“Let A Girl Live!”: Tully Wishes Her Ex Drew Didn’t Return To ‘Big Brother’
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We’re only into the second week of Big Brother and already plenty of drama has gone down between the BB royalty. Among the returning housemates is Tully Smyth who came face-to-face with her ex, Anthony Drew, this week.
This reunion came nine years after Tully and Drew first met in the Big Brother house in 2013. Tully entered the house in a committed relationship but left in a relationship with Drew, making for quite the reality TV scandal.
On the latest episode of Punkee’s podcast Reality Tea, Tully spilled on her surprise at seeing Drew back in the house. We asked Tully about the below tweet, assumedly about Drew, that suggested Tully may not have agreed to do the show if she knew her ex was onboard.
Oh boy that's QUITE the promo for next week! Got very creative there BB. ?? For the record, I'm just Tully. Not "His Ex Girlfriend" and I went in to play my own game. With no idea who was already in there. Had I known, it may have been a different story. @BigBrotherAU #BBAU
— Tully Smyth (@tee_smyth) May 12, 2022
“It just changes everything,” she replied. “He’s a bit of a dead weight, he dragged me down, I got distracted, and so my whole thing was that I wanted to come back without him. I wanted to play alone and play on my own two feet.”
Tully continued, “For him to be in the house, it foiled all my grand schemes and grand plans. I think I still would have gone ahead with it [joining the new season] but there would have been a lot more thinking behind it. I would have weighed up the pros and cons.”
Tully revealed she had planned to play without getting caught up in any love stories this time around, and was left surprised to see her ex in the house. “I was completely shocked. People don’t believe me, they think I must have known. But there’s just no way, he had publicly said he would never do it again. The shock was genuine, unfortunately.”
It feels like 2013 all over again and we absolutely LOVE it ? #BBAU pic.twitter.com/IPSMjxcVSb
— Big Brother AU (@BigBrotherAU) May 16, 2022
Tully was especially shocked as Drew is someone who typically shies away from the spotlight. For example, so far this season Drew hasn’t shared a single Big Brother post on his Instagram grid. “That’s the thing! Even now, with all the media and the press, we get sent a gallery of images to promote the episode that night, with images of us that we can post… he hasn’t posted anything about the show!”
Tully also claims that the Big Brother housemates have a group chat which Drew doesn’t contribute to. “We have a group chat on WhatsApp, he doesn’t speak in it!” she said. “It’s kind of like, why did you come back, dude? Why bother! He’s silent in the group chat, he’s said about two things, and that group chat goes off!”
Drew’s apparent disinterest in promoting Big Brother and communicating with his former housemates has left Tully confused as to why he signed on. “It is kind of frustrating because it’s like, why couldn’t you have just let me have my moment? Let a girl live! Let me come back and play on my own, if you don’t care about the show, if you’re not fussed either way!”
In the years since meeting Drew on the 2013 season, Tully has started dating her current partner Daniel Parisi. Tully said she had discussed the possibility of Drew being in the house with her boyfriend before entering. “Daniel was the most supportive,” she said. “We had a lot of really honest conversation where we played out different scenarios — worst case scenarios. If they somehow managed to convince old mate to come back how would you [Daniel] feel about it? And he was like, ‘It was almost a decade ago!’
“I think because the country watched us, they watched us eat, sleep, fall in love, so it feels very recent to them. They can’t separate the years, but it’s been almost 10 years. We’ve both moved on — he has a partner, I have a partner. It’s kind of old news and it’s a shame this time around that I’m having to talk about him all over again. I’d love some time in the spotlight without having to talk about old mate.”
Despite the edit so far emphasising Tully and Drew’s history, while Drew and Sam Manovski have grown closer, she maintains there was never any love triangle in the house. “It’s been a little disappointing to see the love triangle thing hammed home. There was definitely no love triangle in there. It doesn’t even make sense, as I have a boyfriend so is it a love square? I don’t understand. Sam and I are on really good terms and we’re really supportive of each other.”
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