Big Brother 19 interview: Allison Grodner on Josh’s win, looking ahead to BB Celebrity

The Big Brother 19 finale is about 24 hours in the rear-view mirror now, and with that, what better way to close the door on this season than a final exit interview with Allison Grodner? The executive producer has been kind enough all season to speak with us about various aspects of the game, and one final time we’ve got a selection of email responses from her.

Today, you can see what Grodner had to say about the surprise of Josh’s win, how she assesses seasons after the fact, and how quickly she and the rest of her team are getting to work on the upcoming Celebrity season. It may not begin until the new year, but everyone is actually getting back to work sooner than you’d think. (Alas, we probably won’t know the cast for some time.)

CarterMatt – I want to go back to early in the season, when Josh was blowing up and seemed like the target almost from the moment after Cameron left. Did you ever think that he would win?

Allison Grodner – Not at all.  I really didn’t think he was going to make it past the first two weeks.  I thought he would either be evicted or he would self evict.  Seeing him after the show I congratulated Josh and told him I never would have guessed I would be signing the half million dollar check to him. It was an exciting win and we are very happy for him.

In looking at the season as a whole, do you already have a good sense of some of what worked and what you’d like to change for the future, or is that something you prefer to think about after getting some distance from it?

Every season we learn something new and make tweaks here and there to both creative and rules.  Having some distance is good too.

Finally, what’s the immediate future for you like now? Do you get a little break before planning BB Celebrity, or are you diving right in to planning that?

We need all the time we can get to plan BB celebrity.  I might take a half day tomorrow but we will be diving in first thing on Monday.

If you missed some of our other Big Brother 19 coverage…

There’s actually a ton of CarterMatt commentary to check out! For starters, we got together highlights of some of Dr. Will’s backyard interviews with some of the various houseguests, and beyond that we also have a piece discussing the voting practices with America’s Favorite Houseguest.

We hope you enjoyed our coverage of Big Brother 19 — if you’re new at the site this year, we hope you stick around for Survivor. We’ve got everything from weekly exit interviews to reviews coming up over the next several weeks. (Photo: CBS.)