Big Brother 4: where are they now? The Ex-Factor cast made peace with the show — mostly
Big Brother 4 cast: where are they now? What happened to Jun Song, Alison Irwin, Erika Landin and the X-Factor houseguests — from the exes twist of 2003 to their lives two decades later.
In the summer of 2003, CBS looked at a group of adults who had voluntarily agreed to be filmed 24/7 and thought: what if we also made it worse? Eight houseguests walked into the Big Brother 4 house, and then five of their exes walked in after them. The "X-Factor" twist. A psychological war crime with a live audience. Naturally, it produced one of the most quietly influential seasons ever.
The winner who invented floating (and moved to Belgium)
Jun Song won the whole thing 6–1 over Alison Irwin, becoming the first Asian-American winner in the show's history and the patron saint of the "floater" strategy — feed the house, hear everything, be nobody's target. The jury hated it right up until they rewarded it with half a million dollars.
The win itself was chilly. Fresh out of the house, she told Julie Chen on CBS's The Early Show: "I thought I would be just ecstatic." The houseguests barely clapped. Reality TV, everyone!
These days Jun is based in Ghent, Belgium, working as a content strategist and raising her son — after years that included running (and closing) her own Korean restaurant there. And here's the "mostly" in "made peace": in a 2022 Entertainment Weekly interview , she said she'd come back for exactly one thing — an all-winners season. Terms and conditions apply. The queen negotiates.
The rest of the exes' club
- Alison Irwin (runner-up) parlayed her chaos into The Amazing Race 5 and a return for BB7: All-Stars, where she made history as the first returning player ever evicted first. She's since married and stepped away from TV.
- Erika Landin got the franchise 's biggest glow-up: All-Stars finalist in 2006, coming within one vote-adjacent villain (hi, Mike Boogie) of the crown.
- Justin Giovinco, Alison's ex, now recruits for crypto companies, which is arguably a more volatile house than the one CBS built.
- Jee Choe, Jun's ex, entered the house after three years of total silence between them — and still voted for her to win in the end. Closure, televised.
The twist was designed to make thirteen people miserable. Two decades later, most of them talk about it like a weird summer camp they survived together.
That's the thing about BB4: it was engineered for maximum discomfort, and the cast mostly came out the other side with careers, families, and a healthy distance from Julie Chen's key ceremonies. Mostly. Jun's all-winners clause remains on the table. CBS, you know where Ghent is.