The 52-year-old former undercover cop from Boston struggled with being away from home and his family for nearly three weeks until finally, on day 24, his fellow houseguests put him out of his misery and voted to evict him, 10-1. “I had more downs than ups,” Kenney tells Entertainment Weekly. “So I think they knew that they were doing what was best for me.”
While his stay in the Big Brother house was relatively short, Kenney did get to witness some truly wild moments in the game. First came Angela Murray’s “Crazy Eyes” attack on Matt Hardeman. And then this week, the Veto meeting devolved into chaos when Tucker Des Lauriers shocked the house by taking Angela off the block, and then HOH Cedric Hodges shocked Tucker by putting Makensy Manbeck up as replacement nominee instead of Quinn Martin — and then Makensy blindsided everybody by taking herself off the block using America’s Veto.
Viewers chose to put Quinn and his Deepfake HOH up on the block next to Tucker and Kenney, but it was Kenney who was sent packing. EW interrogated the former law enforcement officer about his ongoing homesickness, his theory for why the houseguests didn’t send Quinn home instead, why he once thought Angela was a producer “plant,” and more.
I don’t know whether to say “Congratulations!” or “I’m sorry.” How are you feeling?
KENNEY KELLEY: I feel good. I left a lot of good people in the house, but as America knows, I miss my family tremendously. My kids and my wife are absolutely everything to me, and I definitely underestimated the emotional aspect of missing them, and it made the game difficult.
When you gave your final speech on the block last night, you didn’t ask your fellow houseguests to send you home. In that moment, were you hoping to stay?
I had mixed emotions. Obviously, I’d be lying if I didn’t say I wanted to go home. But I also was prepared to stay. I knew that Tucker was going to take himself off the block, and the houseguests knew I wanted to go. They knew that I missed my family, which was evident. I had good days and bad days, and a lot of ’em would ask me, “Is this a good day or a bad day, Kenney?” [Laughs] I’d be honest with them and let them know. And yesterday it was a tough day, because I’m up there against one of my closest friends in the house — so that makes it difficult, and then missing your family. But I really wasn’t too sure what was going to happen, to be honest with you.
Quinn is a wealth of knowledge. [The houseguests] knew he was a super fan. They knew he knew everything about the game. And I knew Brooklyn was running the house, and I knew the girls were fairly powerful in the house, not super powerful, but I knew that they were fairly powerful in the house. I didn’t know if they would take this opportunity to get rid of Quinn, because I did have some good relationships with the girls in the house. I really didn’t know what was going to happen. But if they had kept me in the house, I think they did know that me and Tucker together were going to be tough to navigate [against]. So, I think they made the right choice, in both aspects, being kind to me and sending me home to my family, but also that I was going to be a tough competitor in the house, especially with Tucker.
On the other hand, though, Quinn has the Deepfake HOH power — so I’m a little surprised the houseguests didn’t get him out at the first opportunity.
I wasn’t surprised. Quinn had a great social game. He had a lot of good alliances in the house. They weren’t super strong, but he had connections with everybody in the house, and everybody was constantly feeding off of his knowledge of the game, which was actually good for their game, too. And the power isn’t as strong as I think America thinks it is, because in the house now you have to nominate three people for eviction. Quinn was so close with so many people in the house that he would’ve had a difficult time nominating three people — and then on top of it, possibly nominating a fourth.
He actually made it perfectly clear that he never intended on using it. I didn’t have a lot of alliances in the house, and I still was having a difficult time coming up with who’s going to be my third nominee if I had won an HOH, and who was going to be my backup if I had had to replace a nominee? So, it was probably a blessing and a curse to get that power, and I don’t think he’ll use it, to be honest with you.
We have to talk about this week’s Veto meeting, which totally went off the rails in the best way. Your understanding going into it was that Tucker would take Angela off the block, and then Cedric would nominate Quinn?
Yeah, the night before Tucker came to the HOH room and the “Shake It Ups” were in there. And he said that he had a plan. I think I kind of spiraled that plan because earlier in the day, I had a good conversation with Quinn. I never really had an opportunity to talk to Quinn about game. I was trying to bring him into our group in a kind of lowkey way, not really revealing that me, Tucker and Cedric were working together. I was asking Quinn, “How come me and Tucker can’t get a group together?” And I was like, “Why wouldn’t you work with me and Tucker?” And Quinn got me hook, line and sinker. He played it off really good. He was like, “That’d be a great idea. Let’s do this! Talk to Tucker.”
