Dr. Will Kirby is ready to be your ‘Deal or No Deal Island’ villain

Big brother was on life support. A disastrous first season had flopped both critically and commercially in the summer of 2000, and didn’t even come close to replicating the immediate success of CBS’ other new reality competition show, Survivor. Somewhat inexplicably, CBS decided to give the show one more chance, and that decision turned out to be one of the smartest the network ever made.

Season 2 of Big brother was as wildly entertaining as the first episode was painfully boring. And the most entertaining of the cast in Season 2 was a cheeky 28-year-old doctor named Will Kirby. Dr. Will became enemy no. 1 in the house and then somehow managed to make it all the way to the end and convince a jury of his peers to award him the $500,000. Will was even bolder when he returned to the franchise’s first All-Stars season, at some point dared his housemates to vote him out. (They didn’t.)

But while Dr. Will has made several reality appearances since then – host Big brother jury roundtables and guest appearance on The traitors – he hasn’t actually competed since Big Brother: All-Stars appearance in 2006. That all changes when Will makes his grand entrance in this week’s episode of Deal or No Deal Island (Jan. 14 on NBC). Host Joe Manganiello, showrunner Matt Kunitz and DONDY Cast members have already weighed in with their, shall we say, strong reactions to Will’s gameplay, but we also spoke to the infamous personality to get his take on what to expect when he returns to reality TV.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Break it down for me: How is this game similar or different from Big brother?

DR. WILL KIRBY: When you look at any of these games, there are really four aspects, right? There is what you might call the kinetic dynamism or athletic quotient. Then there’s the social quotient, there’s the strategy part, and there’s luck – and every single show has them. So as much as I joke around, if someone pretends they’re a phenomenal reality gamer, they might be really good at three of them, but there’s still a huge amount of luck involved, and that’s just the truth.

This game has a huge amount of luck because you have to play the Banker and either beat the Banker or lose to the Banker, which is really a different element because you can’t control luck. So the social aspect of the game really isn’t imperative until near the end. The producers did a phenomenal job with social layers at the very end, which I love.

Strategy is important, but only to the extent that it can help you gain immunity. It can’t really do that, so it’s hard to plan. And the other component is the athletic component. So the athletic component, you have to have some control over that, especially in this game. So I felt like I had a really pretty well-balanced game, but I also got into firearms. I wasn’t going to just fizzle out at the end of my career and want to make a big impact.

Let’s talk a little more about that. How would you describe your gameplay this season? We haven’t seen you compete on a reality show in a long time, so what should people expect?

I knew those fellow contestants would come in and quickly judge me by my past reputation, and I would lean into that. So I wanted in as a reality villain. But I am a very different person than when I played 25 years ago. There are words and there are actions. My words, I tried to play as ethical as I could but my actions were ironically as ethical as you can see.

I had the highest level of integrity of rectitude, of morals, of ethics. And when I made a deal with someone, I 100 percent kept that deal, and I knew other people weren’t going to keep their deals with me, and I was okay with that. I wanted my character arc to come in, be a big target, be a villain and then slowly transform into a hero. And I think I have achieved that.

Have you played any reverse psychology, like on Big Brother: All-Stars where you threatened to fire everyone if they didn’t vote you out?

As soon as the second challenge was explained, I reversed it in my brain and then tried to manipulate the rules of the game to my advantage. So what the fans are going to see is someone who goes 180 degrees from what you expect with the games.

Who else from Big brother would do well on this show?

Big brother is a puzzle because skills of Big brother does not translate to any other show. And we have seen that again and again and again. Big brother people continue The amazing race and performs poorly. I mean, there are people who are Big brother legends who have lost 10 shows at this point. So it’s really, really hard to extrapolate Big brother skills and bring it into other shows.

I think there are people who have done well Big brother and they can always do well Big brotherbut they are simply not able to work well on other shows. And conversely, there are people who can just go from one show to another seamlessly. And this is Boston Rob, this is Parvati. There is a subset of true professionals—and I include myself in that at the risk of self-aggrandizement—who can take on a show, whatever the setting, and be nimble enough and evolve quickly enough to survive.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Deal or No Deal Island sent on Tuesdays at 9pm ET/PT on NBC.

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