Last night, on the Big Brother 15 finale, contestant Andy Herren beat out the other two members of his “Exterminator” alliance, GinaMarie Zimmerman and Spencer Clawson, to become the Big Brother 15 winner and recipient of the $500,000 prize.
Andy ended up winning by not personally offending most of his fellow Houseguests, despite his participation in most of the lying, backstabbing, and alliance switching in the house.
He won the final HoH and surprisingly took GinaMarie, who was arguably a much harder target to beat, to the end of the game with him. But in the end, he answered questions better and defended himself very well when they faced the jury of evicted Big Brother Houseguests.
Andy got a 7-2 vote in his favor, with only Aaryn Gries and Judd Daugherty supporting GinaMarie.
GinaMarie walked away as the $50,000 runner-up, and Spencer complacently took third. Elissa Slater, also a decent player, walked away with a nice prize as well: $25,000 as America’s favorite houseguest.
While the game is over, the drama may just have begun for Gries and some of her housemates, who now have to face the fallout from their actions in the real world.
“Her life is potentially ruined because of it,” said Shawn Onyechi, who briefly dated Gries and considers himself her friend. “There are certain things she can’t do because of things she said and what CBS made her out to look like.”
He referred to the media firestorm that erupted over her racial slurs and the resulting consequences, including the loss of her modeling contract, which she just may have learned about.
Onyechi, an African-American junior at Texas State where Gries also attends, said the controversy surprised him.
“I never heard Aaryn say anything racist about anybody. She has always been nice to me,” he said.
GinaMarie, who was Aaryn’s closest ally on the show, was also recorded on the Big Brother unedited live feed making racially insensitive remarks and unknowingly got herself fired from her pageant coordinator job at East Coast USA Pageant, Inc.
