‘Big Brother’ Alum Zach Rance Calls Out Fan Sending Death Threats Over Showmance With Frankie Grande 10 Years Later

Armando Tinoco
·3 min read

Zach Rance, who appeared on Big Brother Season 16, is calling out fans for sending death threats to him and his family over “showmance” with Ariana Grande’s brother, Frankie Grande.

In a video shared on social media, Rance pleaded with fans of the CBS reality competition to stop the toxicity.

More from Deadline

“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 said in a video posted on YouTube. “I have been getting harassed nonstop incessantly for the past 10 years since Big Brother was on in 2014.”

Rance 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.”

The Big Brother alum appeared on the show in 2014 and formed a close friendship with Frankie Grande, which made fans ship them as “Zankie.”

“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 said. “That wasn’t the case because we weren’t dating after the show. And our ‘showmance’ didn’t end up coming to fruition.”

Rance noted that many fans “were extremely invested in Zankie” and were subsequently “disappointed” that the couple didn’t continue after the show. In 2015, Rance’s phone number leaked, and he started receiving “very mean” and “very rude” messages directed at him and his family, calling the former CBS contestant “homophobic” and “a closeted gay.”

“These emails that 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****t, you should kill yourself because you’re so in the closet.’”

Rance said that as time went on the emails started getting “more harsh” and worse to the point of threatening his life, adding, “And it came to the point where I didn’t really know what to do. And I was kind of scared that whoever this was that was sending these emails is going to physically harm me or my family.”

The offensive messages reached Rance’s grandmother and father’s work email, with the life coach and realtor reading them in the video.

“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 said these emails have impacted his mental health and have also affected him financially as the person contacts his clients.

Watch Rance’s full video below.

Best of Deadline

Sign up for Deadline's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

  • Up next
  • Up next
  • Up next
  • Up next
  • Up next
  • Up next
  • Up next