Eddie: Well she’s back, beautiful as always, and we’re moving on to Big Brother 5. Julie Chen, good morning, dear, how are you?
Julie: I’m very well, good to be with you, Eddie.
Eddie: Well, glad to have you here, and hard to believe we’re already at season number 5.
Julie: I know.
Eddie: And it just keeps getting more and more exciting. Tell us, give us a little, kind of a brief summary of what we can expect this time around.
Julie: Well, as you know, we always incorporate a twist and this season’s twist, we’re calling it Project Do Not Assume, or for short we just take the initials Project DNA.
Eddie: OK.
Julie: And the reason behind that is because two of the people going into the house this season are related to one another, but they have no idea.
Eddie: Oh, you’re kidding!
Julie: They don’t know they’re related, they don’t know the other person even exists. So…
Eddie: OK, now, how are they… now just to get kind of… how are they…
Julie: How are they related?
Eddie: How are they hooked up? I mean, this could be a problem, here.
Julie: No, I don’t think that will happen, and that’s all I can say about that.
Eddie: OK, alright.
Julie: No.
Eddie: Alright, now, I was looking at, you announced the group, and quite a wide array of folks. Age-wise, though, I’ve noticed that the oldest person is 36, I believe?
Julie: Oh, there’s a guy in there who is actually 41.
Eddie: OK, now that’s not at all… oh, there we go, Mike Lubinski, is a nurse. (ed: he is not a nurse, Will is)
Julie: Yeah.
Eddie: Alright, so we do have our registered guy that’s my age, so good. But otherwise, some pretty youngsters in there. You’re typical good looking young people, I’m assuming?
Julie: Yes, there is a firefighter who is all muscle, blonde, very attractive, he knows it. There is another guy who, he says he doesn’t like to work, we’re not really quite sure if he has a job right now, but this was his line: “I like having a good time at a party and going to bars, and I’m the guy in the bar who, rest assured, is going home with a woman, and he goes, then I don’t have to buy them dinner.” It’s like, okay…
Eddie: Nice. Good quality people, I see you were really looking for the quality of their different human character.
Julie: We decided to class it up this year.
Eddie: Absolutely, yeah, sounds great. Hey, I want to ask you a question here, about Big Brother. Now, in London, Big Brother, I kinda follow the production over there, and it’s much more racy, I mean nudity all over the place, and now they’ve had some problems here recently, and, you know, when Big Brother started, started at the same time Survivor did, and I remember the talk around it, it was anticipated that Big Brother was going to be, and not that it isn’t a great, I mean people love it here, but it doens’t have the same phenomenon that it does in London, why do you think that is?
Julie: I think there are three basic reasons: in London, they had Big Brother as their first reality show, and then when Survivor launched in London, it didn’t do well. So, it was like, we were the reverse: we already had Survivor on the air for about a month and a half, 2 months, and it was a huge success, so we were automatically dwarfed, in that sense. We, it didn’t look so unique, the concept of strangers living together. The second reason was because the first season, if you remember, we let the public vote out who they didn’t like, and we, as Americans, we like harmony, we like people to get along, and we voted out the trouble makers, and then it was just…
Eddie: And you need ‘em, you need ‘em to make it work.
Julie: … weak. It was boring to watch, you know, it wasn’t that exciting. And the third reason is because, and it falls into that line, if you follow the rules that they followed in Europe, that they set in Europe, because that’s where the show started, it started in the Netherlands, even before London, and it was a huge success, and the lifestyle and the way of thinking, the Dutch think a differnt way, they live a different way than we do. The challenge is, we’re not interesting to watch, as Americans, we didn’t care about watching 10 people put together in dominoes, you know, and then they loved it in the Netherlands, you know. Go explain that, I don’t know. So, season 2 we changed the rules, we decided to let the people in the house vote out who they didn’t like, and the competitions got a little bit more fun, in my opinion, so, I think that’s why.
Eddie: Absolutely, well, looking forwards, starts July 6th, and we’re wrapping this (unknown), yes or no answers. Does the Janet Jackson debacle, does that affect what we see on the show?
Julie: Yes.
Eddie: OK, thank you very much, you have a great day!
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