It’s a tale as old as time; an attractive white man gets put in the public eye, he says the n-word while a million pairs of eyes are on him, and the discourse on whether he will or will not be punished for it swiftly follows.
That’s the current plight of Luke Valentine, one of Big Brother 25‘s houseguests who was already on course to set a paranoia record long before he pulled this little stunt, and with the world calling for his removal now, it seems like the clock is ticking for everyone’s new least-favorite Floridan.
Should the producers do the right thing, it would be the first time in the history of Big Brother‘s U.S.-based series that a contestant has been ejected — the term used for contestants who are forcibly removed from the house by the production team — for saying the n-word, and would be the fifth ejection overall.
Indeed, only four contestants have ever been removed from Big Brother‘s U.S. show; namely Justin Sibek (season two), Scott Weintraub (season four), Chima Simone (season 11), and Willie Hantz (season 14).
Sibek was quite infamously ejected for his violent behavior, which reached a climax when he held a knife to fellow houseguest Krista Stegall’s throat. Hantz was ejected for similar reasons, headbutting contestant Joe Arvin in a physical confrontation between the two. Weintraub, despite never attacking anyone, was ejected for verbally threatening other houseguests, which he compounded by throwing chairs around the house and generally creating the ethos of a wickedly unsafe environment. Simone, meanwhile, simply kept disobeying orders from the show’s production team and was ultimately ejected for breaking her microphone by tossing it into a hot tub.
There have been other contestants outside of the U.S. show who were ejected for using the n-word, namely Emily Parr and Rodrigo Alves, who appeared on season eight of Big Brother UK and season 22 of Celebrity Big Brother UK, respectively.
In total, 339 houseguests have been forcibly ejected across all versions of Big Brother, with reasons varying from threatening or assaulting houseguests, being casualties of a canceled season, faking illnesses, having real illnesses, making Nazi salutes, and expounding information from the outside world.
CBS airs three episodes of Big Brother per week, on Sundays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, so any decision surrounding Luke’s future on the show should be arriving in our news feeds before long. Here’s hoping the production team doesn’t let this one slide.