Big Brother 24 player Kyle Capener, who earned the nickname “KKKyle” on social media this summer for language that was deemed racist by viewers, was evicted Thursday from the CBS reality show.
Capener, an unemployed 29-year-old from Bountiful, Utah, drew ire by making fun of a fellow player’s Brazilian accent, and telling another houseguest that his hat looked like it belonged to a Filipino rice farmer.
But his biggest breach was expressing concern that an alliance was forming among the house’s BIPOC players that was similar to last year’s Cookout, the all-Black alliance that led to an historic win by Xavier Prather. Though Capener never directly said that he and his fellow allies should form a “white” alliance, he was shown in Wednesday’s episode telling fellow white players on Day 39 that “I’m sorry but after the Cookout, uniting under one common cause which was race … that has to play into my thought process moving forward in the game.”
He then suggests forming a group with the remaining players … who are white. Two of those players — Michael Bruner and Brittany Hoopes — then reported his comments to Black houseguests Monte Taylor and Taylor Hale. Word got back to Capener, who was seen bawling in the diary room at the end of Wednesday’s episode.
Capener tried to do damage control on Thursday’s live episode by apologizing to Taylor and Terrence Higgins, another Black houseguest. That led to a constructive, come-to-Jesus discussion with the whole house, with Capener admitting to living a sheltered life and having an “unconscious bias.” The Black players showed grace toward Capener, with Higgins and Taylor even questioning why Bruner and Hoopes didn’t alert them earlier about his Cookout comments.
“I’m an imperfect person trying to get better and that’s what I hope to do,” said Capener, who is shown tearing up several times during Thursday’s episode. “I understand where my game is at. I made a lot of mistakes in the last 50 days.”f
After his eviction, Capener told host Julie Chen Moonves that “it didn’t click in my mind” that what he said about the Cookout would blow up the house and lead to his eviction. “I realized how terrible that was and I should have realized it from the start. I apologize to everyone watching.”
He also said he was grateful for this experience, “as flawed as I am.”
Capener nows becomes a fourth member of the jury.
