Mini Mathur Wins Prime Video India's Alliance Reality Show

Mini Mathur won Prime Video India’s Alliance on Thursday. The 53-year-old presenter-actor is a rare 50+ winner of a captive reality show . She also doesn’t fit into the reality television type, despite her approximate 30-year career across channels, formats, and genres on TV. Having started her career as a model, she began her career in entertainment as host of the memorable game show Tol Mol Ke Bol. But it was her relocation to Mumbai and debut on MTV that fetched her the breakthrough she needed. With her entry on MTV, Mini joined the legion of India’s first VJs — alongside Cyrus Sahukar, Cyrus Broacha, Malaika Arora, Shehnaz Treasuryvala, Sophie Choudry, and her teammate on Alliance, Nikhil Chinappa. They were the youth icons for the millennial generation, who required some handholding after the liberalization in the early 1990s to walk into the new millennium. “I don’t know if we were really that cool. But we were the audience’s only choice. At that time, if you wanted to watch television beyond Doordarshan and the saas bahu soaps, MTV was the only choice. That’s why we were embraced by the audience, even though all we were doing was being ourselves,” Mini told this writer in a News9 Live interview back in 2022. But as television opened up in the early 2000s, Mini transitioned to General Entertainment Channels (GECs). She hosted four seasons of Sony Entertainment Television’s popular singing reality show Indian Idol, along with other shows that ranged from travel, food to music. The only show she entered as a contestant before Alliance was season 2 of dancing reality series Jhalak Dikhla Jaa. Much of that also had to do with her lack of inclination towards any form of negativity, which gradually became an essential staple of reality TV. “There was a lot of hope and josh in the youth. It was great to relate to a cult that your entire generation subscribed to. But where are the thrills now? There’s cancel culture, so much negativity because of social media. There are no new highs, but deeper lows every day,” she said in the above interview. Gradually, hosting also took a backseat for Mini as she lamented that a presenter doesn’t enjoy as long a shelf life as they do in the West. “In the West, a presenter is an actual profession, and not something they do on the side. Even till 65, they get their own talk shows. But that’s not the case in India. We’ve not had an Oprah (Winfrey) or a Late Night Show ,” pointed out Mini. As streaming entered India, Mini found a new avenue and a new facet of her personality — acting. She made her debut alongside longtime friend and fellow former VJ Cyrus Sahukar in Sahil Sangha and Ajay Bhuyan’s family comedy show Mind the Malhotras on Prime Video India. She followed it up by playing the rich South Delhi mother of Ananya Panday’s titular character in Collin D’Cunha’s 2024 comedy show Call Me Bae, also on Prime Video India. But filmmakers and casting directors were still not casting her beyond the urban upper middle class stereotype. “I keep telling casting directors that I’m keen. But they keep offering me more of the same. I can’t go chasing directors because they’re all around me. I’m married to one, others keep visiting,” said Mini, referring to her husband, filmmaker Kabir Khan. Also Read: Shah Rukh Khan tops brand value for Indian celebs at Rs 1694 cr; Ranveer Singh follows Since Mini forged her own path across VJing, hosting, and acting — instead of treading the beaten path of participating in one reality show after another — she served as a breath of fresh air on Alliance. “I am not the reality show type. For me, it was just a question of survival in the first week. As the weeks rolled along, I started enjoying the game and focused on things that excited me about Alliance and that helped me,” she told SCREEN in an exclusive interview , after lifting the winner’s trophy.