Big Brother's First Drag Queen Was Evicted 12-0 — After 'I Miss Gay People' Went Viral

Jason De Puy walked into Big Brother as the first drag queen the show had ever cast. He walked out on Thursday night by a vote of 12 to nil.

The performer known to RuPaul's Drag Race audiences as Salina EsTitties was the third houseguest evicted from season 28, and not one person voted to keep him. Big Brother Network logged the ballots one by one — Haley, Chuk, Dee, Angela, Melody, Mallory, Drew, Barrett, Taylor, Lyric, Yash and Devens, every one of them naming Jason — for a unanimous 12-0. TV Insider notes he came in as the show's first drag queen; he never got to compete in drag.

He had little room to stop it. Head of Household Kamuela “Kamu” Kirk had wanted him gone from the moment he won the room, per Gold Derby's live recap, and got there by backdoor: Lyric Medeiros went up as Kirk's pawn, won the veto and used it on herself, which freed Kirk to name Jason as her replacement. That left one escape route — the BB Block Buster, a Jenga-with-VHS-tapes game called Video Tape Tumble, played by Jason, Mallory Aurichio and LaTrice “LaLa” Verrett. LaLa's tower went first, at two tapes. Mallory finished eight tapes to Jason's seven, which Gold Derby describes as a split second.

The clip that outlived the week

With Kirk in power and his own name heading back toward the block, Jason produced the moment that went viral. Hyping himself up before the gym, he said he wanted to send the MMA fighter home “so all his MMA friends can say the drag queen sent the fighter home.” Then, as Out described it, he stretched out alone on the couch, laid an arm across his head, and delivered the line: “I miss gay people.”

Was it melodramatic? Out's own answer was: of course. It was also, in Out's word, completely understandable — he was the cast's only out LGBTQ+ houseguest, sealed in a house he could not leave.

Out reported that most of the response was jokes, but that some people made a straight-faced point alongside them — that it is “cruel for the Big Brother casting department to only cast one LGBTQ+ person per season because it leaves them so isolated.” Our own read, for what it's worth: when a show makes the same casting choice every year, the isolation stops looking like an accident of the draw.

"Zesty bestie"

Kirk had his own week. Video on X showed him asking “Zesty Bestie Jason” to take a seat on the block — InTouch Weekly reported the phrase is “slang for a flamboyant or effeminate person — or someone who clearly identifies as part of the LGBTQ+ community.” Fans and followers were not thrilled, InTouch reported: one X user called it “homophobic and degrading,” another “a borderline homophobic microaggression.”

The fuller picture is less tidy, and InTouch carried that too — other viewers dug up earlier instances of Kirk using “zesty bestie” toward De Puy where it appeared to land as affection rather than insult. Worth keeping the sourcing straight: Out characterized Kirk’s earlier remarks about drag queens as homophobic in its own voice, while the “zesty bestie” reaction is viewers’ and Frankie Grande’s, not a finding of fact.

That former houseguest is Frankie Grande, who had already posted video of Kirk talking about “drag stuff” and wanted the “homophobic bigots” gone. “Ew this conversation makes me sick to my stomach,” the Titanique star wrote. “I'm disgusted.”

The part that complicates it

Jason was not a bystander at his own eviction. Out's account has him alienating most of the cast early by playing hard. Parade goes further: he schemed against the season's returning reality veterans from the start, and at one point fake-cried to Angela Murray about her being his mother figure in the house. When that got back to the veterans, Rick Devens put him on the block and he and Murray called him out. Murray's accusation — that he was “using his sexuality to play on my emotions” — is hers, and it came from an ally.

He survived that week on a Block Buster win. He did not survive the next one.

The exit

When Mallory took the comp, Gold Derby has Jason changing straight into the outfit he'd picked to leave in and hugging his fellow houseguests through tears. Kirk went in for one too and got “Don't touch me, Kamu.”

From the nomination chair he made a case that doubled as an accusation: it was clear who held power in the house, and “they will corner you, they will bully you, they will harass you, they will tell lies.” He offered himself up as a shield and asked the house to make a big move. The house voted him out twelve to nothing.

On his way out he told whoever gets targeted next to take his tea kettle and air them out. Host Julie Chen Moonves was waiting outside banging a kettle of her own. She credited him with “having a good handle” on the house, then flagged how loose-lipped he had been.

Then she told him something he did not know. He had assumed America hated him. He had actually placed top three in both BB Time Capsule votes.

Big Brother airs Sundays, Wednesdays and Thursdays at 8/7c on CBS; the $750,000 is still out there.