Emma Willis was "shocked" to find out ‘Big Brother’ has been axed.
The 42-year-old television presenter – who hosts the Channel 5 show – was just as surprised as everyone to hear the show had been axed but she is still hopeful that it could be picked up by another broadcaster.
She said: "This is a very strange ‘What You Talking About Willis?’ today because normally it’s a ‘Yay! It’s the launch!’ of our civilian series. But the excitement comes with really a lot of sadness because we have all found out today that Big Brother is no more on Channel 5. I feel like I’ve been through this process before. Well I have been through this process before because I worked on the last year on Channel 4 and we like … buried it. Like, genuinely. We had a grave for it and everything in the back garden and then the next thing we know is, ‘Oh wow, it’s coming back.’
"So, the news was a shock, if I’m honest, but I kind of still hold out hope that somebody out there, loves it as much as we all do still and will give it a home in the future because it has been on the TV for a bloody long time and you know it’s part of our popular culture. So it would be sad. It would be sad to see its end at the age of eighteen. It’d be lovely to see it come back for its twentieth anniversary."
The new – and final – series of ‘Big Brother’ will begin on Friday evening (14.09.18) and Emma has promised the show will "go out with a bang".
She added in a video posted to the official Big Brother Twitter account: "But the one thing that I can assure you is that on hearing this news, it has made every single person that works here and on the show, it’s given us even more of an incentive to make this the most incredible series because we want to go out on a high and we want to go out with a bang. Let’s celebrate Big Brother for everything it is and everything it has done."