Long Island's Ava Pearl competing on this season's 'Big Brother'

A woman who grew up in Port Jefferson Station is a contestant on the current season of the CBS reality-competition show "Big Brother." Ava Pearl, 24, is one of 17 “houseguests” on the 27th season of the show, which places a group of adults in a house for roughly three months, cut off from any contact with the outside world.

Each week the players compete to become the head of household, who then nominates three people to be eliminated. After a series of competitions to avoid a potential elimination, the rest of the houseguests vote on which nominee must pack their bags and leave.

On Thursday's show, one of the remaining 16 houseguests will be evicted.

Pearl, who is not allowed to talk to the media during the show's run, is not in jeopardy of leaving during Thursday's show.

The series also offers a nearly 24/7 livestream that allows viewers to watch what happens in the house.

Pearl’s best friend, Josephine Maniaci, of Wading River, described seeing her on the show as “surreal.”

“She's being 100% authentically her,” Maniaci, 24, said in an interview, “and anybody that genuinely knows her would say that she is being her complete self. None of this is amped up or anything.”

Maniaci explained how she and Pearl, a self-described "aura painter" who now lives in Manhattan, became close in middle school, where she said Pearl acted as a “protector” for her and other kids who were bullied.

The pair initially watched "Big Brother" together in high school, but stopped when they were in college.

“And then this last year, we started watching a lot more after her brother Nolan … said to her, ‘Hey, you would be really great on "Big Brother," ’ ” Maniaci said.

After mulling the decision over, Pearl, whom Maniaci described as a “go-with-the-flow” person, decided to audition.

“And so she started working on her audition tape, and she had to go through many series of interviews and stuff like that,” her friend said.

On June 27, Pearl left for California, telling Maniaci that she thought she would be an alternate for the show, and would let her know when she was coming back.

Maniaci did not hear from her for two weeks and, on July 8, she saw the cast announcement — with Pearl on it.

“It was really funny, but it was also comforting to see that she was still being herself, and making jokes and not taking things too seriously,” she said.

According to Maniaci, Pearl was “obsessed” with former contestant Frankie Grande (Ariana Grande's brother), who “was able to be friendly with a lot of people and get a lot of people to spill tea with him,” aka revealing gossip or secrets. r

“That was kind of Ava's goal, to try and get in there and be like a safe place for people to talk to her, and then she can make her own [strategy] with her game plan,” she said.

"Big Brother" will crown this season's winner during a live finale airing on CBS Sept. 28.