We wanted to get Ekta Kapoor on board for The Bachelorette: Ajit Thakur

General Manager, Life OK, Ajit Thakur is all excited about his latest interesting offering The Bachelorette India – Mere Khayalon Ki Mallika . After all, the channel managed to get a hot B-town beauty Mallika Sherawat to seek her life partner on TV. In a conversation with Tellychakkar.com, the channel GM talks about Bachelorette, Mallika and more. Thakur firstly goes on to say, “We’ve always done different kinds of shows, and I am not a big believer of song and dance reality shows like what the others are doing. Similarly we don’t do any saas bahu serials. We have made shows on social issues, domestic violence, terror and more. The Bachelorette is a continuation of the theme of love that we got in from June. This is one of the biggest shows for the channel. But, I still think Mahadev is the biggest show on TV even when others feel it’s some fiction show that tops the charts.” Why did you zero in on Mallika? “With the festive season creeping in, one wants to create a buzz; Mallika has that attraction. Moreover a protagonist has to be desirable and she is. She will get the men and women to watch her. And also, there had to be a back story to that person and she has it also. We will unravel her real story that people are yet to know about. Mallika’s story will be very inspirational for everyone as she has achieved everything because of her desperate will to succeed and a passion to do films. Viewers will get to see all of this in her journey to find the right life partner. Her friends and family will also be seen making appearances,” he averred. Well, interestingly Mallika wasn’t the channels first choice; they did have a few more personalities in mind. “We did not find many with a back story. But we would have loved to have Salman Khan. We did make people talk to him but he wasn’t interested. Karan Johar was another name in our mind and so was Ekta Kapoor. I know Ekta as a friend and have worked with her but she did not want to be a part of it. In fact even when we first thought of Mallika, we thought that she wouldn’t want be a part of it. And it did take us a lot of time to convince her. It included many hours of call; even going to LA to talk to her. There she asked me and Fazila Allana (producer SOL) if she would find the real guy. It took time, but finally she gave in,” Thakur added. Will she be able to connect with the audiences? “That was her question to us but once you watch the first episode, you’d know. When Rohit Roy, the host of the show, asked her why she is doing the show, she broke down. So, the best way to connect with the audience is not the confidence but the vulnerability that comes out; something that’s different from her success and hardcore victory. So I know that there will be just two reactions for her; they will either love or hate her,” he maintained. Furthermore, when we went ahead to ask Thakur if any of this content will be filtered, pat came his reply, “The Mallika you see in films is not the real Mallika. We will show the real one and that’s all that we will filter. It will be an honest show because she is honest. Moreover I believe that if you tamper with reality, it actually stop being a reality. I also think that Life OK is the only channel that caters to the family audience as we have comedy, thriller, love story, mythology and everything. Over here, the content will be finding love on TV.” Does this mean that the lady did get an opportunity to select the boys? “She was a part of the last selection process where we got her to see some of that. But she was majorly involved in briefing the casting agency on what she was looking at, whether it was maturity, intelligence, sense of humour or eating habits all of this has been taken into consideration. We had more than one lakh entries from the age group of 16 to 70 out of which we picked out 30,” he replied. We went on to remind Thakur that people have earlier watched Swayamvar which is based on a similar concept, he averred, “We have paid extra to get the original format which is different from that of Swayamvar . This is more on a larger scale and the audience will get to see a rose ceremony which is a symbol of love. Here the rose decides who stays and who goes. Moreover the casting will make a difference as Malika is not from TV. So, the show will stay away from TV controversies.” We reminded the channel GM that Welcome- Baazi Mehmaan Nawazi Ki that aired on Life OK was one of the most controversial shows of late. He accepted the same and said, “We tried too hard to make it controversial. Welcome was taken from Come Dine With Me (the original), that was for real people. But we made a mistake by putting celebs as it created too much of unnecessary controversies.” Well we wish you luck with this new show Ajit!