For those of us who've been watching Big Brother for years (or decades), it's impossible to imagine the series without its host, Julie Chen Moonves. She's been the face of the reality competition series since its very first season, and you'll find her in just about every live eviction episode of the show when it airs on CBS each summer (or streaming with a Paramount+ subscription. Hearing her talk about how she got the job is wild, especially taking into account how the gig was initially offered (voluntold?) to her.
Julie Chen Moonves sat down with The Amazing Race host Phil Keoghan for a new segment on CBS Mornings, and among the topics they discussed was how she was brought on board to host the U.S. version of Big Brother back in 2000, while also juggling her responsibilities as a news anchor.
She set the scene by explaining that, at the time she was told she was going to be the host of Big Brother, she was 29 and living in New York. At that point, you may know she was anchoring the CBS morning news and hosting CBS Mornings, and she'd only been there a few months. She went on to explain:
And he basically handed me a schedule -- and Survivor was already on for a few weeks, and it was huge, and a few weeks later, I get called into the office of the then president of CBS News, and he says there's a new show called Big Brother, you have to get on a plane for 10 weeks, go from New York to LA, evict someone on live TV and fly back and do the news again Monday morning.
Understandably, Phil looked astounded that this whole process went through the news department at CBS, was just handed to her, and it didn't really sound like she had much say in the matter. Reality TV may not fall under the category of scripted TV, but it certainly isn't news.
Something else Chen Moonves brought up later might explain why it worked this way for this particular show. She noted that she learned years later that Meredith Vieira had been offered the role, though she turned it down. She also pointed out that, rather than hiring a seasoned game show host, they wanted someone who could handle a live show, which would include the eviction announcement, interviewing whoever's coming out of the house, and making sure the episode wraps up at the end of the hour.
Early on, Big Brother was also more of a social experiment, and with exit interviews, I could see it feeling more "newsy." With that in mind, it sounds like they were specifically looking for someone with live news experience, and the ability to keep the show on track.
As Big Brother fans well know, Julie Chen Moonves is up to the task there. In any regular week in Big Brother, a houseguest is evicted on Thursday night during the live episode. There is a series of events that take place during this usually-hour-long ep, and all of it has to be done by the end of the timeslot. Julie will literally remind the houseguests, on air, that they're on live TV, if they're taking too long to follow instructions or things aren't moving quickly enough.
Another interesting piece of this is that Julie Chen Moonves intended to turn the hosting opportunity down. In fact, from what she went on to tell Phil Keoghan, she did turn it down. It was less about the money, from the sound of it, and more about being told that, should she take this job, it was unlikely that she'd ever land a role as a correspondent for 60 Minutes, which was her goal at the time.
At that point in her career, this wasn't a responsibility that she was interested in pursuing, but it turns out, it wasn't so much a job offer as it was an assignment, at least based on how Chen Moonves describes it:
Then he said to me, 'Well you know, Julie, you're relatively new at this company, and technically we can assign you this job, and if you turn it down, it could be seen as insubordination.' ... So I was like, when's the next flight to LAX? Let's go, buddy!
It's wild to consider that this role was basically forced on her as part of her job responsibilities so early in her career. How many of us have a job that requires us to fly across the country once a week for months to host a live TV show? Who knows how things would have worked out for her had she turned down the role and moved on from CBS?
At the same time, it's impossible to imagine watching a season of Big Brother without her as host for the live episodes, so I'm glad it all worked out. Big Brother celebrated its 1000th episode this past season, and was recently renewed for Seasons 29 and 30. Hopefully Chen Moonves will continue to serve as host. No one can pull off the iconic "but first" quite like she does.
