‘Big Brother’ Houseguest Rebekah Shelton Spoke About Her Experience, Saying “It Sent Her Crazy”

Rebekah Shelton, a former Big Brother star, said that her experience in the show's iconic house "sent her crazy." The 37-year-old actor, once known as Rodrigo Lopes, had gender transition surgery in 2014. A death hoax, an appearance on The Jeremy Kyle Show, and gender transition surgery in quick succession led her to retire from the spotlight in 2018.

Rebekah, now an IT professional, allowed the Sun to interview her in her one-bedroom apartment in Poole, Dorset, to talk about the calm, 'regular' life she leads with her blind cat, Princess. She revealed, "My mind just went a bit crazy after Big Brother, and it took me a while to get back to me, and this is one of the reasons that I'm doing this interview; to show that I'm not the same person and I now have a normal life. I would be lying if I said ‘Oh, I didn't want to be famous’ or ‘I just wanted to experience it'. Everyone that goes on Big Brother wants to be famous and wants to be recognized and wants to be loved in a way."

Rebekah left her home country of Brazil to attend college in Leeds, where she ultimately placed fifth in the Ch4 reality program. Before addressing the show's aftercare, she said producers 'played with [housemates'] emotions' and figured out how to set them against each other. Rebekah had spent two weeks in hiding in France, where she was constantly chaperoned and unable to use her phone or make any outside contact before entering the residence. She didn't find out she made it until the day before the program premiered, and after she made it to the finals, she was isolated from the outside world for another 93 days.

Siavash Sabbaghpour, who came in second, was a roommate, as was beauty model Sophie Reade, who famously legally changed her identity to Dogface for a task. After finishing in fifth place, Rebekah struggled to re-adjust to life outside of Big Brother's high-stakes environment. Although she had an adoptive family in Leeds with whom she was matched upon her arrival in the UK, she was living alone in a rented apartment since her biological family remained in Brazil. Rebekah confessed, "When I left the show, it was a bit of a roller coaster, and I didn't get much help. It was very hard to come to terms with getting back to normal because you spent three whole months in front of the cameras, and then suddenly, you were just back in your home with no cameras, and it's just weird. I remember being by myself, and I thought, ‘What now? What do you do next? Was that all a dream?’"

After gradually coming to terms with the fact that she was a woman in the years after Big Brother, Rebekah had gender reassignment surgery in 2014, "along with a couple other surgeries." The next year, in 2016, she appeared on another reality show, Judge Rinder, where she was questioned about a late payment on her $1,400 breast operation. She informed Judge Rinder that she was a call girl in London and that she made as much as £10,000 a month. After rumors of her death spread online in 2018, Rebekah stated on The Jeremy Kyle Show that her Twitter account was hacked. To this day, Rebekah still considers her time on Big Brother to be the "best experience of my life," with her only true regret being that she didn't play more for the prize money.