Sarasota swimwear designer Alyssa Lopez eliminated from ‘Big Brother’

Sarasota swimwear designer Alyssa Lopez made it through 65 days locked in the “Big Brother” house before she was voted out Thursday by a loyal alliance of the remaining six competitors.

Lopez was among the 16 people who began the competition on the CBS series in early July hoping to win a grand prize of $750,000. The winner will be crowned during the Sept. 29 finale, and Lopez will be among the jurors deciding who takes that prize.

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The 24-year-old Lopez, who celebrated her birthday in the house, is a co-founder of the Molliebird swimwear line.

In comments video-recorded for the Herald-Tribune before she was sequestered with the four other jurors, Lopez said she has watched “Big Brother” since she was 11.

“I actually applied four times, so I am a big superfan of the show, and I’ve always wanted to be on it ever since I turned 21,” she said. ”I honestly thought I would be good at the game. I got fifth juror, not too bad, but I think I did pretty good.”

Lopez said being trapped in a house with a dwindling pool of competitors for months “sounds insane. It’s crazy. It’s very overwhelming. It’s definitely crazy to think I did that for 65 days.” 

For the first time this season, the 16 competitors were initially divided into four teams of four.  Lopez was on the Kings team with Fort Myers forensic scientist Sarah Beth Steagall, who was eliminated last week, and attorney Xavier Prather, who become her closest ally in her final weeks. She became close to teammate Christian Birkenberger before he was eliminated earlier in the summer.

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“I think the teams twist honestly helped every single person in the house because as soon as you walked in, you had three people aligned with you,” she said. “But unfortunately for me, the Kings were a big target, and each week our names were in everyone’s mouth.”

Lopez said her friendship with Birkenberger “did hinder my game because I don’t think I was focusing as much as I should have in the game. Him leaving did help my game. Xavier, I think that definitely helped my game as well because he was very loyal, and I could tell him anything, and in this house, it’s very hard to find someone like that.”

She did not know, however, that Prather was part of a six-person alliance of Black contestants who called themselves the Cookout and controlled the voting each week. They had pledged to take each other to the final six to assure that a person of color wins the game this season. 

Lopez was nominated earlier in the week for elimination but won the power to remove herself from contention in the first of two evictions for the night. In the frenzied episode, Lopez then came up in the competition to become the Head of Household, who nominates two people for elimination. She also lost the veto competition, which was won by Prather, who removed himself. He was the only one to support Lopez in the 3-1 vote, which showed the loyalty of the Cookout alliance to one another.

She said there is a “lot of fakeness in the house, a lot of fake smiles, a lot of sucking up,” which happened each time a new head of household was chosen. “Unfortunately, I’m really bad at fake smiling, and I don’t suck up to people, and I think that’s why I’m sitting where I am right now.”

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