she’s had the coveted Power of Veto used on her twice ⏤ first by Tucker Des Lauriers and then by Leah Peters.

Although it sounds as improbable as it’s been, Angela’s social game is somehow keeping her alive, and BB superfans everywhere simply do not understand. Despite being nominated time and time again — and seemingly making a new enemy every day in the Big Brother house — Angela has somehow managed to float through the game week by week, a mildly impressive feat given how cruel she’s been directly to people’s faces.

How is Angela managing to actually have some success on BB26 despite her rampant chaos? Longtime host Julie Chen Moonves has weighed in on the action in an exclusive interview with Entertainment Weekly to offer her thoughts.

The worst BB player of all time, or the best?

When asked why the BB26 houseguests keep saving Angela, Chen Moonves spilled the tea, explaining what she sees from the host’s perspective:

“I think people in the house genuinely like her and see her as a fun mom figure. Plus, they aren’t threatened by her, so why not keep her? Plus, I bet they don’t want to get in trouble by their real moms by voting her out!”

Given how heinous Angela’s actions have been throughout her Big Brother game, superfans of the show (such as myself) were baffled to hear that Chen Moonves believes “people in the house genuinely like her,” because Angela’s edit has largely suggested otherwise. Chen Moonves’ opinion that the houseguests allegedly “aren’t threatened by [Angela]” also feels rather contradictory. Quinn just spent his HOH gunning for Angela to be evicted. When Angela tried to join Tucker’s alliance with Rubina, T’kor, and Kimo, the mother of all awkward silences quickly followed, and they only gave in because what else were they going to do? Angela then turned on Tucker faster than you can say double agent, reinforcing how unlikable and untrustworthy she is. In my honest opinion, someone who is well-liked by everyone is the bigger threat in the game — especially since the winner is decided by a jury of former houseguests ⏤ so we are #ConfusedAF after reading everything “The Chenbot” had to say.

Nevertheless, real estate agent Angela is full of surprises, so who knows ⏤ maybe she’ll coast her way all the way to finale night and somehow manage to take home the $750k cash prize in the end. The only way to find out for yourself is to catch brand new episodes of Big Brother 26 Sundays at 9pm ET/PT and Wednesdays and Thursdays at 8pm ET/PT on CBS, with next-day streaming on Paramount Plus. With the jury portion of the game just beginning — as well as the removal of the AI Arena — things are definitely starting to heat up, and we seriously cannot wait for everything the second half of the season has in store!