I did this interview, the morning after Lee was evicted with Jesica, and found him to be exactly the same person I watched in the house – quiet and reserved. We chatted about his experience and his friendship with Keagan.
Here’s how it all went down…
Segs: How are you feeling today?
Lee: A bit tired, hey… I struggled to sleep last night…
Segs: Why?
Lee: I don’t know…
Segs: The cameras and the bright lights were gone..?
Lee: (
giggles) No, I think it was getting used to sleeping without any noise or anything… because you have so much noise and people around you making just making havoc and chaos all around you… so last night, was peace and quiet (
giggles)… and a comfortable bed as well…
Segs: Keagan keeps complaining about those beds, tell us about those mattresses
Lee: Those beds… aaarghhh (
holds his hand to his head) … I don’t think there was ever a point in my life that I slept on such a thin mattress. Honestly. I think it was in the second week that I actually needed to see a doctor for my back pain, and get anti-inflammatory…
Segs: are you serious? (
surprised)
Lee: yah, it’s so uncomfortable. That’s how bad it was. But eventually I got used to it and found one bed that.. that accommodated me (
giggles)
Segs: Why did you go on the show? What appealed to you about the big brother show?
Lee: aaahm… just before I entered there, there was a time that I came to a point in my life where I need to adventure… aahhh get out there… and experience life. And that point in time I was seeking for things to do… I didn’t know exactly what to do so aaahmm… we were sitting inmy room, actually, me and Keagan …and the big brother came on for the auditions and I was like “
Keagan, uuuhmmm… let’s enter this thing?” so he looked at me and said “
yah”. Luckily there’s a computer in my room, so we went online and got the forms and submitted on the same night. A week later, we were called to the auditions.
Segs: Was he really interested or he just decided to be spontaneous like you?
Lee: It was a spur of the moment decision… and I think that’s how we go about life, actually. Like aaah.. We could be just chilling at whoever’s house, and we’d be like let’s do this. So the big brother thing was not planned, we didn’t go like “
yah, we could win this money. This Dynamic duo” and all that… No, it was just.. we didn’t think of this in a game plan or strategy of what we are gonna have, it was like let’s enter and we didn’t think about it… we waited for a call-back, and fine, let’s see how the auditions go…
Segs: Who is more spontaneous, you or Keagan?
Lee: Keagan drives me to be spontaneous. Keagan is a guy that lives on the edge… so in his mind whatever he thinks, it will happen… or portray into an action and then it will “
Lee, lets’do this”.. and I’ll be like “
ok, fine” or whether or not I feel that whatever he wants to do (
giggles) is a risk to my life or not… we would make a decision whether or not to join him (
giggles)
Segs: Are you more of the risk taker than Keagan, as stated on some forums that you have a violent background and some Karate black belt?
Lee: In my… there is some truth in that, I think… growing up; as a young child, I had a short fuse. Uuuhmm, and learning to deal with it is the person I became now. So that’s why, where you would see Keagan getting irritable and stuff, he would be easy to jump into an argument… whereas I over the past years have learnt how to deal with it, in some way, in my own way… Although not the best way, I must admit, like that’s why I never wanted to argue with anybody because for me, I would keep it, keep it, keep it, keep it until it’s all bottled up… yah, so
Segs: So the viewers should have kept you in there a little bit longer, to build up those emotions?
Lee: (
giggles) Not necessarily, it’s not always a good thing. I don’t think I would have provided the entertainment to that extent, it would have been more like a distractive, almost disqualified type uuuuhhhh reaction. Yah, so… Luckily for me, it did not happen.
Segs: Did you hold back Keagan and were you his voice of reason?
Lee: Never ever. I think after his first argument when people didn’t really know him. During Keitta’s head of house, I think it was an argument because noone wanted to listen to Keitta so Keagan got angry about that and he started throwing pots and chairs and stuff like that… at that point, I stepped in because nobody really knew him and understood him.. how he is , as a person, so I took him and sat him down in the diary room and spoke about it.
