Arisa Cox, born in the city of Toronto, Ontario as Arisa Natalie Cox, is an actress, known for Big Brother Canada (2013) and Camp Rock 2: The Final Jam (2010). The host has been married to Shaun Cox since June 2009 and they have three children.
Not only has she hosted Big Brother Canada, Arisa also hosted The Canadian Screen Awards Non-Fiction Gala, The Teddy Bear Affair Charity Gala, Canada’s Walk Of Fame Gala, Style DJ Awards and other award shows in Canada. She even works as a morning radio show host.
Arisa Cox: Biography, Big Brother, A Third Baby and No Straight Hair
Quick Trivia about Arisa Cox
- Attended Earl Haig Secondary School
- Is of Trinidadian descent
- Has won numerous awards and honours for her academic achievements and her writing.
- Host of E! in Canada. Host, writer and producer on E! News Weekend, (Canwest) [2008]
- Graduated from Carleton University with a Honours Bachelor Degree in Journalism and a Minor in Film Studies. Was involved with the two school newspapers.
- Was a reporter for CJOH-TV, a Ottawa-based television station.
- Attended Claude Watson School for the Arts.
- Associate Producer on ‘Road to Rockstar’ (Canwest) [2006]
- A reporter for Toronto Tonight, on Toronto 1. [2004]
- Arts and Entertainment Reporter for ‘The A-List’ [2005]
- Weather and Entertainment Specialist for The New RO in Ottawa.
- Entertainment Correspondent for The Gill Deacon Show [2007]
- Has three children with her husband Shaun Cox.
Arisa Cox Big Brother
The host of one of the biggest reality shows in Canada, Arisa Cox has had a long history of experiences and adventures in her life.
Immediately after university, Arisa started as a radio journalist then later joined E! Network both on and off camera. The real turnover to her career came after the lady was approached with the role of a host in the very first season of the reality show, Big Brother Canada. While the United States version of the show aired in Canada since its debut, Canada had never had its own English spoken adaption of the series until one was announced in 2012. The show first launched and in February 2013, Arisa Cox was brought on as the show’s host. She mastered her role as host in many significant events of the industry. The first season of Big Brother Canada in 2014 landed Arisa her first Canadian Screen Award nomination for best host. This is what she had to say about her landing the role as Big Brother Canada host:
“The audition process was a treat, I have to say. Considering I was on a reality show in 2001 (back at the dawn of the modern reality tv age), it was like coming full circle. Most hosts in Canada threw their hat in the ring for Big Brother Canada, so I wasn’t too precious about the audition process. In general I find you have to do an audition, do everything you can to rock it, then forget all about it. Otherwise you’d be constantly heartbroken! Before I got the coveted gig, I was flown in from Edmonton for a final meeting with the executive producers, and at that point the possibility became real. And then the news came just before Christmas, and it was the best gift ever.”
The show’s seventh season premiered on March 6, 2019. But asked what her favourite moments in her 6th year she said:
“There have been too many to count! But there’s almost nothing that compares to announcing a winner each season. I get to be a part of one of the best days of someone’s life. It’s a moment they never forget – I don’t either. I’m so thrilled to get to do it again for the sixth time!”
“I love seeing how this season’s heaven and hell theme plays out in individual players. The play between instincts towards good and evil is something we see in every game of Big Brother, but this year it seems to be amplified. We have a really strong cast and the game has really started heating up”.
Clearly, the host who has been with the show has till season 7 has kept the love going year after year.
Big Brother Canada has aired 200 episodes and featured 76 HouseGuests in total on the show. It’s multiple companion shows, Big Brother: After Dark, a show featuring a live look into the house, aired throughout the first four seasons.
Is Big Brother Canada going to have season 8?
In 2019 host Arisa Cox confirmed that Big Brother Canada was renewed for an eighth season to air in 2020. Season 8 will begin with a two-night premiere on Wednesday, March 4, 2020 at 7 p.m. ET/PT and Thursday, March 5, at 8 p.m.
Arisa Cox’s Baby
Arisa and her partner, Shaun Cox, have been together for more than a decade now, and their love has been clearly expressed on social media. Arisa and Shaun’s passion has welcomed two children together, followed recently by their 3rd baby.
