Had no work, no money and bagful of threatening creditors: Amitabh Bachchan on doing KBC

By Vandana Srivastawa

on September 07, 2018

Amitabh Bachchan is back on the silver screen with the tenth season of Kaun Banega Crorepati. The iconic show has been hosted 9 times by Big B while one season was hosted by Shah Rukh Khan. It’s been 18 years since the first time Amitabh hosted KBC and took the entire country by storm. The show became a cult and even today people have been trying their best to get an opportunity to appear on the show, surprisingly the prize money of Rs 1 crore has not been the prime attraction but meeting Bachchan is.

In a recent interview, Bachchan spoke about his decision of taking up KBC which was a way to get back to work and pay his creditors.

Despite being advised not to, Amitabh remembered what propelled him to take up the show and shared, “18 years since the start of KBC and it’s the tenth season, nine of which have been conducted by me, one done by Shah Rukh. Hesitancy and apprehension were prime when it was suggested to me and the fear, of what others felt would be diminishing my 70 MM film projection to a 25-inch TV screen. But circumstances were not very conducive. I never did have a 70 MM film projection ever, irrespective of what the market and Industry may have believed, more so at the juncture when KBC came my way, I had already begun reading my ‘The End’ credits!”

Elaborating further on the circumstances that instigated him to take up the iconic show, Big B added, “I had no work, no money and a bagful of ill-mannered threatening creditors. Apart from the creativity of venturing into TV, something that I had always kept in the back of my mind years earlier, it was giving me an opportunity to, not entirely, but in a small way indicate to those I owed money, that I was working at it. This effort along with some financial guidance helped me pay off each and every person. But the experience of KBC was much larger, in more ways than one.”

Kaun Banega Crorepati and Amitabh Bachchan have become synonymous with each other and the show not only brought happiness and monetary benefits to the contestants but also gave a new lease of life to Amitabh’s career.