Once the confetti fell and the celebratory hugs for Big Brother 27 winner Ashley Hollis subsided, the show had one more award to hand out — only there was never much of a mystery as to who would be crowned America’s Favorite Player.
Keanu Soto took home the title, along with the $50,000 prize that comes with it, after receiving a whopping 65 percent of the vote. After the live finale concluded on Sunday, September 28, Keanu, 33, shared a special moment with a member of the audience that helped explain why he was a clear fan favorite.
“I had one of the ladies in the crowd who had her son there say that it was nice to have a role model on the show,” he tells Us Weekly exclusively. “So that meant a lot to me. I said going into the show that, obviously, I want to win the $750,000 [grand prize], but if I have to change who I am as a person to do that, then it’s not worth it.”
While Keanu couldn’t pinpoint one moment that made him the clear fan favorite, there were incidents that both made the episodes and that were left solely for live feeders that stood out. The common thread was that Keanu was consistently his authentic self.
“Maybe it was the way that I handled [runner-up] Vince [Panaro], when he would cry and stuff,” Keanu suggested. “Maybe the way that I just kind of like showed him that, hey, it’s okay to be human.”
Keanu had a rocky relationship with Vince, 34, in the house, as Keanu desperately tried to stay loyal to him and Vince burned him multiple times. But every time Vince betrayed Keanu, Keanu would come back and offer up a necessary pep talk, urging Vince to be bold with his moves and not shy away from taking responsibility for his actions.
That attitude also got him in trouble with Jimmy Heagerty, leading to a funny moment where Jimmy, 25, went on a tirade filled with snappy one-liners, leaving a laid-back Keanu to respond, “How long did it take you to come up with that?”
Keanu explained that at that point, he began to believe his fellow houseguests all thought he was a liar, leading to his now infamous speech where he warned the house he would pick them off “one by one.”
“I probably could have simmered down there,” he reflected. “And I probably would have been able to have a social game at the beginning as opposed to just having my back against the wall.”
Keanu didn’t enter the house as a Big Brother superfan, but he did his best to learn the game as he went. Another factor in his immense popularity was his “frenemies” relationship with Big Brother legend Rachel Reilly. Though his fatal flaw may have been not heeding her advice regarding trusting Vince, Keanu said he learned more from Rachel, 40, by watching her play.
“She tried to teach me a lot by telling me things, but I learned a lot more by watching her,” he said. “When she had her HoH reign and she put up Mickey [Lee], Morgan [Pope] and Vince initially, obviously, Riley [Jeffries] ended up going home. But they were eating out of the palm of her hand by the beginning of the next week.”
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