The TV host gave birth to daughter Aella Cox in 2010 while her son Cassius was born in 2012 and baby boy Zin was born in 2019. The couple was living a beautiful parenting life but if you asked her personally this is what the reporter had to say about her kids in 2013:
“I’ve thrown sleep out the window, as many parents can relate too. Recent joys? Watching my son go from rolling to crawling to the zombie walk to a drunken cowboy walk. Now he just looks tipsy, and amazes me that his knees aren’t black and blue. My daughter grows and changes every day, and I love watching her relate to the wonderful people in her life, and now that I’m back in Toronto, watching her meet so many of my old friends. She’s a total handful. Energetic and funny and outgoing and smart and curious. My mother used to call me a “day’s work” when she reminisces about raising me, and my daughter is definitely a day’s work, so I suppose history repeats itself. My son meanwhile is a very cool customer. Very laid back. I’m very blessed. I also love that my children have forced me to let go of so much. I feel like I’m much more supportive of other women and especially mothers. It’s hard to be judgemental now when I know first hand how tough it is to be superwoman – which is the expectation these days.”
Arisa announced her third pregnancy on Twitter on 11 April 2019 feeling incredibly thankful for all the felicity that she and her husband have been garnered with. With their third baby on the way, the couple is off to more joy on their long journey with each other.
Arisa Cox’s Family
When asked what she does in the off-season the TV host said: “Off-season I am a speaker focusing on empowerment, work-life balance and media literacy, and I host award shows, charity fundraisers and other live events. And running a family will always be a full time job!”
Arisa and her husband of 10 years Shaun Cox have a daughter Aella Cox born in 2010, a son Cassius Cox born in February 2012 and a third child: Zin who was recently born in 2019.
Born on 7 December 1978, Arisa Cox is 40 years of age. The Ontario, Canada born television personality belongs to the Trinidadian ethnicity. Famous as a reality TV host, Arisa stands tall at the height of 5 feet 5.5 inches (1.66 meters).
Arisa has kept her personal life, as private as possible but at the same time has revealed much of her family background to the public. However, it appears from her social media that she has two siblings. As you’ll see from her powerful article on thestar.com, she considers her mother to be her inspiration in every aspect of her life.
She also loves hiking in the woods with my family and dogs, and marveling at the natural world as she lives in the country and feels lucky to be able to do that more! Other fun filled family activities with her kids include making stop motion Lego movies with my daughter and having Star Wars battles with my son. We can also imagine that her baby boy Zin keeps her fully occupied but that’s why it takes a whole village of a family to raise a child, right?
Arisa Cox in Survivor
Arisa Cox caught up with “Survivor” host Jeff Probst ahead of the “David Vs. Goliath” season 37 finale, in which he spoke about who he’d like to see come back for a future season and what his favourite moment was.
In 2018, Arisa Cox and the ET Canada team brush up on their survival skills for Survivor: Edge of Extinction. The 38th season featured 14 new contestants competing with four returning players. The season premiered on February 20, 2019 and concluded on May 15, 2019, when Chris Underwood was named the Sole Survivor, the first person in Survivor history to win the game after being voted out in the same season.
Arisa Cox in Camp Rock
Camp Rock 2: The Final Jam is a 2010 Disney Channel Original Movie and the sequel to the 2008 film Camp Rock. The film stars Demi Lovato, the Jonas Brothers (Joe, Nick and Kevin), Meaghan Martin, Maria Canals-Barrera, Daniel Fathers, and Alyson Stoner, as well as newcomers Daniel Kash, Matthew “Mdot” Finley, and Chloe Bridges.
Arisa Cox played the character of Georgina Farlow, the host of Hitz TV, the television network covering Camp Wars.
Arisa Confronted The Rule for Straightened Hair:
Arisa Cox wrote a moving article for thestar.com about the value of inclusion which essentially boiled down to her hair, changing her career and her perspective forever. Today she says:
“When I was a child, seeing a black woman in Canadian Television wearing anything but straight hair was unheard of…..It blows my mind to think how far we have come in Canada, that each generation can do better than the last. All of the places I’ve worked while rocking natural hair – from Big Brother Canada to CBC’s The National to ET Canada – have been under leadership that understands the value of inclusion. ‘Representation Matters’ is not just a hashtag.”
Here’s A Snippet From Thestar.com Article:
“I was 24 years old. I was working at a now-defunct TV station in Ottawa and had a customary performance review with the news executive. And the bomb dropped.
