Rajiv Lakshman (left) with twin Raghu Ram

After an unceremonious exit from Roadies along with his more famous twin Raghu Ram, Rajiv Lakshman is treading the extreme reality TV path again with The Player (Saturday 7pm on Channel V). A t2 chat with the irrepressible Rajiv…

What is The Player all about?

The Player is an evolution of the Game Theory (an attempt to mathematically capture behaviour in strategic situations in which an individual’s success in making choices depends on the choices of others). In this game, there will be 10 players, all kept in isolation in an underground bunker and vying for the one crore worth of prize money. Each player’s chances of winning is governed by the choices and decisions made by his opponent. The task is to convince one another of why each one of them should get the prize money as against the other and arrive at a unanimous winner. As the group gets indecisive and greedy, time keeps ticking, subjecting them to penalties. The inmates are assigned daredevil tasks to win points for themselves and increase their stakes in the game. In a twist, sometimes some dirty secrets about the contestants are revealed on national television to reduce their stakes in the game.

Every time the contestants are not unanimous in their decision one person will get eliminated from the game via a vote-out or a task and for every second they don’t reach a unanimous decision, the prize money gets halved! The concept of The Player is a lot like a game of chess, only much more evolved and exciting. One player can win only if the other nine choose to lose. It’s a unique, adrenaline-pumping concept, something that hasn’t been played out on Indian TV before.

Keeping contestants in isolation and assigning them tasks seems to have become a stock concept of reality television…

I know you are thinking of shows like Bigg Boss, Roadies and Splitsvilla, but The Player is nothing like them. Isolating participants is a requirement of extreme reality television. What you do with these contestants after that to create gripping content is what I would refer to as the concept. Also, in this show, the players will not be kept exclusively in the bunker at all times. They will be taken wherever necessary for them to participate in the tasks assigned to them.

How did you zero in on the 10 contestants?

There was a casting phase initially that took place in the major cities. We even set up auditions through social networking sites and the Channel V website. Thereafter, I personally travelled to these cities and interviewed the shortlisted candidates. One major criterion of choosing the final 10 was the need for money. We have struggling actors and models, we have a girl who needs the money for her brother’s treatment, we even have an autorickshaw driver from Delhi! Then, other factors like spunk and attitude and reality TV friendliness came into consideration.

On air, how will you define your role in The Player?

I am the mastermind on the show. I am the one who is playing with the minds of these players. Most of my shows that I have conceptualised have been social and human experiments where the cast is treated like lab rats. In this show, I help the players in their agendas only to spring a shock on them along the way. I am agenda-less and voiceless on the show, but I am going to give everyone a very very tough time!

Will your brother Raghu be involved in The Player like you were involved in Roadies?

In spirit, yes, but he has no say in the day-to-day workings of the show. In our lives, Raghu and I have done everything together — we were born together, we went to school together, we failed together, we went dating together (laughs)! We are always a part of each other. He is someone who has been an inspiration to me and his advice is always keenly sought. I did show him the first episode after we shot it, but I am in this alone.

With so many extreme reality shows on air, do you think the genre faces an overkill?

There are 300 Bollywood films that are produced in a year. Is there any chance of an overkill there? I strongly believe that the audience watches shows, not genres. If a show is interesting, people will watch it, irrespective of the genre. Genres don’t work, ideas work. A lot of people are saying that there is a reality show fatigue because makers have become lax and have stopped reinventing themselves. Being unpredictable and unscripted is the cornerstone of a reality show. A concept that has the ability to capture the imagination of the masses works, the rest fall by the wayside.

Of all the reality shows on air, which do you like watching?

Honestly, I don’t get the time to watch TV on a regular basis, but I have caught bits and pieces of various reality shows. I personally hate Bigg Boss. It had the potential to be a gripping show, but it’s become one big mess now. I saw an episode (in the recently concluded Season 3) where the housemates were woken up at 3am and made to do the Paa dance as part of the integration format. How stupid was that! You create an atmosphere of enmity and stress among the contestants and the tension gets diffused in a jiffy.

Then again, there was Iss Jungle Se Mujhe Bachao where all the attention went towards making the show large and grand, but the contestants were never pushed to the limit. The wrong casting can break a reality show and the prime example of that is Big Switch (UTV Bindass). I don’t want to sound boastful, but for me all this is not reality television and I wouldn’t like to be part of half-baked, low-intelligence shows like these.

Have you been watching the current season of Roadies?

I have nothing to say about Roadies.