The Cookout was a six-person alliance on Big Brother 23 made up of Tiffany, Xavier, Kyland, Azah, Big D and Hannah. All six reached the final six, and Xavier went on to win the season 9–0.
What made the Cookout different was not simply its size. The alliance found a way to hide six people inside a house full of smaller relationships: members stayed close to houseguests outside the alliance, allowing the six to look like separate pairs rather than one voting bloc.
That strategy was not reconstructed after the season. OBB’s live-feed archive preserves Tiffany working it out in the house on July 28, 2021, while the details were still changing.
- Season: Big Brother 23 (2021)
- Members: Tiffany, Xavier, Kyland, Azah, Big D and Hannah
- Goal: keep the six from targeting one another and get the alliance to the end
- Result: all six reached the final six
- Winner: Xavier, 9–0
- Named by: Xavier
Who was in the Cookout?
- Tiffany
- Xavier
- Kyland
- Azah
- Big D
- Hannah
The six were the Black houseguests on Big Brother 23. Their agreement was bigger than an ordinary week-to-week deal: members repeatedly described getting the group through the game together as a mission, even when doing so conflicted with their individual relationships and preferred targets.
The alliance eventually produced the first Black winner of the main US series when Xavier defeated Big D in the final two.
When did the Cookout form?
The simple answer is the opening days of Big Brother 23. The more accurate answer is that there was no single moment when six people sat down, named the alliance and signed off on a finished plan.
The members later described an immediate understanding when they entered the house. Big D went person to person making the agreement explicit, and Xavier gave the alliance its name. But the live-feed record shows the structure continuing to develop after that.
Hannah is the clearest example. By July 28 Tiffany was already counting Hannah as one of the six, but Azah and Big D were still talking about the Cookout as a group of five. So there is no clean, defensible date on which Hannah suddenly became “member number six.”
All six did not even sit alone together in one room until late August, weeks after they had already been protecting one another.
What was the Cookout’s goal?
The agreement began with a basic rule: the members would not target one another. As the season developed, the goal became getting all six to the end so that Big Brother 23 would produce a Black winner.
That required members to make decisions they would not necessarily have made for their own individual games. Their closest allies outside the Cookout eventually had to leave, and some members spent much of the summer working with people inside the six they did not naturally trust.
How did Tiffany plan to get the Cookout to the final six?
On the morning of July 28, Tiffany came into the room with the problem she had been trying to solve: six people were too many to hide if they moved through the house as one obvious group.
Her answer was to give the alliance camouflage.
Each member would maintain a close relationship with somebody outside the Cookout. Those outside relationships would make the house look like a collection of pairs rather than one six-person alliance. The outsiders could then be removed one by one while the six retained the votes to protect their own members.
OBB’s July 28 live-feed record catches Tiffany presenting the idea to Big D and Azah, then working through it with Kyland and Xavier on the chessboard.
The important part is that this was still a working plan. The clean pairing chart remembered after the season was not yet fixed.
Who were the Cookout’s outside partners?
The best-known later version of the plan looked like this:
- Tiffany: Claire
- Hannah: Derek X
- Kyland: Sarah Beth
- Azah and Big D: Britini
- Xavier: Alyssa later in the season
But that was not the original July 28 arrangement.
When Tiffany first explained the structure on the feeds, Xavier’s outside person was Christian, not Alyssa. Tiffany was talking about Claire for herself, Sarah Beth for Kyland, Derek X for Hannah, Britini for Azah, and Christian for Xavier. Big D did not have a separate outside person assigned in that conversation.
Christian was evicted in week five, and Xavier’s closest surviving outside relationship became Alyssa. The familiar Xavier–Alyssa version is therefore a later state of the plan, not the list Tiffany originally presented.
That distinction matters because the Cookout’s strategy was flexible. The structure survived even when the pieces attached to it changed.
How did the Cookout hide six people?
The outside relationships did several jobs at once.
- They separated the six socially. Cookout members did not have to look like one group.
- They created believable loyalties. Other houseguests saw pairs and small groups instead of a hidden bloc of six.
- They gave nominations cover. A Cookout member could sit beside an outsider without automatically exposing the alliance.
- They preserved the votes. As outsiders disappeared, the six moved closer to controlling every eviction.