For me, Keagan will never get.. *
sigh*.. touch wood, Keagan will never get angry at me or something like that. I think in some way I am his voice of reason, but after that and once people started realizing… and like I realized that Keagan does make his irritations noticeable, like he will tell you
“listen, please stop. That is irritating me, if you don’t mind”… maybe not in the politest of ways but he did ask them, and people would persist and then that’s when I realized, I am not his father, I am not here to baby him…
So I am not gonna hold him back and say “
Keagan, be somebody that you are not” … yah, that’s when I decided the people in the house will have to realize who Keagan is and with me stopping him all the time they are not gonna see who he is, and they are not gonna … not tread lightly around him but they will realize what ticks him off and what sparks arguments, and who he is a person.
Segs: Is he doing anything for the cameras?
Lee: Not at ALL. I can vouch 100% on that. That is completely Keagan, whatever you hear coming from his mouth is Keagan. Not Keagan playing for the cameras.
Segs: In the diary sessions, you were mostly silent and Keagan would take over those sessions…
Lee: uuhhhmmm.. It’s, how do I say it, I like to keep my answers brief and avoid beating around the bush whereas Keagan elaborates to an extent that he goes from an A4, then A3 until A0… then he becomes psychological and I let him carry on… to finish his essays…
Segs: You seemed guarded, was there stuff you held back from revealing to Africa? (
Question from Nonwe)
Lee: Not at all, I was telling most people that asked me this question, in the first week – there was a lot of overpowering personalities, everybody wanted to be louder than the other, always wanted to be heard, always wanted to be seen… the first week, for me, I just took a step back and just observed…
later, as the game progressed, I realized who you could push their buttons and they will realize that you are joking or who you can’t do that with. So you see Keagan likes pushing buttons, that’s his way of interacting… it’s the same thing I do, it’s just that Keagan doesn’t think of the aftermath so if he pushes you, he doesn’t really care whether or not you are gonna get angry and not see it as a joke.
Segs: This may be an unfair question to ask you however you may be able to clear the confusion for us whilst we wait for Keagan, this Afrikaans battle… do you speak Afrikaans and what why was Keagan so offended at being told by Junia that he should speak Afrikaans?
Lee: Personally, I can’t answer for Keagan… But personally, I speak English at home but due to circumstances I wanted to learn Afrikaans because there would be situations where I would be amongst people.. you know, where you are not part of the conversation because you can’t speak Afrikaans. That’s when I decided that let me learn Afrikaans fluently.
Segs: So did you learn it at school?
Lee: yah, I learnt it at school but I just never used it because my surroundings; close friend, family and people I live with in our community speak English, they would speak Afrikaans here and there but I never made the effort to learn it and respond in Afrikaans. Sometimes you find yourself in situations where it makes it easier for another person to understand you in Afrikaans, for example you may walk down the street and somebody asks you something in Afrikaans, responding in English may not help the person so you make it easy by responding in Afrikaans.
Segs: Did you and Keagan discuss that outburst about Afrikaans?
Lee: Never. (shaking head) It was his battle and whatever battles he fought, and argued, I had nothing to do with it. I would never hate or dislike, or be irritated by somebody even if Keagan does, I am my own person and he is his own person. If he had an altercation with somebody, after that, I would never even bother try to explain what was happening between the 2 of them as I was not involved. At the end of the day, the 2 of them need to come to a common ground and come to an understanding.
Segs: He battled with Junia a lot and you became a bodyguard – whilst he fought with her, you got along with her?
Lee: My friendship with Junia had nothing to with softening her feelings and opinion about Keagan. There were times she would say things about Keagan and I wouldn’t say anything, I would not defend her or him or pick sides, I would just change the topic. At the end of the day, that was her battle and her opinion, not mine.
Segs: who did you find the most irritating?
