Think you’ve got what it takes to be cast on reality TV? So did I.

It seemed like a great idea at the time. I would (fake) audition for Big Brother to see if I could cut it on reality TV. I mean, how hard could it be? I’ve watched enough reality TV to know what they are looking for: big personalities with even bigger opinions. Easy, right?

Not so much. After 15 minutes in the hot seat – facing a very light grilling from Big Brother executive producer Jonathon Summerhayes and head of unscripted at Paramount Australia Sarah Thornton – I have no idea who I am any more. What’s my selling point? What happened to my hobbies? Do family and work count? What is the most interesting thing about me? Who am I?

It turns out I’m the kind of person who can randomly bring up French lentil salad in conversation, avoid most personal questions, and then throw my husband under the bus multiple times because of his snoring.

“You did say The Empire Strikes Back was your favourite movie,” says Summerhayes a few weeks later.

I did? (To be fair, it’s the right answer.)

If you ever thought auditioning for reality TV is easy, I am here to tell you it’s not. What’s even harder, though, is piecing that casting puzzle together. From thousands of applications, a handful of people are plucked from anonymity and placed on TV to be cheered and jeered in equal measure. But how do those people get chosen? And what are producers looking for?

“I often think if you hopped on a bus and you took a bunch of all those people off the bus, or some other kind of leveller like a plane or a doctor’s waiting room, you’ve got that kind of proper cross-section of people from all walks of life,” says Thornton, who got her casting start on British TV with the series Britain’s Worst Wife.

Reality TV is big business in Australia. All five of the free-to-air networks broadcast a reality show of some type, from cooking (MasterChef Australia, My Kitchen Rules) to romance (Married At First Sight, Farmer Wants a Wife), building (The Block, My Reno Rules, Grand Designs Australia), physical (Survivor, Alone Australia), gentle competition (Recipe of the Year, Portrait Artist of the Year) and psychological gymnastics (Big Brother, Traitors Australia).

The ratings are also generally pretty robust – this year’s MAFS finale in April had a national audience of more than 3 million for Nine*, while the MasterChef Australia episode featuring Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, delivered Ten its highest Sunday ratings since 2023 – and, handily, they count towards Australian content quotas. They are also less expensive to produce than scripted content and provide plenty of fodder for social media.

Of all the reality shows on offer, in terms of casting, however, Big Brother is probably the most democratic. No special skills are required – you don’t need to cook, be prepared to lose weight, stand on a pole for five hours in a physical endurance test, or be a celebrity to enter. That means the recruitment net is thrown wide.

“We don’t cast particular traits,” says Summerhayes, who has cast all of the major reality shows over the last three decades. “You don’t cast for love. You don’t cast for those big opinions or conflict. You just cast big characters that can light up a room in whatever way, and then the format takes over as soon as you take away those little life luxuries – no contact with the outside, no phone.”

This year’s crop of housemates, who were unveiled at the new Big Brother house in Brisbane on Monday night, are a typically varied bunch, ranging in age from 22 to 61 years old, with the usual “textbook Aussie bogan” (Matty), a princessy entrepreneur (Ebony) and the sister of former winner Reggie in the mix.

The ones who make it to the screen are chosen from a group of about 500, who have been whittled down from a pool of thousands of applications (Ten wouldn’t give exact numbers, only to say they had increased significantly from last year, when the show returned to its original home on Ten after a brief stint on Seven). Those 500 are interviewed in person by Summerhayes and Thornton, who are looking for 14 people to make up the Big Brother jigsaw puzzle.

Which brings us back to my afternoon with Summerhayes and Thornton. After my audition, I took a turn at casting, sitting with Summerhayes and Thornton while they put three housemate hopefuls to the test. Two of them passed – Kyrah and Andrew, aka “Marshy” – and entered the house on Monday night, while one did not (to be clear, I had no input, just a bird’s-eye view).

Did I agree with their choices? We aligned on 25-year-old NSW high school teacher Kyrah, but when it came to the blokes, I would have said no to Marshy, and yes to the other man. For me, I was instantly put off by Marshy’s entry into the room – the 24-year-old forklift salesman from South Australia walked in and tried to hug me (Thornton told him to sit down pretty quickly). He then described his “icks” as women wearing backpacks and toe rings, and then pulled his pants down to show off a brightly coloured pair of Budgy Smuggler swimmers.

So what did Thornton and Summerhayes see in him – the self-described “Italian Jason Momoa” – that I did not?

“His confidence was appealing,” says Summerhayes. “He feels like a small fish in a big town. He’s from the country, I think part of that fun is he’s confident, he can walk the walk, talk the talk, [but] will he be everyone’s cup of tea? Who knows? But I think it would be fun to see how he swims in a bigger aquarium.”

But what about the other guy? He was in his 20s, his family had an Italian background, he worked in content creation, and he also said he had worked for manosphere influencer Andrew Tate. With that background, and some of his spicy opinions, surely he would have made an interesting fit for the house?

“He probably would have had similar personality traits to someone else that we’re looking at,” says Summerhayes diplomatically.

Adds Thornton: “Even in the people that we cast to have slightly spicy opinions, they still have to be able to light up a room, connect, and have a touch of positivity or life about them. So just because someone has opinions that we know might be good for content, if they’re not also layered and likable and charismatic, then they don’t qualify.”

As for Kyrah, it was her positivity that made her stand out.

“On the surface, she’s blonde and chirping and pretty, but she’s got layers and depth,” says Thornton. “Just the fact that she can’t read a room because of her neurodiversity [Kyrah has been diagnosed with autism and ADHD], but is very knowledgeable about that and able to articulate it, makes her able to bring depth to the house that someone who is similar to her on the surface but doesn’t have those layers wouldn’t bring.”

Adds Summerhayes: “Almost every second person came in and spoke about mental illness, which was great. But hers was a different journey. There was no negativity there.”

As for my audition? Well – spoiler alert – I didn’t get in. So what went wrong? Tell it to me straight!

“Who says you failed?” says Summerhayes.

Adds Thornton: “I don’t know that you did fail.”

Summerhayes: “Sometimes we keep people in our back pocket. You weren’t right for the jigsaw puzzle for this time round. We see some absolute gold that aren’t necessarily right for this season for whatever reason. Again, it’s the make-up of the whole group. Don’t be surprised if we call you early next year.”