It’s been five years since we’ve seen the housemate reality competition show Big Brother in the UK, but thanks to ITV, it’s back and better than ever. The iconic show premiered on Oct. 8 with AJ Odudu and Will Best as the hosts, and all of the classic Big Brother antics back as well.
Over the course of the show, we’ll see nominations, evictions, tasks, and all of the drama we’ve come to love between the housemates. Like previous incarnations, the public plays a huge role in the show and deciding who stays and who goes.
Now, let’s meet the castmates.
Who’s in the cast of the Big Brother UK 2023?
There are 16 new housemates vying for the grand prize of £100,000 (about $106,000). Here they are in no particular order:
Jenkin
Jenkin is a 25-year-old bartender from Bridgend. In addition to his work as a barman, he’s also a bingo caller. He joined Big Brother because he was “bored” and wanted to “do something different” and decided he would “give it a whirl.”
In his VT, he said he was “not the only gay in the village, but I’m the best one.” He’s a self-admitted “goss” who describes themself as a “little bit of an instigator,” so look for him to be “bringing the drams.”
Olivia
Olivia is a 23-year-old dancer from Glasgow. She says she will “wind people up” when they are in “that hangry state” and “grind their gears.” She thinks she’ll get nominated for “being full on and for my brutal honesty and oversharing of opinions.”
“I grew up watching the show and I’ve always said if it ever comes back, I want to do it. I just think I fit the brief because I’ve got the personality to sell and this is the best place for it,” she said.
Henry
Henry is a 25-year-old food writer from The Cotswolds. He said he’s “really looking forward to learning lots of life skills, like learning how to cook, clean, or do the washing.” He said that while he’s 25, he doesn’t consider himself an adult yet.
“These are some big things they don’t teach you at school that I need to learn. And also just getting to know loads of different people from very different backgrounds that I might not get to meet in my everyday life.”
Chanelle
Chanelle is a 29-year-old dental therapist from Llanelli. She said she applied to the show “as a joke” and that somehow that joke “has now materialized into real life!” She said she’d be nominated “for being annoying.”
“In Wales, we have this saying, ‘I’ll do it now in a minute.’ So like, if I went to make food and I left a dish on the side, I have all good intentions of washing it but I’d be like, ‘I’ll do it now in a minute,’ and it might be three hours later before I do it. So probably for silly stuff like that.”
Dylan
Dylan is from Coventry and he’s a 39-year-old DJ. He said that as an amputee, he likes “meeting new people and having new hurdles to jump.”
“It’s going to be an interesting journey to see if I can do whatever we’re asked without having any problems with staying on my leg for a certain amount of time and doing all the tasks. I’m excited for the challenge.”
Noky
Noky is a 26-year-old former Miss Great Britain who now works as a banker. She said she hopes to show people “what pageant girls are really like and disprove a lot of stereotypes around them.”
She also aims to show “what it’s like being a woman who’s worked in male-dominated fields” by showing that “women are capable of doing anything they want.”
Paul
Paul is a 23-year-old security officer from Liverpool who always watched the show with his mom. He said everyone told him he should apply to the show, so he did, and “now I’m here.”
He describes himself as “extroverted to say the least” and “a bit nuts but also the agony aunt, like I’ll sit and speak with them but I’ll also take the piss out of them.”
Tom
Tom is a butcher from Somerset. He’s 21 years old and went on the show because “it’s a bit of fun really, isn’t it?” He likes the idea of the show being “different from day-to-day life.”
He wants to be on the show so he can “sit there and chat s*** with people all day.” He also knows he might accidentally offend people because his mouth moves much faster than his brain. His ideal housemate? Karl Pilkington because he’s “just a laugh.”
Trish
Trish is a 33-year-old stay-at-home mom from Luton. She said one of the biggest reasons she wanted to go on the show was to “humanize refugees and immigrants, especially in this political climate.”
“I want people to see that behind the stats and figures, there are real humans. We are important simply because we exist, not only when we participate in capitalism. We matter because we are alive and breathing – no human is illegal!”
Yinrun
Yinrun is a 25-year-old customer service representative from Harrogate. She’s looking for an adventure and thinks Big Brother is “such a fun game show.”
I think it’s another adventure for me,” she said. “I’m a pretty adventurous person.” She described herself as “quirky but loveable” and said her dream housemate would be the comedian Michael McIntyre.
Jordan
Jordan is 25 and he’s from Scunthorpe. He works as a lawyer and said that he was “quite disillusioned with life so I suppose boredom made me apply to some extent.” He applied on a whim and loved the social experiment side of the show.
“I don’t really like the idea of living with people but I thought I might as well give it a try. And I wanted to challenge myself.”
Zak
As you can probably tell from Zak’s promo photo, he works as a male model. He’s 28 years old and he hails from Manchester, but he didn’t grow up there. He grew up in the jungles of Thailand where he would “collect snakes.” He knows he might be judged for being a model but he’s not stuffy he’s a “down-to-earth guy.”
“People assume I’m arrogant but when they actually get to know me I’ve got a lot more to offer.” He wants to just be himself and get his personality “out there and have a laugh with people.”
Hallie
This 18-year-old youth worker has actually had a brush with TV before because one time she “accidentally swallowed magnets” and had to have them removed surgically. She came on the show for “the whole experience.”
“Big Brother is the biggest social experiment and I want to be a part of it. It’s about getting my face out there and just having fun, enjoying life.”
Farida
At 50, Farida is the oldest contestant on the show. She’s a makeup artist from Wolverhampton and wanted to go on the show because “Asian women and Asian culture is underrepresented on TV.”
“A lot of people think that wearing a headscarf might stop you from having opportunities, whereas for me, it’s been completely the opposite. I embrace it with confidence and it’s actually given me lots of opportunities. I want to let people know that us Muslims, we really aren’t suppressed. I’m far from suppressed – I used to be a holiday rep!”
Matty
Matty is a doctor from the Isle of Man. He wanted to be on the show because he wanted to “experience everything before I die.” He watched the show growing up with his mother, who would let him stay up past his bedtime.
“I grew up in such a small place on the Isle of Man where I didn’t really see many people who felt like me. I remember watching Big Brother and I could see myself in all these characters from a cross-section of society, and I thought like, oh, maybe I would fit in there.”
Kerry
This 40-year-old NHS manager is from Essex suffers from multiple sclerosis and said “The reason why I never applied before is because I always saw those whacking great big stairs to get into the house.”
“It just felt a little bit unachievable because, for the first three years of my illness, I was in a wheelchair. When I saw it was coming back and searching for real people from all walks of life, I thought, this is my year.”