Lee: No-one for me was irritating. yah…. Big brother also asked me a similar question and I could not find a single person that I could say irritated me. There was maybe once that Junia’s singing got to me. That wasn’t so much of a grudge; it was just like at that specific moment it got to me.
Segs: What are your thoughts about Janette?
Lee: Jannette, I don’t know so well. To be honest, I couldn’t pinpoint her… Her personality only really showed when she had taken some alcohol. But otherwise she was always playing that sweet pity card and all that.
Segs: What are your thoughts about the Seydou and Esperanca situation?
Lee: That was just a real mix-up that should not have been allowed to happen, honestly, from my understanding. The one did not want to be in the house already, yah.. In that situation, the one was there for the money, and the other one was there… shuu.. to support a fellow countryman but to be honest she really did not wanna be there. In her sense, he needed to, I think… to compensate and have some understanding. It might have seemed unfair. I think it could have gone down differently.
Segs: So much happened in that Jacuzzi, did you guys ever attempt to clean it?
Lee: I cleaned it once after Ola Luke, Jesica and Junia decided to throw foam bath, shower gel and all that stuff in it. It reeked and it was filthy, yoh… I was like “
no, no, no, we neeed to clean this.” And that was the time I was sitting with Mgash and Malonza and we were scrubbing the little things around the Jaccuzzi. We scrubbed it clean and then Zainab still came with her little bikini (
giggles) and everything… For some reason, ever since after that specific day, that jaccuzzi was never cleaned. Up to THIS day. I don’t know about now.
Segs: But you guys still went in there every other day, putting your heads in that dirty water, why?
Lee: (
laughs) I don’t know. You know… when you realize that the … luxury is there, it might be filthy (
giggles) but you still want that luxury and experience it. I think that’s why we all did it
Segs: Was it warm or cold?
Lee: Eyohhh…It was warm for the first minute because the outside air is colder than the water. Your body would be cold when you got in there… so, you’d be like its nice and warm… and then your body would acclimatize to the water again, then you are freezing..
Segs: what is your opinion on the br-otto machine?
Lee: uuhmmm… aaah… I actually… I actually never thought about it, honestly… I would think that it makes sense in a way, although it’s unfair, it’s extremely unfair… but if we had to individually nominate people, there would be too many different nominees because everyone had a different opinion about somebody, if we nominated individually for instance, Keagan and I would not have nominated the same.
It would be difficult to come to a unanimous decision on who needed to leave. You could but it would make the list too long. There would also be too many disagreements between the pairs. The nominations worked out pretty fair, but also unfair… a bittersweet thing.
Segs: Who were you going to nominate, if you had stayed?
Lee: I would have nominated between Zambia and Kenya; maybe Tamara. I have no beef, altercations or anything with her but I just decided now I feel my nomination is based on who I feel is a threat. I would always nominate the biggest threats. Also all four of them provide entertainment to be likeable and popular in the outside world. They have strong personalities and characters.
Segs: But how would you know who is a threat or popular in the outside worlld?
Lee: I don’t know but that’s one thing I always told myself. If I had a chance, I would choose the biggest threats but at the end of the day, I wouldn’t know who they were and couldn’t tell because we don’t know how the votes are going.
Segs: What entertainment do you think those four provide? (
raised eyebrow)
Lee: I don’t know… like I saw Tamara would have that feisty aggressive “
if you come into my face, I will…”
Segs: smack you silly… ?
Lee: yah “
smack you or I will not back down”. Talia played that cute, likeable, sweet character… Malonza is the loud, crazy and screaming running all over the house. Mgash is similar to Talia, you know, that sweet guy in the kitchen, cooking and all that stuff…
**************************** End of interview ********************
Even though Keagan failed to live up to his Downville hype when he got upgraded, the biggest moments for him in the show were when his wingman Lee was in the house. We wish Lee all the best and hope if Keagan gets the money, Lee gets his fair share :-)