Well, Quinn kind of played it wrong because he already had an alliance with Tucker. When I actually approached Tucker with it, I think that put Tucker into a spiral. He was questioning Quinn anyway [for not telling him about his Deepfake HOH power], but then when he found out Quinn and I talked and we were going to try and do an alliance with each other, Tucker was like, he’s already in an alliance with me and a couple other people. And then he’s already in the Underdog alliance, and I think he’s in another alliance with Joseph. So Tucker kind of spiraled, and he came up with this plan, and I thought it was a bold move. I thought it was a week too early, to be honest with you.
I’m like, well, if he does this and he takes Angela off the block, then I’m probably the next person that they’re probably going to get rid of. At that point of the game, I was in it. I was ready to make the “Shake It Up” [alliance] a tough group to compete against. So I had mixed emotions.
When Cedric put Makensy up instead, what was your reaction in that moment?
I knew Cedric wasn’t going to [put Quinn up]. He didn’t tell me that he was going to not put Quinn up, but I knew that he was super apprehensive. Even that morning, I tried to talk Tucker out of it. I said, “Tucker, do you think this is a good move? I don’t know.” And Cedric was like, “We don’t have the votes to get Quinn out.” And I could just see in Tucker’s eyes that we weren’t changing his mind no matter what. He wanted to shake things up like our name, and he wanted to get the game going. At times he was very bored in the house. He thought the game was starting off too slow. He knew that there were a lot of different alliances in the house, but he also knew that they weren’t very strong. That’s why we were trying to make ours the stronger alliance in the house. Even though it was a small alliance, I think we had the tools and the capability to go a long way.
You were evicted by a vote of 10 to one. Did any votes surprise you?
No, not at all. I know Angela was having a super hard time with voting me out, but I told her it was the right thing to do at that particular time. And there was a couple other people like Cam, I think he kind of struggled with it, and the girls I think struggled with it. Makensy and Leah, I was kind of pretty close with them — they were like my daughters, but I think they knew. I had more downs than ups. So I think they knew that they were doing what was best for me. But in the overall scheme of things, I think Brooklyn knew that it was time for me to go. She knew that I was on to them. I knew that she was trying to run the house, and I would’ve blew that up.
Speaking of Angela… what do you make of her behavior?
Her initial behavior was terrible. I didn’t agree with it at all. I’m not a person who likes confrontation, which is why I decided to go into the Big Brother house. Surprise, surprise. [Laughs] But I also could understand, because I was having certain emotions, but I handled them differently. I went off by myself and I would become quiet. She wasn’t able to do that. She had to express it in a different way. We’re all different and we’re all human, but I still didn’t agree with the way that it was done. She kind of went after Quinn a little bit. She went after Lisa a little bit. She actually made Cedric super upset in the kitchen one day, and I couldn’t get past that. Even though I know the house flipped and that Lisa was going out, I still couldn’t vote to keep Angela in the house, and I always hated unanimous votes anyway, so I made sure that I wasn’t going to vote to vote Lisa out at that particular time.
But in the long term of the game, Angela is an absolute sweetheart. She was probably my biggest advocate to stay in the game. Every chance she got — it got annoying at times, but I really appreciate what she was trying to do — she was trying to keep my head in the game and keep me in the fight. And she always didn’t say the right things because she didn’t know what I was thinking, but she always meant well by saying those things. And it obviously was gameplay, and she needed another ally in the house, because she knew that she didn’t have any numbers. But I think generally she cared about me and she wanted me to not regret not being in the house.
Some viewers believe she’s performing, and that this isn’t who she really is. What would you say to that?
I will say I agree with them. When she came down the stairs clapping and going off on Matt, I was like, “This is scripted!” I’m like, “She’s a plant in the house. She’s probably, like, Ainsley’s puppet in the house and she’s just going to do whatever they [tell her to].” So I thought it was part of the game, to be honest with you. I didn’t think that there needed to be that much drama in the house.
But I don’t think she’s playing. I think she’s a go-get-it, happy-go-lucky person who’s made something to herself and wanted to have a good time. I think in the beginning when she was the HOH and she wasn’t sleeping, she became something that she probably thought she never would become. She regretted that, and she apologized for that numerous times. But I think that’s her. I think after week three, the real people come out. The first week, you can fake it and then the real people come out.