Inside The Rules 'Big Brother' Houseguests Have To Follow and Where Producers Stand on Napping

Even the most casual Big Brother fans know that this reality competition show is unlike any other. And no, that's not just because viewers can tune into live feeds of the houseguests at nearly any hour of the day or night. It's because the rules the players follow are different and they go beyond simply not allowing players to have contact with the outside world. There are rules about what they can sing, what they talk about, and even their sleep schedules. But can Big Brother houseguests nap?

The players on Big Brother live together in a house with no contact with their loved ones or the outside world for as long as they last in the game. And, for players who make it further, to the Jury House, they last even longer without being able to talk to anyone outside of the game. But it's all in the name of potentially winning the $750,000 prize at the end, and for many, the stress is well worth it.

According to the show itself, houseguests are not allowed to nap on Big Brother. Well, usually. On Reddit, some fans claim they saw players nap in seasons before Season 26, but the days of being able to nap during filming or on the live feeds in general appear to be long gone. On a clip from the live feeds from Season 19 of Big Brother, houseguest Josh Martinez allegedly began napping, at which point a disembodied production voice said through the house speakers that he was not allowed to nap.

The same Reddit thread also shared that there were times in the past when players would stay up so late that they would sleep all day or be tired enough to want to nap. As a result, the live feeds weren't interesting for daytime watchers. Now, apparently, there is a rule that houseguests have to be up for the day by 10 a.m. and there's no napping allowed.

Another seemingly random rule that houseguests have to follow is that they can't sing copyrighted music in the house. While not every piece of filming from the live feeds makes it onto the edited episodes, the live streams still have to answer to the laws of paying for copyrighted music.

So, if a player begins to sing a song that does not belong to them, production typically tells the player over the speakers to "please stop singing." In other cases, the feeds might momentarily be cut out so the houseguest in question can stop singing lyrics that do not belong to CBS or its parent company Paramount.

If houseguests talk about how production works, or what a producer might have said to another player, they are instantly told they are "not allowed to talk about production." Though according to one fan on Reddit, the reason the houseguests are told this is so that "production doesn't influence the game."

According to them, producers ask players certain questions in the Diary Room to get them to talk about the game. But by discussing this with other players, the game can be influenced in a way that changes things in a negative way and makes players unnecessarily paranoid to one another, just because they were asked logical questions by producers.

And it honestly all sounds very exhausting. But hey, these players could win almost $1 million when it's all said and done.

Watch Big Brother on Sundays at 9 p.m. EST, and on Wednesdays and Thursdays at 8 p.m. EST on CBS and Paramount Plus.