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Salman Khan-hosted Bigg Boss is one of the biggest IPs on Indian television. The popular reality show, earlier produced by Endemol Shine India, is now co-produced in collaboration with Banijay Asia. Bigg Boss Hindi, with 19 hit seasons and three OTT editions, has also paved the way for the franchise’s expansion across languages. With Bigg Boss Season 19 underway, SCREEN spoke to Rishi Negi, the man behind the show, to get insights into how the world of Bigg Boss operates. From casting and execution to production strategies, Rishi shared several interesting behind-the-scenes details.
Explaining how the world of Bigg Boss functions, the Endemol COO shared, “This show is iconic. We work on it for nearly a year, and a lot of thought goes into it. It does get stressful at times because there are expectations from all fronts. There is pressure from the platform, so you do get nervous. Sometimes putting everything together gets overwhelming. Bigg Boss has been one of the most travelled IPs of Endemol globally. We looked at it as something that would work in the Indian markets; it was a social experiment.”
“This show addresses a very basic human nature, which is voyeurism. The thought of bringing Bigg Boss to India was to have a show that was larger than life; it couldn’t be produced like other reality shows. We had done the best casting for the first year, and the show also kept evolving. In terms of the host, we went from having Arshad Warsi, to Shilpa Shetty, to Mr Bachchan, and then finally Salman Khan,” Rishi added.
Sharing how they managed to bring the latest season of Bigg Boss to life, Rishi Negi revealed, “This year, we had lots of meetings with Salman Khan. He gets very excited and is also involved in the casting. We ran a few names through him, and he came up with a lot of suggestions. But it’s not like, just because SK has given a suggestion, you have to take it.”
Rishi also added how they incorporate audience feedback. He said, “We actively run behind feedback. We just don’t listen to the social chatter, our marketing and PR team keeps showing us what the audiences are saying. We conduct post-show research to understand the reaction of the viewers and make changes accordingly. After we finish a season, the entire team takes a month-long break, and we then start research. This year’s theme broadly came out from all the chatter we were listening to about how Bigg Boss is biased and scripted. Hence, we decided to go with the theme where we gave power to the housemates.”
There have long been scams surrounding the casting of Bigg Boss, leading many to believe that contestants pay to secure a spot on the show. Rishi Negi debunked these myths and explained how the casting for the show works. “We do not take any money from those who we cast in the show. Some people reach out to celebs on our behalf, but no money transactions take place; we are very clear about that. There is a very clear thought when we are casting; we are basically looking for characters, we look at unique people, it’s not about how famous or infamous you are. In the past, we have put people who are extremely famous and it did nothing for the show. We have put people who were not famous but came out well,” he said.
Rishi added, “Everybody goes through multiple rounds of interviews, and we meet everyone. For casting, the team does personal or online interviews of at least 300-500 people. Some people also come with suggestions to us, but we always look at how they would be in that house. Everybody wants to portray themselves as Sidharth Shukla or Gautam Gulati, so we try to unveil that mask. We reach out to celebrities across the entire gamut from sports, TV, digital, politics, etc.”
When asked if having a controversial image helps in securing a spot inside the Bigg Boss house, Rishi said, “Even if you have a controversy, but you are not an interesting character, then nothing would happen. A controversy can get you noticed by the team, but if you are not interesting, you will not get in the house. If you have a controversy, maybe somebody would reach out to you and ask if you want to be on the show, but there is no guarantee. This entire assumption about controversies is hyped by people.”
Talking about the security measures on the sets, especially in light of the death threats against Salman Khan, Rishi said that they are extremely strict when it comes to security. He shared, “We have close to 600 people in our workforce. There are 3 shifts, and we work 24X7. There is fair representation of women in the workforce. When it comes to content security and on-ground logistics, we are absolutely uncompromising — both are top priorities.”
“In the last two and a half years, we have beefed up security because of threats to Salman Khan. We don’t get live audiences on the show now when Salman Khan is there. Also, there is a very strict protocol about the people who come on the show. For everyone we hire, whether on a permanent basis, temporary, or vendor basis, we do a strict background check on them, ” the Endemol CEO added.
Giving an insight into how the teams function, given Bigg Boss production happens 24X7, Rishi Negi shared, “There is one team that only focuses on the weekend episodes. One team focuses on the tasks that will happen on the show. You can never script this show, because the content flow depends on how the contestants react, and the story flows basis their reaction. Sometimes we plan something, but then a big thing happens in the house and we have to scrap our plan and devise a new one around the situation.”
“One team has to constantly keep working on the show. As for the editors, they have been working on the show for a very long time, so they understand how the flow happens. We have 200-plus cameras, so there is one story that gets created, gets refined, and is sometimes dropped because something else happens, so this team is constantly thinking,” Rishi added.
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Rishi Negi also explained how the Bigg Boss set is utilized throughout the year, at times even being used for other language editions. He shared, “This house requires 4-5 months of pre-production, and the facility creation is very complex, so we create a hub and keep that throughout the year. We try and see if we can also do another language season in the facility. There is a lot of civil work that needs to happen; it’s not a simple set. We have to create an entire infrastructure. So we keep all our locations intact for 365 days.”
Bigg Boss 19 currently streams on JioHotstar at 9 pm and on Colors TV at 10:30 pm every Monday to Sunday.
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