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Tim Dormer spills on Big Brother manipulation

Former winner says producers brought back to lift the ailing show, but when he bagged the series in a blunt email he was dumped.

2013 Big Brother winner Tim Dormer has detailed how producers of the series on Nine instructed him to manipulate the house when he returned as ‘Head of the House‘ in 2014.

Currently appearing in Big Brother Canada, Dormer recalled how he was summoned to the show after falling ratings and given instructions, including encouraging specific housemates to pair up romantically and for one housemate to shave off a beard to avoid him being evicted early.

“People didn’t watch it and they called up and said, ‘Get on a plane. Can you come in?’ The ads all said ‘Tim’s Back!'”

“They said, ‘It’s the beard. If you can get him to shave the beard!’

“We were in the Presidential Suite together. They said ‘You have to pick him to go in.’ That was kind of like, the producers having their control. I had to pick whoever I wanted.”

But a later incident occurred on the day of his appearance on the Live Eviction show, via a fan forum.

“A fan had written to me and said, ‘You are not who you were the first time around. You were obviously just following directions. You’re in the back pocket of the network. Big Brother is shit this year, and we were hoping you were going to fix it.’

“It really got to me because it was true.”

Dormer said being part of the production and seeing the house from the other side of the walls embedded him with producers.

“The magic was gone. I’d seen the wizard behind the curtain, and I’d become that in a way. I felt dirty,” he said.

“So I wrote back… in a really long email saying, ‘I’m in no-one’s back pocket. I hate the show, what they’ve done. It’s f***ed, it will be cancelled, all they care about is appeasing to the brands and not the viewers. You’re 100% right.”

But the email was published.

Plans for him to be a regular contributor each week were dumped as a result.

“…I was in my dressing room and there was a knock at the door with a print out of the email. They said ‘Did you write this? This is really serious.’

“(I said) ‘I’m not going to lie. I did. The show’s shit.’ He then went and got the network person who looks after the show….. she just said ‘You’ve totally f***ed your career.’ She just said ‘We will never work with you again.’

“Don’t bite the hand that feeds….”

Via: Behind Big Brother

12 Responses

  1. Tim was a contestant on Celebrity Apprentice in 2015. If Nine had been upset with him and said any of what he has claimed, why would they then back-flip and put him on another of their shows?

  2. Why is “reality show contestant whinging about manipulation” still regarded as news? Sure it was ‘news’ in 2001 when “Johnny Rotten” was made the villain in the first Australian Big Brother but in 2016 doesn’t it just go without saying now?

  3. Tim is right, it was the worst big brother, he should have been allowed to just go in and do his own thing, not do as the producers told him.
    He seemed to float into the show for a couple of days, and then float out again, and they tried it with Ben from Brisbane as well, it just doesn’t work.
    I don’t like the Canadian version, too much strategising and alliances being made, not sure how Tim will cope in there.

    1. I follow the Canadian/US show as I like the strategy/alliance aspect (On the other hand, I don’t care for our BB) and Tim is doing very good.

      I have heard him being called the “Aussie Dr Will” (for those initiated, Dr Will a really good player from an early season of the US show) and he is one of the best players in the house.

  4. Good on Tim for speaking up….though he is definitely a reality show junkie.
    BB14 was absolute shit.
    As soon as Tim went in, you could see he was just following instructions from the producers to blatantly attempt to manipulate people. Everything he said or did was basically scripted.
    So fake and contrived.

  5. Big Brother Canada and Big Brother Australia are very different productions, with BB Canada still treating the fans with respect by having multiple live feeds and not trying to dictate the story of the series by manipulating the process.

  6. So let me get this right – Tim Dormer gets asked to come back and be a regular on a prime time TV show, then bags the show and says it’s “shit”, loses his job, then goes overseas to be on a foreign version of the same show, and re-tells the story of how shit the show he’s on is…

    If that isn’t the definition of a reality show troll, I don’t know what is.

    1. You must have a warped sense of definition. Being consistent to oneself and highlighting producer manipulation in the face of losing opportunities is something to be commended. I can only imagine what these producers are doing with the many reality formats airing.

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