‘Big Brother Canada’ interview: Peter Brown on strategy, Alec, and fighting with audience

If “Big Brother Canada” was a wrestling match, Peter Brown fancied himself the guy who lives to stir up the crowd. He is a longtime fan with a passion for entertainment, and we figure that few people in the game really strived as much as he did to have fun with every part of the experience. Were there moments of controversy? Definitely, and he also managed to get most of the audience booing at him during the taping for the show last night, but he was a personal favorite all season long, so we were excited to have some one-on-one time with him on Friday morning. (Update: Peter mentions Twitter in here, and he has since created a new account.)

Cartermatt.com – So did you get any sleep at all from last night?

Peter Brown – I had no sleep at all.

I was curious to see whether or not anyone had managed to get less sleep then I did, and you’ve beaten me.

Well, I’ve finally managed to win a challenge.

Hey, you did win a Veto.

Yeah, I won two Vetos.

So have you had a chance to see anything yet, what people are saying about you?

Not yet. I’m pretty much still in the cocoon.  Which is nice, but I’m getting little droplets of the real world, and it’s pretty bizarre.

So when you get out of here, what’s the first thing that you’re going to do?

I’ll probably watch the wrestling pay-per views that I’ve missed while I was gone, and then I’ll watch the show.

Which ones have passed?

I’ll have missed Elimination Chamber and WrestleMania.

I was a big WCW fan back in the day, but I never got the pay-per-views because they were too expensive.

Yeah, and they’re even more so now.

Was implementing the wrestling something that you were hoping to do on the show? You said in the house that you have a personality inside of the game and outside of the game, so when did you decide to meld the two together?

Well, I’ve been a pro wrestling fan all of my life, and obviously don’t have the physical requirements to be a pro wrestler…

Neither do I.

So I thought, why not be the ‘Big Brother’ version of what a pro wrestler would be? I like CM Punk, and I thought I’d be a kind of CM Punk kind of guy. In the house, I was very quiet and very social, at least as much as I could be, and in the Diary Room I was loud, boisterous, obnoxious, but always honest.

Were you trying to mimic your YouTube videos? I’ve seen some of them.

That was exactly what I was doing. My character on the internet is an exaggerated version of me, Parker Jakobowhitz. The Diary Room is very familiar to me: You have a camera, you have a couch, and that’s basically what I do. So I felt very comfortable playing that character, if you can call it that.

Well I remember from going on a reality show years ago (Beauty and the Geek season 5) that you can go into a game with a certain strategy in mind, but you never want it to be so stringent that you’re not flexible. Did you have any sort of philosophy?

Well I had a checklist of items. I knew I needed one person that I could trust completely, and lucky I found that within the first ten seconds of the game. I knew I needed a group of four that could control votes, and I had that within the first week. So after I had my checklist items, I kind of went on easy street for a while. The game was very easy for both Alec and I until jury, and then the instant eviction had screwed us. We had plotted and planned so many scenarios, and we said we’re going to agree and do whatever we decide on. Unfortunately, it was Andrew and AJ straight off the bat, and we said we’re going to keep Andrew.

I’m going to do something horrible here and drudge up that at around the start of the jury, pretty much every person online thought that you were going to win the game. So what in the [world] really went on with Andrew and AJ to cause this to go so haywire?

Well I sincerely appreciate everyone who thought I was going to win in the pre-jury…[phase]

And a lot of people still thought you were going to pull it off.

I thought I was going to pull it off too, and I came pretty close at times of working my way out of trouble. Alec and I didn’t have to talk a lot, but when we do, we burned through scenarios. We thought at some point Andrew and AJ were going to be up there together, and Alec had made a promise in the hot tub with Andrew that we were going to look out for him. We had looked out for him since Tom was gone, and we’re like ‘if this ever comes up, we feel like you can go to bat for us.’ Andrew didn’t really see it like that, he didn’t like the game that we were playing, but we didn’t entirely know that at the time. We saw him as someone who was on the periphery of the game who could help us, and we said ‘this is what we’re going to do.’ And we did it, but had we had ten seconds to talk to Topaz, we would have switched it and picked AJ.

I have to ask about what happened at the taping last night, when you were hounded during commercials by Jillian fans after [you bashed some of her gameplay]. What made you want to fight back?

I saw an opportunity off-camera to do something that I’ve always wanted to do, which is to cut a heel promo [all over a crowd]. So when I heard the boos, I was like ‘I got them exactly where I want them.’ So I stood up, and I made sure they were paying attention. I wanted to keep going, but there were rushing so I had to rush through it, but I loved pro wrestling and I wanted to have that moment of cutting a heel promo. It was very important to me, and I was just having fun.

I think that’s something that some people don’t seem to understand when they take the game so personally, and are at home and armchair quarterbacking the whole thing. You were just having a good time.

Yes.

So getting booed doesn’t bother you at all?

(Laughs) No.

I know Dr. Will is not very sociable online, and I don’t think he is on Twitter very much these days, but what do you think he would say about what you did this season?

I would hope that Will would say that we had potential, and then made a few missteps, which is exactly what happened. Will Kirby was a huge influence on me in my personal life, and in the world of ‘Big Brother.’ Dan Gheesling also. I feel disappointed, because Alec and I keep getting compared to Will and Dan in some way, and we’re obviously inferior players. We’re not as good as them, but we do aim to be, so throw a Canada vs. US [season] and let’s see what happens.

I think a good comparison for you would be Matt Hoffman. I think you were both extremely smart and played really good games, but there were just one or two moves along the way that didn’t work right. I think he could’ve won his season, and I think you could’ve as well. (Note: the biggest difference is that Matt won Head of Household on a couple of occasions, and made himself a little more of a threat.)

Very fair.

You go back to Vancouver and what happens now? Are you and Alec really going to move in together? Both your moms were talking about it on the show.

I’ve heard, which is pretty awesome.  I will be in need of a new place, Alec will be in need of a new place, so we’ll see what happens. Alec likes living with roommates, I like living alone, but if I’m going to live with anyone, it’s going to be him.

Are you already thinking down the road to a potential All-Stars? I know this is season one and that could be years, but…

You could tell me that there’s fourteen other houseguests waiting right now, and I’d go.

I know there are some people that say ‘I can’t handle the stress and the cameras.’ None of that would bother you?

None of it would. I felt more at home in that house that is totally manufactured than I do in the real world. I would totally do it again in a heartbeat. Any other type of show that they want Alec and I on, I would do it. I’m a ‘yes, yes, yes’ kind of guy, but ‘Big Brother’ is the be-all, end-all for me until I’ve won.

So what would you say to some of the people who have been crazy about you all season, who have made the shirts, taking pictures of themselves doing the Sheyld in random places around Canada? Even people in America, it’s a global thing.

I’m bamboozled by that. I don’t know how to take it since we were just having fun in there. If people found stuff they could connect to, that means so much to me, because I’ve connected to ‘Big Brother’ my entire life. I appreciate people wearing the shirts, throwing up the Sheyld sign. It means more to me than I can ever say.

Do you have a Twitter? Is that something you’re going to do?

My YouTube character Parker Jakobowhitz has a Twitter (right here). That will be changing to a Peter Brown Twitter. I don’t know what it will be yet; I have a few different ones that I’m going to try out.

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In case you didn’t catch our take on what happened during the “Big Brother Canada” finale last night when the cameras weren’t rolling, be sure to check out our article here. Thanks again to Peter for taking so much time to talk to us.

Photo: Slice