Zach Rance, Frankie Grande. Courtesy of Zach Rance/Instagram; Jesse Grant/Getty Images for Paramount+
Big Brother alum Zach Rance is putting out a plea for help as he continues to receive death threats after competing on the reality series a decade ago.
“This is me asking for help to all the people that follow me, to all the Big Brother fans, to anybody that’s ever watched a season of Big Brother,” Rance, 33, said in a YouTube video uploaded on Sunday, August 25. “I have been getting harassed nonstop incessantly for the past 10 years since Big Brother was on in 2014.”
He continued: “I have received extremely specific and vulgar emails about myself, my family and they are threatening and they are direct threats to not only my life but my family’s life my friends’ life and it was time for me to come out to the public and discuss what’s going on here and ask you guys for help.”
Rance competed on season 16 of the CBS competition series back in 2014. While on the show he formed a friendship with Frankie Grande, who is the older brother of pop star Ariana Grande. Fans of the series loved seeing Rance and Frankie’s close bond and nicknamed them “Zankie.”
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“Him and I had a very close friendship in the house. A lot of the fans and a lot of the people who watch Big Brother thought that when we were to come out of the house we would have been in a relationship,” Rance reflected. “That wasn’t the case because we weren’t dating after the show. And our ‘showmance’ didn’t end up coming to fruition.”
Rance added that a lot of fans were “upset” and “disappointed” that he and Frankie didn’t date after the show. Both Frankie, 41, and Rance moved on after the season wrapped up. However, Rance started to get a slew of emails and text messages after his contact information leaked.
The life coach shared that the messages were “mean” and “rude” while others accused him of being “in the closet.” (Rance came out as bisexual in 2020.)
“These emails I was getting didn’t stop,” he said. “I was getting emails every single day saying, ‘Zach you’re an ashamed closeted gay, you’re a f–got, you should kill yourself because you’re so in the closet.’”
Rance has now printed out about “four to six months of emails” and he has placed them in “massive binders.” He noted that the amount he’s printed so far doesn’t come close to the total he’s received in the past decade, which is around “5,000.”
“These threats started getting more harsh, worse, more direct, more specific and it came to the point where I didn’t really know what to do,” Rance admitted. “And I was kind of scared that whoever this was that was sending these emails is going to physically harm me or my family.”
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In addition to getting the threatening messages himself, Rance’s family has also received vulgar emails noting that his father and grandmother have received anti-semitic statements. According to Rance, the emails have come from an anonymous sender and he’s been unable to track down the user’s IP address.
“Even though I continue to fight and even though I continue to look at the positive and I continue to use this as a what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger type of thing, it’s been going on for way too long,” he said.“It’s been 10 freaking years. Big Brother was on in 2014 and it’s now 2024. And this person is still sending these emails daily.”
Rance is now putting out a call to action to any Big Brother fans, especially ones involved in the Zankie fandom, to share any information with him about the potential identity of the person sending the threats.
