'Big Brother' 2021 Premiere Introduces Biggest Cash Prize Ever

Big Brother 23 kicked off on Wednesday night. Naturally, it wouldn't be a Big Brother premiere without the introduction of a new twist. Host Julie Chen Moonves informed the houseguests that — for the first time ever — the cash prize would be more than the typical $500,000. Instead, the winner of Big Brother 23 will receive $750,000, the biggest cash prize ever given to a Big Brother contestant.

That wasn't the only twist that Chen Moonves shared during the premiere episode. She also told the houseguests that they would be playing in teams. Once the teams were chosen, they competed in the first Head of Household competition. The winning team's captain becoming the first Head of Household of the summer. The Jokers team won, meaning that the team's captain, Brendon "Frenchie" French, would be the first Head of Household of the season. Chen Moonves then offered Frenchie a "double or nothing" offer.

Chen Moonves offered Frenchie the chance to take part in another competition. If he won, his whole team would be safe for two weeks (and a new HoH would be crowned after Frenchie's reign was over). However, if he lost, he would have to surrender his win and the team that came in second place. (The Queens, led by captain Claire Rehfuss would have been deemed the winner.) In the end, Frenchie decided not to compete in the competition, choosing to remain safe for the first week instead.

The theme of this year's Big Brother house is "Monte Carlo meets beach club." To go along with that theme, the houseguests will be faced with a number of exciting offers throughout the course of the season, just as they were in the first episode. During an interview with Us Weekly, producers Allison Grodner and Rich Meehan spoke about what fans can expect from these twists and from the course of this season, in general.

"The overall theme is the 'Big Brother beach club.' This comes from all of us having been locked in our homes for the past year, like Big Brother houseguests," Grodner said. "Everyone's longing for vacations, to get out there and so forth. So we really wanted to bring a sense of adventure and vacation fun and a club atmosphere to the house. So it's got this casino meets beach, Monte Carlo meets beach club meets Vegas, kind of feel to it. And it's aspirational. It's fun. It's for our houseguests to go on vacation for the summer." Meehan added about the upcoming twists, "All the inherent risk of playing Big Brother. So we're kind of ramping that up this summer and really leaning into the risk versus reward dilemmas." Disclosure: PopCulture is owned by ViacomCBS Streaming, a division of ViacomCBS.