{"id":364952,"date":"2025-12-23T04:44:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-23T04:44:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/364952\/"},"modified":"2025-12-23T04:44:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-23T04:44:08","slug":"the-challenge-star-cara-maria-sorbello-big-brother-star-rachel-reilly-cast-in-holiday-rom-com","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/364952\/","title":{"rendered":"‘The Challenge’ star Cara Maria Sorbello, ‘Big Brother’ star Rachel Reilly cast in holiday rom-com"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Challenge<\/a>\u00a0winner,\u00a0Cara Maria Sorbello,<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Big Brother<\/a> winner,\u00a0Rachel Reilly,<\/a>\u00a0are trading in reality TV for scripted fiction for their next project.\n<\/p>\n

Entertainment Weekly has learned that the two reality competition veterans are starring together in a holiday rom-com movie.\n<\/p>\n

Sorbello, who has won two seasons of MTV’s long-running reality competition series, and Reilly, who won Big Brother season 13 (as well as Celebrity Fear Factor and Snake in the Grass), will play fictionalized versions of themselves in the upcoming film Mistletoe Mansion.\n<\/p>\n

Cara Maria Sorbello on ‘The Challenge’.<\/p>\n

Jonne Roriz\/Paramount+<\/p>\n

The meta-romantic comedy takes place within a fake reality TV show called The 12 Dates of Christmas. Sorbello and Reilly will star as the hosts who disagree on the creative direction of the season when the bachelorette, Ava Cleary, develops unexpected feelings for her talent handler, Luke Sheppard.\n<\/p>\n

According to the official description, Sorbello’s character is “drama-seeking” and “pushes for a traditional reality TV ending, whereas Reilly’s host is more “romantically inclined” and pushes for Ava to follow her heart instead.\n<\/p>\n

Reilly’s role draws from her real-life “showmance” with her husband, Brendon Villegas, on\u00a0Big Brother. The couple met on their first season together, Big Brother 12, and their relationship made them a target early on. They both returned as a duo in season 13, with Reilly ultimately winning the top prize.\n<\/p>\n

Mistletoe Mansion is written and directed by Candice “Candy” Cain (A Jar Full of Christmas, A Holiday Homecoming), and begins filming Jan. 10th, 2026.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

Rachel Reilly on ‘Big Brother’.<\/p>\n

CBS<\/p>\n

Sorbello, 39, first debuted on The Challenge: Fresh Meat II in 2010 as a new recruit partnered with four-time winner Darrell Taylor. She has since returned for 16 additional seasons across MTV and Paramount+, reaching the final 10 on six occasions and winning twice, becoming the first woman to win a solo season of the series. She also won the charity spinoff season Champs vs. Pros in 2017, and appeared on Fox’s 99 to Beat in September.\n<\/p>\n

Get your daily dose of entertainment news, celebrity updates, and what to watch with\u00a0our\u00a0EW Dispatch newsletter<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n

Reilly, 41, first debuted on Big Brother in 2010 and returned for two additional seasons, winning once. In addition to her wins on\u00a0Celebrity Fear Factor\u00a0and\u00a0Snake in the Grass, she also competed on two seasons of\u00a0The Amazing Race\u00a0with her husband and one season with her sister, Elissa Slater. She also appeared on The Traitors and Worst Cooks in America.\n<\/p>\n

In the scripted world, Reilly has recurred as a waitress on the CBS soap opera The Bold and the Beautiful since 2010. Meanwhile, Sorbello has previously appeared in many of filmmaker Cain’s previous projects, including A Jar Full of Christmas and the TV series Welcome to Hope.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Challenge\u00a0winner,\u00a0Cara Maria Sorbello,\u00a0and\u00a0Big Brother winner,\u00a0Rachel Reilly,\u00a0are trading in reality TV for scripted fiction for their next project.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":364953,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[236,88],"class_list":{"0":"post-364952","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-celebrities","9":"tag-entertainment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364952","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=364952"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364952\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/364953"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=364952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=364952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=364952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}