Copyright Parade
It’s been almost a month since the finale of Big Brother 27. And, after going under the radar for the better part of a few weeks, runner-up Vince Panaro has finally opened up about the status of his relationship with his girlfriend of seven years, Kelsey. The 34-year-old recently released a video on his YouTube channel titled “Post Big Brother 27 Thoughts”. In it, he addressed several of the chief comments fans made about him during and after his 83 days on the hit CBS reality series. 🎬 SIGN UP for Parade’s Daily newsletter to get the latest pop culture news & celebrity interviews delivered right to your inbox 🎬 “I think coming out of the house, I just wanted to prioritize talking to Kelsey,” he initially explains. “I wanted to prioritize getting my head on straight and decompressing and processing everything that I just experienced for the past 3+ months before anything else.” Panaro then goes on to talk about whether the way he behaved in the house was a reflection of him as a person. He specifically addresses the heightened emotional reactions he had during his time on the season, culminating in a meltdown following a critical misread of instructions in Part 2 of the final Head of Household competition. “Even if [people] wanted to root for me, they couldn’t,” he says. “Because they viewed me as somebody throwing a pity party or I was crying too much or I started to lie too much or I was emotionally cheating.” “I became the person that people love to hate,” he continues. “It’s just a crazy environment and a crazy social experiment, and everybody responds and reacts in different ways. And I obviously had a unique way of reacting to that environment.” Related: ‘Big Brother 27’ Runner-Up Vince Panaro Says He’s ‘Not Too Worried’ About Relationship After Alliance With Morgan (Exclusive) And it’s the mention of “emotional cheating” that gets into perhaps one of the most widely talked about parts of Vince’s game: His relationship with Morgan Pope. While the two started out as tight allies, they grew even closer as the second half of the game went along. They began to grow more physically intimate, engaging in extended embraces. The two spent the better part of two weeks sleeping together in the HoH room, albeit with a pillow wall between them. Things culminated in a cutting remark from Zingbot, who asked Pope, “What do you call someone who lights up when Vince enters the room, gives him long, passionate hugs and warm, affectionate cuddles? His girlfriend!” “Lines started to blur, and I felt like any level of affection was normal in that alternate reality I was living in,” Panaro admits. “And some people will say, ‘How could you be that stupid? How could you not see it? And I could only say, ‘Well, you’d be surprised.'” “In hindsight, can I see how that’s disrespectful to having a girlfriend? Yes, 100%,” he says. “And I’m sorry for that. And to be honest, that’s on me. I’m the one who set the boundaries. I was the one who was in a relationship. I was the one who said this is normal, and it helped me mentally in that house. But outside, I could see that’s not being respectful to having a girlfriend, and I should’ve been extra cautious. But the fact of the matter is I wasn’t.” Related: ‘Big Brother 27’ Star Morgan Pope Clarifies ‘Strictly Platonic’ Relationship With Vince (Exclusive) When Parade spoke to Panaro a few hours after leaving the house on finale night, he seemed confident that his relationship with Kelsey would be fine, despite the comments both in and out of the house of his dynamic with Morgan. “It’s a unique environment, and nobody knows the platonic relationship between Morgan and I outside of us two,” he said. “Nobody knows the relationship romantically between my girlfriend and I outside of the game. But I know my girlfriend and I know the boundaries we set before I entered the house. And I lived a Big Brother dream. Yeah, not too worried about any of that stuff.” Of course, Panaro had no idea the comments Kelsey had made on social media in response to some of his behavior in the house. At one point, he spoke in the house that, prior to the season, he and Kelsey had discussed that he would be able to flirt with the other houseguests if it meant furthering his game. However, Kelsey then wrote in a comment on Instagram, “I never gave an okay to flirt as a strategy. We talked extensively about boundaries before he left.” Related: ‘Big Brother 27’ Winner Ashley Hollis Reveals How Elle Woods and Goodbye Messages Got Her the Win (Exclusive) And Panaro closes out the video by talking through where he and Kelsey stand now. “Kelsey and I have talked everything out,” he reveals. “And we’re currently taking time to process everything individually and figure out what things look like after that.” “But something that I appreciate about her is that she had the respect for me to be the first person that I see when I leave finale night and to stick around and have those conversations with me. She could have left and could have never spoken to me again, and thought that whatever her perspective was was the end of the line for me. She was there, first above everything else to make sure that I was OK mentally coming out of there knowing the backlash that I was gonna be receiving. But at the same time, she has enough respect for herself to take her own independent time and figure out what she wants and to process her own experience individually. And I respect that too.” “The fact of the matter is I was in a relationship entering that house,” he concludes. “However, [anyone] reacted towards me is because I welcomed it and I set those boundaries that that was OK and that was acceptable within my relationship. So that’s all on me, and I understand the way that it looked.”