“You’ve worn your hair straight from time to time, we’d like you to wear it straight on the show.” I could feel the heat rising in my body. Ears buzzing.
“I’m not interested,” I replied without a beat. I was told the request wasn’t optional “if I wanted to keep my job.”
I remember raging to my mother over the phone right afterwards, floored that a middle-aged white dude had the balls to tell me, a modern black woman, in a country as diverse as Canada, how to wear my hair.
My hair — and all the identity and self-worth and cultural baggage attached to it — was not up for debate. I refused to allow my image to be controlled in some boardroom that I was not also in.
What those not in the film/TV industry often don’t know, is that there is a built in clause in many on-air contracts that puts control of personal appearance in the hands of the employers. But just as my managers had a contractual right to demand I change my hair, I had also had a right to find a new job.
By the end of the week, I had a new job that would move me back home to Toronto that was better paid and at one of the most diverse places I’ve ever had the pleasure of working at. I couldn’t have planned it better myself.
Requests To Wear Processed Hair For Camera Is More Common Than You Think:
“But I’m one of the lucky ones. — not everyone is able to walk away from a job so easily. And it’s definitely not exclusive to black women. The pressure for on-air types to go blond is well documented, and long hair is even better, since short hair tests poorly, or so the conventional wisdom goes.”
The Powerful Words of Arisa Cox on Natural Hair:
“Like the vast majority of women, I can track my life story through my hair. Every different hair style or colour is a milestone that we can recall with ease — the significance being not so much the hairstyle, but how it made us feel. But for black women, our personal hair journeys have an additional layer of complication. Our hair is farthest from the European standard of beauty that you can get. The goal is “good hair” — hair that moves, that shifts in the wind. To have natural or nappy hair meant looking like a slave.
Luckily, my Trinidadian-born parents — my mother with good hair and my father with long dreadlocks — had both worn afros in their pasts. They had long fostered my confidence in my smarts over my appearance.
Working on Big Brother Canada has been a bit of a big deal for the natural hair scene as well. With so many international fans of our show, I have heard more than once that my hairstyle has been inspirational for many women and their daughters — struggling to fight the tide of weaved-out pop stars and celebrities. It’s humbling.
But reality exists in the grey areas. There’s Beyonce, but there’s also Whoopi. Not all black women who wear straight hair are self-hating, just as not all black women who wear natural hair like afros, twists and dreadlocks have transcended vanity. Any woman should feel the freedom to wear whatever hair makes her feel good. It takes all kinds, and self-esteem as it relates to our hair comes in many forms. Most women are on a never-ending quest to find the hair that perfectly expresses who they are at that moment in time. We live in a visual, often superficial world, and we can’t see personality from across the room. But we can see hair.
I will never forget that breakthrough moment when my fabulous hair stylist Romeo Lewis said: “You know if you layer your hair, you can probably wear it curly all the time.” Sweeter words were never spoken. I have never looked back, and my hair remained a positive for the rest of my career in television.
People want to touch it, people want to understand it, people ask me questions about it on Twitter. It’s simple for me — I rock this hair because it’s low maintenance, because it’s a nod to my ancestors, because it’s hard to forget, because it feels like a celebration, like who I am on the inside showing up on the outside.
So I didn’t lose my job. I won a sense of self-respect. I love a happy ending.”
Arisa Cox in Christmas With A View
Arisa Cox acted in the romantic drama: Christmas With A View as Brock St. Regis. The plot follows the story of Thunder Mountain Ski Resort which is abuzz when a celebrity chef named Shane Roarke is named the new head chef.
Clara Garrison isn’t as excited and is instead focused on getting resettled. After she failed at the restaurant business she owned in Chicago, Clara returns home to run a restaurant for a man named Hugh Peters. Someone who seems nice, maybe even a love interest, but then comes along chef Shane. He is a celebrity chef on a 6-month contract, who immediately seems to be enamoured with Clara. What can Clara say? Hardworking and charming are attractive qualities. But, with both being co-workers, Hugh her boss, no matter the time, attention, also expensive gifts, so comes the question of who is really worth spending Christmas, possibly a life, with?
Arisa Cox’s Salary
Although her salary as a host for the other reality events cannot be confirmed, her average salary as a Radio and TV host can be predicted to be $70K per year.