The Many Lives of Dustin Yu

Dustin Yu stepped into the Pinoy Big Brother house carrying the weight of several small lives already lived. He had run a restaurant, acted in a film, and captained a basketball team. None of that, he admits, prepared him for the strange ecosystem of reality television, with its bright, omnipresent cameras, the constant pressure to perform, and the unshakable awareness that somewhere, someone was editing his life into episodes.

“I didn’t have a game plan,” he says, half-laughing. “I just decided to be myself.”