The plan did not mean the Cookout controlled every competition. Non-members won HOH and vetoes throughout the middle of the season. What mattered was that those weeks still ended with outsiders leaving while the six remained intact.
How did the Cookout reach the final six?
The alliance’s influence became clearer as the numbers shrank.
- Week 1: Kyland was nominated but saved by Derek X’s veto. Travis was evicted.
- Week 2: Kyland became the first Cookout HOH. Frenchie was evicted.
- Week 3: Xavier won HOH. Brent left, and Tiffany developed the outside-partner plan during this week.
- Week 4: Hannah sat on the block beside Whitney. Whitney went home.
- Week 5: Derek X backdoored Christian, removing the person Tiffany had originally attached to Xavier in the July 28 plan.
- Week 6: Kyland won HOH. Britini was evicted.
- Week 7: Sarah Beth won HOH, but Derek X was evicted.
- Week 8: Sarah Beth was evicted, removing Kyland’s closest outside partner.
- Week 9: Tiffany had to nominate Claire after Alyssa won the veto. Claire left first; Alyssa followed during the double eviction.
- Final 6: only Cookout members remained.
By the time Alyssa left, the alliance had done exactly what it had spent the summer trying to do: reach six without losing one of its own.
Did anybody figure out the Cookout?
People got close.
Derek X and Claire both began identifying the right collection of people late in the game, but suspicion never became an organized counter-alliance. The six also did not behave like a conventional alliance socially, which made the correct theory easier to dismiss.
That was one of the strengths of the structure. Houseguests could notice that the same people kept surviving without seeing a group of six meeting together, moving together and openly protecting one another.
Did the Cookout get along?
Not particularly.
The alliance’s success can make the season look much smoother in retrospect than it was on the feeds. Tiffany repeatedly clashed with Big D and Azah. Members disagreed about eviction order, which outside allies should be sacrificed first and how much of their individual games they should give up for the six.
The July 28 conversation itself shows it. Azah agreed that Tiffany’s structure made sense but pushed back on the order of the targets. Later in the season, the disagreement between individual interests and the alliance’s mission became much sharper.
The notable thing is not that the Cookout had no internal conflict. It is that the conflict never broke the agreement before final six.
What happened when the Cookout reached the final six?
The protection ended.
Kyland won the first HOH with only Cookout members remaining and nominated Tiffany and Hannah. Tiffany became the first member evicted from the alliance, 3–0.
Azah then won the HOH during the second half of the double eviction. Hannah was evicted 2–0.
At final four, Xavier won both HOH and veto. Big D cast the only vote and evicted Kyland.
Xavier then won the final HOH, evicted Azah in third place and took Big D to the final two. The jury voted 9–0 for Xavier.
Who created the Cookout?
There is no clean single-founder answer supported by the complete record.
The members themselves have divided the credit. Big D has described himself as the person who went around making sure everyone knew they were working together. Xavier is consistently credited with naming the Cookout. Tiffany developed and presented the outside-partner plan that gave the six a route to the end.
Later interviews often compress the beginning into a shared Day 1 understanding. The feeds show something more gradual: the agreement existed early, but its membership, structure and strategy continued to develop.
So it is more accurate to separate the questions than to force one person into every role:
- Early agreement: developed among the Black houseguests in the opening days
- Formalising the group: Big D is repeatedly credited with going person to person
- Name: Xavier
- Outside-partner strategy: Tiffany
Why is the Cookout important to Big Brother history?
The Cookout accomplished both parts of its objective. All six members reached the final six, guaranteeing that one of them would win Big Brother 23, and Xavier became the first Black winner of the main US series.
Strategically, the alliance also became one of the clearest examples of hiding a large voting bloc behind smaller relationships. The six did not need to appear to be six because each member had visible loyalties elsewhere.
It also demonstrates something that gets lost when alliances are reduced to a list of names: successful alliances do not have to like one another, agree on every target or even tell the same story about how they began. They have to keep the agreement intact when breaking it would be easier.
The Cookout and Big Brother 23
The alliance is only one part of the season. The Big Brother 23 season record has the complete cast, HOHs, nominations, vetoes, evictions, twists and final result.
For how alliances work more generally — majority groups, voting blocs, final-two deals, fake alliances and overlapping groups — see the Big Brother alliances guide.