Aaryn Williams says her late father, George, instilled the racist beliefs that exploded into national scandal during her 2013 run on “Big Brother.”
The 36-year-old, formerly known as Aaryn Gries, makes the claim in an upcoming Bravo reality series, “Small Town Trouble: Texas,” where she sits down with her husband, Nick Williams, to revisit the controversy that derailed her modeling career and made her one of the most vilified contestants in the show’s history. The series premieres Nov. 18.
Nick told Aaryn he had no idea who she was when they first met. “I didn’t even know what ‘Big Brother’ was,” he said. He described her instead as “this wonderful person who made a terrible mistake.” Aaryn pushed back on that framing. “It’s not even a mistake that I made. It’s who I was,” she replied.
In a confessional segment, Aaryn elaborated on how the hate speech she directed at Black and Asian houseguests, as well as homobic slurs, reflected something deeper than a single reality-TV meltdown. “It took me a really long time to understand how deeply ingrained it was in me, and how many people I hurt by saying the things that I did on the show,” she said. “It is my biggest regret in my life.”
Aaryn traced that ingrained prejudice directly to her upbringing. “I grew up around a lot of racism,” she told viewers. “I wanted to make my dad proud when I was on the show. Unfortunately, he raised me with a very racist mindset,” She said her father’s worldview kept her own “so small” while he was alive.
She offered a specific example of his bigotry. Aaryn claimed George refused to post her prom photos on Facebook because her date was Black. The revelation came as part of her broader argument that she had been “ignorant to the ignorance” of her Texas life, having not yet processed what she now considers trauma from that environment.
Aaryn framed the public backlash as an unlikely catalyst for change. “Had I not been called out for my behavior, I don’t think I would’ve been the one to break this cycle with my family,” she said in her confessional. She and Nick now have four daughters, and Aaryn vowed that with their support, the girls “will never have to worry no matter who they become one day.”
The 2013 season of “Big Brother” captured Aaryn, then 22, making remarks that included mocking Asian accents and using racial slurs. The fallout was immediate and severe. Her modeling agency dropped her. When she was evicted from the house, the live studio audience booed her loudly. Host Julie Chen Moonves pressed her in a post-eviction interview that grew tense as Aaryn attempted to deflect responsibility.
“Being Southern, it’s a stereotype, and I have said some things that have been taken completely out of context and wrong and I do not mean to ever come off racist,” Aaryn told Chen Moonves at the time. “That’s not me and I apologize to anyone that I’ve offended for that.”
The contrast between that 2013 denial and her current admission marks a significant shift in how she discusses the period. Where she once blamed editing and regional stereotyping, she now describes the behavior as authentic to her then-self, shaped by paternal influence she says she has since dismantled.
“Small Town Trouble: Texas” will follow Aaryn and Nick alongside four other couples in Boerne, Texas: Annari Uys and her husband, Gabby Hernandez Huffman and her husband, Alli McAnelly and her husband, and Hailey Head and her husband. Bravo describes the cast as “a charming yet unconventional group of wives, mothers and social insiders.”
Aaryn’s return to television comes more than a decade after the scandal that made her name synonymous with reality-TV racism. Whether audiences accept her account of personal transformation remains to be seen as the series launch approaches.
“Small Town Trouble: Texas” premieres on Bravo on Nov. 18.