Aaryn Williams (née Gries) is trying to set the record straight about her infamous Big Brother racism scandal as she launches her new Bravo reality show, Small Town Trouble: Texas.
“Don’t Google me,” Aaryn, 36, warns husband Nick Williams in a Small Town Trouble clip released on Friday, November 6.
Aaryn spoke candidly about losing her modeling contract due to making racist and homophobic comments while she competed on Big Brother 15 in 2013. Fans were outraged over Aaryn making derogatory statements about fellow housemate Helen Kim‘s Asian heritage and using a homophobic slur towards contestant Andy Herren.
By the time of her eviction, Aaryn left the Big Brother House to overwhelming boos from the studio audience. In a tense exit interview, Aaryn tearfully told host Julie Chen Moonves that she felt “horrible” and “regretted” hurting anyone’s feelings.
Aaryn revisits the controversy in the upcoming series Small Town Trouble: Texas as she recalls asking husband Nick, 38, not to look her up online when they first got together.
“I didn’t know what Big Brother was but I’d already met you and saw this wonderful person,” he tells her in the teaser. “You made a terrible mistake!”
Aaryn corrects her husband, explaining that her conduct on Big Brother was not a “mistake.”
“It was actually who I was,” she admits.
The reality star acknowledged that it took “a really long time” after she left Big Brother to accept how “deeply ingrained” prejudice was inside her.
“It is my biggest regret in my life,” she says in a confessional interview.
Small Town Trouble: Texas cuts back to Aaryn sharing with her husband that she’ll be making amends for her offensive comments “for the rest of [my] life.” Offering some context, Aaryn remembered growing up around “a lot racism,” accusing her late father, George, of raising her with “a very racist mindset.”
“It’s hard to put into words. I was ignorant to the ignorance of my life because I hadn’t processed the trauma that had happened to me there yet,” Aaryn tells Nick.
Aaryn alleged that her father once refused to share her prom pictures on Facebook “because my prom date was Black.”
“My daughters will never have to worry no matter who they become one day. I’m going to be supporting them, Nick and I both, but had I not been called out for my behavior, I don’t think I would have been the one to break the cycle within my family,” she lamented.
Aaryn and Nick tied the knot in 2015 and now share four daughters: Skyla, 10, Adeline, 8, Reese, 7, and Kodi, 4.
Bravo’s upcoming Boerne, Texas-based reality show revolves around “a charming yet unconventional group of wives, mothers, and social insiders alongside their respective husbands, as conservative values of small-town life collide with forbidden attraction, messy friendships, and shocking secrets,” according to the official series announcement.
Aaryn’s public mea culpa in the Small Town Trouble: Texas teaser has done little to quiet outrage from some Big Brother fans over Bravo giving the controversial housemate a new public platform.
“Yall are so weird. Yall know what you guys are doing. Remove this show. We dont care,” one fan tweeted at Bravo on Friday, with another demanding, “Smh! Yea, save it. Cancel this.”
“WE DO NOT WANT THIS SHOW,” a third viewer told Bravo.
Not everyone in the Bravoverse was opposed to giving Small Town Trouble: Texas a chance, with multiple viewers suggesting Aaryn should be allowed to show that she’s grown as a person.
“I appreciate that she fully owns the fact that she was racist and was raised that way but has changed, if we don’t give people an ounce of grace to change and learn – what’s the point of holding them accountable?” one X user commented.
Another argued, “Ok I’m gonna give her grace n forgiveness for now let’s see how she is now that she’s not programmed to Hate.”
Small Town Trouble: Texas premieres on Bravo Wednesday, November 18, at 9 p.m. ET with a two-hour episode. New episodes will be available to stream on Peacock the next day.
