Congratulations! After a jury vote, Taylor Hale became the winner of Big Brother season 24, taking home the impressive $750,000 prize during live Sunday, September 25, finale.
Taylor beat out fellow finalists Monte Taylor and Matthew Turner after the jury locked in their choices for the victor, making history as the first Black woman to win Big Brother in more than 20 seasons.
Turner had won the first part of the final HOH competition, with Monte taking the second part. On Sunday’s finale part, Monte won the third live competition and decided to bring Taylor to the final two. As a result, Turner was sent to the jury.
The final two were then asked a series of questions by nine of their eliminated houseguests. The jury consisted of Alyssa Snider, Brittany Hoopes, Indy Santos, Jasmine Davis, Kyle Capener, Joseph Abdin, Michael Bruner, Terrance Higgins and Turner. Taylor won in a vote of 8 to 1.
“I have overcome so much in this game and I have come to understand that I am not a shield, I am a sword. I am not a victim, I am a victor,” she began in her speech to the jury before she was crowned the winner. “If there is one word that is going to describe the entire season, it is resiliency. If you were to ask yourself who the most resilient person of this season has been, it is me.”
Taylor continued: “I’m challenging all of you to decide what type of winner you want to have this year. Do we want the same thing, where we see evictions and comp wins be the path to success? Or do we want a winner where we choose resiliency, we choose persistence as a reason to win this game?”
Big Brother season 24 premiered on July 6 as the 16 houseguests tackled weekly festival-themed challenges on their journey to the $750,00 prize.
“There are so many twists and turns this season and challenges that are so much harder that you’re gonna have a hard time just figuring out how to survive in the house,” host Julie Chen Moonves previously told Us Weekly ahead of the live premiere. “Every week throughout the summer, you’re going to see different themes, like a music fest, a comedy fest, a renaissance fest. But my personal favorite – I think most people will agree – is going to be the Zing Fest.”
The Big Brother house also got a “mid-century Palm Springs” makeover.
“We’re calling it the ‘BB Motel,’” Chen Moonves, 52, told Us at the time. “You can check in, but you can’t check out. You don’t really wanna check out (laughs). You don’t wanna get evicted. You wanna stay in the BB Motel. So, it has that whole feel to it this year. Retro.”
The Big Brother 24 winner’s victory was made, in part, due to her amount of comp wins and strategic social game. Monte, Taylor and Turner were all members of the dominant “Leftovers” alliance, alongside Brittany, Michael, Kyle and Joseph. While the alliance helped secure the group’s safety week-after-week, the show’s “Split House” twist ultimately divided the group. At “Dyre Fest,” Kyle ended up spilling the beans in order to save his showmance with Alyssa.
“Exposing the alliance weighed very heavily on me — and I don’t think I would have if I didn’t feel that I was near the bottom of the seven going into Dyre Fest,” the Utah native, 29, told Us exclusively earlier this month after his eviction. “Unfortunately, I knew going into Dyre Fest, it was either me or Joseph going home that week. And we had played a very similar game and had very similar cards to play at that time. I knew that if I played them first, Joseph was having to play catch up, so I was in survival mode and I just went with it and shared that information. And it also helped that I could then wipe the slate clean with Alyssa and tell her everything and kind of come clean in that regard.”
Elsewhere during the finale, the longtime CBS host announced that Taylor also won America’s Favorite Houseguest.
