Filipino American Tanner Mata, one of Pinoy Big Brother’s newest housemates, is making a lot of buzz and stealing the hearts of television viewers since he entered the famous yellow house last week. With his striking good looks, it’s quite easy to understand why.
The brown-eyed Tanner hails from Nueva Ecija, but grew up in the US with his mother and stepfather. He was rocking the runways, print ads and magazine spreads before he’s roped in to audition for the 11-year-old reality series’ latest edition. He was born and raised in Denver, Colorado and started strutting the runway on Philippine shores just this May when he decided to settle in Manila.
The heartthrob stands at towering 6 feet and 1 inch and has a smile “that would melt the hearts of everyone in a room.” The sporty stunner enjoys playing football, basketball, and is also an experienced snowboarder. He is very much single and has a huge crush on Liza Soberano.
With his classic and manly look, netizens instantly tagged the 21-year-old fashion model as the Asian Clark Kent prompting them too to create numerous fan pages on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter solely dedicated to his stint in PBB. Members of his fan base, which number grows each the day, believe that he can be the next James Reid or Sam Milby, two PBB halfies who have been successful in making a name for themselves after they left the house.
The Fil-Am first debuted on local TV via It’s Showtime when he was introduced as one of the first batch of housemates to enter Big Borther’s house. The video clip of his appearance on the noontime time was uploaded on ABS-CBN’S official YouTube channel and easily made its way to become one of the top videos of the week amassing more than half a million views in just five days.
When asked by host Vice Ganda on what his expectations are in the PBB house, Tanner just smiled saying he has no clue but he’s up for the challenge.
“I actually don’t know. I’m just going to have fun with it,” he said.
Tanner was officially welcomed into Big Brother’s house on Oct. 28 as one of the regular housemates alongside Bibang Bentang-guena of Batangas, Baninay Bautista; Rampa Raketera of Bulacan, Ali Forbes; Longing Son of Taguig, Luis Hontiveros; Lucky Bet na Miss of Tacloban, Thuy Nguyen; Dazzling Daughter of Bulacan, Cora Waddell; and Overseas Filipino Warrior of Tondo, Jerome Alecre.
Before his stint in PBB, he’s under the management of IM Agency Manila, a Philippine-based International modeling agency. His professional photos and pictures of everyday life have earned him more than 50,000 Instagram followers. The rising model has an identical twin brother named Tyler, who is modeling for big apparel brands in Bangkok and Singapore.