Big Brother 26‘S Kenney Kelley During the time he spent in the house, he missed his wife and children and now explains why the experience was worse than he imagined.
“I’m at a point in my life – I’m older – this is like a second chance to raise children,” Kenney, 52, said exclusively We weekly on Friday, August 9, a day after he was fired from the CBS reality series. “I have two older kids (37 and 30) and then I have the two little ones. There are things I missed with my older kids because I’m a young dad and I’m working all the time, and I told myself I’m not going to miss that this time.”
Kenney noted that he first tried to get a cast Big Brother five years ago, and his family dynamics were different then.
“My daughter was just a baby and things would have been very different back then,” he said, adding that his two younger children are now 6 and 8. “(My daughter is) old enough to know that I was going away for a long time and she wasn’t happy about it. So that was pretty tough.”
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Kenney spoke about the desire to Big Brother House in Week 1, when he and his ally Matt Hardeman were on the block next to each other. The following week he was nominated again but won the Power of Veto, which gave him some new momentum. In Week 3, however, Kenney said Head of Household Cedric Hodges to nominate him, although the two had a good relationship. He lost the BB AI Arena competition against Tucker Des Lauriers during the episode of Thursday, August 8th and was voted out via Quinn Martin.
Kenney admitted Us that he “really didn’t give it his all” in the AI Arena competition on Thursday because he “wasn’t really focused on the task at hand.” However, he says that he didn’t lose the competition either.
“Tucker is a beast and I knew I didn’t have to throw with him. He was all in from the moment we got up that morning,” Kenney said. “I knew I wasn’t going to beat him.”
While some Big Brother Fans have asked why Kenney even went on the show, he said Us that he “never expected to miss my family so much.” He said if he had had “less downtime and more playing time,” he might have been able to stay more focused.
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“I think that’s where I made a mistake. I didn’t play the game as much as I probably should have. I wasn’t focused on the game,” he said. “I think if I had joined an alliance where there was a little more intrigue and maybe fewer people in the house, I would have had more fun.”
Kenney noted that he had been separated from his family before, but nothing had prepared him for the Big Brother A house.
“I was deployed in Afghanistan for a long time, but you still have that connection, be it by email or picture. I completely underestimated the isolation aspect of it,” he said.
Kenney’s wife, whom he met when they were both working undercover, is a huge fan of the show and believes it was probably “difficult” for her to watch him struggle around the house.
“We agreed that every day at 5 o’clock I would talk to her on the (live) cameras. And that was the hardest part of my day because I was never really sure which camera she was looking at, so I did that two or three times around the house,” he said. “Each time it was a little more emotional and I’m sure it was emotional for her too. … I can’t wait to hold her. I can’t wait to hold my kids.”
Big Brother airs Wednesdays, Thursdays and Sundays at 8:00 p.m. ET on CBS.
