Jenuine scandal: Big Brother boss speaks

It’s not too much of a spoiler to reveal that Big Brother 8 contestant Jen Johnson went off the rails this week. While producers are saving the scenes for tonight’s eviction episode, her meltdown was seen on Big Brother After Dark and clips have spread across the Internet this week. Placed on the block for the fourth time, and under provocation from her fellow houseguests, she freaked, broke the rules, went off the slop, destroyed Evil Dick’s ciggies and wound up being penalized by Big Brother himself.

Jen, a bikini model and nanny for Vanna White’s kids, has played the dumb bunny this season, though her college double majors in Architecture and Early Childhood Development have led many to believe it’s all a strategic act.

But now… she may have gone too far.

Big Brother executive producer Allison Grodner speaks for the first time about what’s going on, setting the stage for tonight’s Flipit/Schoonie recap (live- blog it guys!)… after the jump…Allison speaks exclusively to Entyertainmnt Weeky. Read the entire interview here. Here are some highlights:

Why did you penalize her? (Jen’s punishment will be revealed on tonight’s show.):

ALLISON GRODNER: We always reserve the right to give penalty nominations when rules are broken that are not safety violations or something so extreme that you should be ejected. But this was unprecedented [someone who was already nominated breaking a rule].

Why not give her a penalty nomination next week?

AG: At this point, our feeling is that the offender should be penalized within the week the offense took place. So this is a new way of dealing with rule violations by the nominees themselves.

Was Jen admonished for destroying Dick’s cigarettes?

AG: There is a rule about destroying personal property in the house. It would be a big mess (if allowed to continue), so we have to have some rules to prevent all hell from breaking loose.

But how do you justify admonishing Jen when her shirt was vandalized with mustard?

AG: Obviously it was an America’s Player situation (Eric was told to do it). She was able to wash it and it was fine. If that had been a situation in the house, we probably would have admonished the person who did it. But Jen doesn’t know who did it!

Jen was contending that she was admonished for destroying Dick’s cigarettes, yet Dick was never admonished for his foul behavior toward her. Is that true?

AG:That’s not necessarily true. By the way, we don’t discuss who is admonished and so forth in the Diary Room. But I will tell you as an overall note that when people are close to crossing the line in terms of violence in the house, they are warned. Jen doesn’t necessarily know [what, if anything, happened to Dick]. They don’t know what happened with her with regards to the cigarettes. We don’t discuss people’s Diary Room visits with the other houseguests.

–Tabloid Baby