BuddyTV interviews Dan Gheesling, the winner of Big Brother 10.
Dan Gheesling (did you know that was his last name? I didn’t) ran away with $500,000 last night on the Big Brother 10 finale. You’ll have a hard time finding anyone who thinks that he didn’t deserve it. He was perhaps the greatest Big Brother mastermind the series has seen since the great Will Kirby. In fact, Dan discusses the fact that he consciously emulated the good doctor as he prepared for Big Brother, one of the many tidbits of knowledge you will learn in the below interview. W. got the chance to speak with Dan earlier today at length about his time on Big Brother 10. Part one of our interview can be found below.
Below you will find the full written transcript of the interview, along with the full mp3 audio.
Exclusive Interview: Dan, Winner of ‘Big Brother 10’, Part 2
Hey this is Oscar from BuddyTV and I’m here with Dan, the winner of Big Brother 10. Dan, how you doin’?
What’s up, Oscar? How are you doing?
Pretty good. So, how are you feeling? Has it set in yet? The victory, everything?
What victory? Has what set in yet? W.at are you talking about? (laughs)
How’s the last 12, 16 hours gone for you?
Oh, it’s been awesome. Getting a chance to compete in Big Brother has been a dream come true and winning it hasn’t even hit me yet. I tried to go to sleep last night, my body was tired, but my mind just wouldn’t let me go to sleep. It’s overwhelming, you know? I’ve been a huge fan of this show. To get on it, play in it and win it, I mean, it still has not even hit me.
Going into the live finale, where was your head at, what was your mindset going in? Were you confident? How were your feelings, just in general?
Going in I thought I had a fifty-fifty shot. I thought the vote would be 4-3. I thought for sure I had Keesha and Renny. I thought Libra and Jerry would vote for Memphis and the game was going to come down to April, Ollie and Michelle. I really did not feel confident and then “Are you kidding me?” – a 7-0 vote. I’m not even sure that’s ever been done before and I certainly would never have expected that to happen.
I thought it was going to be 4-3 too, with you getting the win. What do you think got you that unanimous vote and have you heard anything since you got out of the house?
You know, I had a chance to speak with a few of the houseguests in like 30 second snippets last night. I think it was a combination of things. One, depending on who you’re talking to, for the last jury speech that we had I went through my head and looked at the memory wall and said “Who’s going to ask me what questions?” I tried to go though my head and prepare myself for that so that when they asked the questions I had an idea of what I was going to say and I didn’t get up there and stumble on my words. So, that’s part one. Part two is that I had a personal relationship with everyone in the house. I think not having some sort of relationship with everyone in the house could come back and bite you in the rear. And if you look back at April’s question or Renny’s question – April asked Memphis “Why should I give you the money, you never said a word to me in the house?” How do you respond to that question? You respond to that question by not putting yourself in that situation in the first place, you know? I think those two things helped me prepare myself and I got lucky and I’m really overwhelmed by the fact that it was 7-0.
Coming into the house initially, did you have a specific game-plan in mind? How much did that change over the course of the season?
Being a huge fan of the show I treated Big Brother 10 like a test. I had nine seasons to study from, so I studied from all of them, but I spent a lot of time on season 2 which is the crown jewel, in my opinion, of Big Brother. You had the first major game player and the one that’s often imitated, but no one could ever get it done. But walking in the house I thought I was going to win, then I stepped foot in the house and saw what I was dealing with and everything I thought went to smithereens. You have a Memphis, a huge physical threat. You have Michelle, a fierce competitor. You have two master manipulators in Libra and Brian. Are you kidding me? And there’s a 5’9″, 160 pound school teacher that excels in none of those areas, so I had to immediately reassess my situation. But going in the Big Brother house, I said it was very presumptuous to enter the house with a set strategy because you never know what your going to get hit with. But I knew right away that Brian could win this thing, so that’s why I aligned myself with him. Brian could’ve won this thing if he didn’t shoot all his bullets in the first two hours of being in the house. I like Brian on a personal level and thought he could have done very well because he speaks tremendously and has control over words in a way I’ve never seen in my life.
What do you think was the most important lesson for you that you learned over the first nine seasons that helped you win Big Brother 10?
Oh, you know, without a doubt – you look at a couple players, in particular, in my opinion, imitation is the highest form of flattery. You look at W.ll and Mike Boogie and I started my strategy there, built from there, but I think the thing you can take to be successful in this game is to never take it personal. Someone can call you Judas, someone can call you something 100 times worse than Judas and if you let it bother you you’re going to kill yourself. No matter what someone called me in this game it was like water off my back, I just let it roll. W.en two people got into a fight, one of those people always went home. I knew that could never happen to me if I never let myself get in a fight. The one thing I could do in this game although I wasn’t a huge physical threat, I could master my emotions and that’s what I prided myself on from day one and I think that’s what helped push me to the end.
You talk a little about emulating Will Kirby. He, by all accounts, is a totally different person outside of the house than he was when he was on Big Brother. Did you consciously put on any sort of persona while inside the house or was that pretty much the real Dan we got to see?
Well, unfortunately, the goofy Dan that you saw, that’s pretty much me. I was telling Ollie that, you know, I used to be the cool teacher at St. Mary’s. I don’t know if that’s the case anymore. I’m probably the goofy teacher. W.en people got negative in the house, when people got bored, that’s when I think I shined. I had some of my best moments in the face of boredom, that’s why I created Swim Club, that’s when I messed with Renny the most. It’s the fact that I enjoyed being in the house every second. I never took a second for granted and I had a positive attitude and tried to have as much fun as possible.
For you, was Memphis the ideal alliance member? Was there anyone else in the house, under different circumstances, that you could see being someone better to go to the final two with?
Looking back at it, no. Memphis did a lot of things, but one thing Memphis did that I could hopefully always count on was the fact that if Memphis didn’t like you, he’s not going to talk to you and unfortunately you’re not going to like everyone in the jury house. But the fact that he didn’t talk to everyone in the jury house, that was kind of like a hidden silver lining in the Renegade alliance. I was hoping that might be able to get me a vote or two, I didn’t think it would get me seven. But, I knew that I had to align with someone in the house. Obviously Brian, that didn’t work out. Keesha, I aligned myself with her, she is a tremendous game player, stood up for herself, has a great heart and I care for her deeply. The only thing that scared me about Keesha was the fact that she stood up for herself so much.
-Interview Conducted by Oscar Dahl
(Image Courtesy of CBS)
Senior Writer, BuddyTV
