Rachel Reilly Reveals How ‘Big Brother’ Has Changed & Whether She’d Play Again

Brittany Sims November 13, 2026, 5:45 pm

Rachel Reilly Villegas at the Big Brother, 1,000th Episode Celebration on the Radford Studios Lot in Los Angeles, California - August 27, 2026. — Francis Specker/CBS

What To Know

Rachel Reilly won Big Brother Season 13 and returned for Season 27 after roughly 15 years away from the game.
She says modern players favor house votes and frequently switch alliances, unlike the more loyal alliances of her earlier seasons.
Reilly likes the new Blockbuster twist and would consider returning.

Rachel Reilly might be the most synonymous name in Big Brother history. The icon has played the game three times and won once.

She first played on Season 12 and then returned on Season 13 with five other returnees and wound up winning that season. Then, for 15 years, although her name was still in many people’s mouths, fans hadn’t seen her play the game again until Season 27.

In those 15 years, the game of Big Brother had changed drastically. The Blockbuster was added to the game, putting three nominees on the block instead of two, but aside from that, the gameplay has changed a lot. Reilly, who met her husband Brendon Villegas on Season 12, shared how she thinks the game has changed since her first time playing. The reality TV icon talked to us about the game she loves in partnership with BetUS.

“I think that what’s changed the most was that the people playing are so different now than they were 15 years ago,” she told us. “Because now you go into the game and you see in a game like Big Brother, and people want to be best friends. They all kind of want to work together. There’s a lot of house voting.”

Brendon Villegas and Rachel Reilly attend the Bobs From Skechers Summer Soiree

Getty Images

“Back in the day, we used to have our people, and we would stick with them, and then we would never turn on them, so we would go, and we would just work with them the whole show. Our alliances really meant something.”

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“I noticed on Big Brother 27 and on Big Brother 28, people will make alliances for a few weeks and then they’ll totally switch up. So I think that’s definitely changed. The Blockbuster changed because of that. A lot of the show has changed. The Blockbuster is an addition that they made, which I absolutely love. They added it to give extra competition to the people on the block, and so I think that was a great addition to the show,” she said.

Now, that Reilly has played the modern game, would she ever return for a fourth time? “Yes and no,” she said. Despite it being one of her favorite shows, she wouldn’t want to do the full three-month commitment. “If we’re talking like 10 years in the future and my daughter Adora goes on the show, then yeah, probably I would do it too. But if we’re talking Season 30 for three months, I don’t think that’s going to happen, but if they do — they’ve talked about a winter season in the winter for three weeks — then yeah, sign me up. I would love to do that. I think it would be a lot of fun.”