Xavier Prather becomes 1st Black winner of ‘Big Brother’ in 23 seasons
The historic all-Black Cookout alliance helped Prather capture the grand prize of $750,000, the largest in the CBS show’s history.
After 23 seasons, the hit CBS reality competition show Big Brother has finally crowned a Black person as its winner.
Xavier Prather is the first Black person to take the top spot during a regular season. Singer Tamar Braxton won Celebrity Big Brother in 2019.
According to CNN, Prather has called his win “surreal” and “groundbreaking.”
As previously reported, an all-Black alliance this season called The Cookout vowed to stick together, using strategy to ultimately make history as the six final contestants.
Azah Awasum, Derek Frazier, Hannah Chaddha, Kyland Young, Tiffany Mitchell and Prather united to protect themselves — and each other — to get to the final six, and they eliminated every other alliance and outside threat.
The Cookout coalition helped Prather capture the grand prize of $750,000, the largest in the show’s history. This season’s first runner-up, Frazier, won $75,000.
Longtime Big Brother host Julie Chen-Moonves recently weighed in on critics of The Cookout’s all-Black alliance.
“I have heard some call the formation of The Cookout a form of racism,” she told Entertainment Weekly. “In my humble opinion, it is not.” Chen-Moonves said she found it “impressive” that in a game known for backstabbing for a grand prize of $500,000, the group of six managed to stay loyal to one another to the end.
Big Brother is a reality show on which 16 people stay in a home with no access to the outside world and participate in challenges that eliminate the “houseguests” one by one.
“It’s surreal,” Prather, 27, said after learning his fate, via PEOPLE. “I wouldn’t have been here without all the members of The Cookout and every single member of the jury. And those members not in jury, who were part of the season, can’t thank you guys enough. I’m so blessed to have met every single one of you, and we all made history this season, so I think we should all be proud.”
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