Meet Amitabh Bachchan’s ‘extended family’: How Big B created a new medium to talk to his fans amid run-ins with media

Amitabh’s fans have a direct relationship with the star. He wishes the members of his ‘EF’ on their birthdays and wedding anniversaries, offers them condolences when they lose a loved one, and engages with them on a personal level quite often. When his fans behave like disciplined adults asking him to shut down his laptop at 3 am, he behaves like a stubborn child who knows what’s best for him. And when he shares an emotional note in the memory of his parents, his EF is there to offer him their support. If you are a follower of his blog, you know that this relationship is more than just Bachchan sharing his selfies, and his fans going gaga over them. It’s a community that Bachchan has built over 15 years. Other movie stars have fans, and he has enjoyed those fans for over five decades, but now, Bachchan actually believes he has an ‘extended family’.

Amitabh Bachchan fans outside his house Jalsa in Mumbai. (Express Photo by Pradip Das)

T 4780 – This Sunday .. 41 years ! Every Sunday ! Can never have enough emotion or words for this gratitude and love .. 🙏❤️🌹 pic.twitter.com/x0HJm0nzqT

— Amitabh Bachchan (@SrBachchan) September 25, 2023

But what was it that triggered Bachchan to create a new universe for his fans where he could connect with them one-on-one?

It was in April of 2008 when Amitabh Bachchan officially addressed his fans for the first time on his blog, but before his first note, Amitabh shared transcriptions of two interviews that he had given at the time. When his fans wondered why he was sharing interviews that were already published in print, the Sholay actor truthfully revealed that there was a slight difference between what was published, and what he said. He agreed that the press had all the right and liberty to print the parts that fit in the newspaper but he also expressed his displeasure implying that his intentions were not correctly conveyed via these interviews. This was probably the primary reason why Amitabh Bachchan started a direct channel with his fans, something that he possibly wanted ever since he was first ‘banned’ by the film magazines at the peak of his career in the 1970s.

In a blog entry in 2017, Bachchan shared that during the Emergency in the 1970s, the film magazines had ‘banned’ him as they believed that he had a role to play in the press ban that was imposed at the time. Things got so bad that at one point, when Bachchan walked the red carpet for a film premiere, the photographers would put their cameras down. His name would be mentioned as an afterthought when his films were talked about in the same magazines. In retaliation, he banned the media from his film sets. This was the start of a heated relationship that continued till 1982. In the meanwhile, Bachchan had some of his best years in the movies. The angry young man era made him the biggest star there ever was, and all of this came without any coverage in the film magazines. It was evident that Bachchan was a star because his movies were loved by the fans and he didn’t need a middleman to nurture that relationship.

Amitabh Bachchan: A Living Legend, an exhibition on Bollywood legend on the occasion of 28th Kolkata International Film Festival. (Express photo by Partha Paul)

The so-called ban continued until 1982 as when the star’s life was hanging in the balance after the near-fatal accident on the sets of Coolie, even his worst critics became his well-wishers. The wave of sympathy across the country had swallowed the film magazine people too. Fans across the country participated in havans and poojas for his well-being and the so-called ban was now a thing of the past.

But the relationship continued to be delicate and decades later, in 2007, when Abhishek Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai got married, it reared its ugly head once again. This time around, there were all kinds of rumours about the wedding rituals performed by the Bachchan family. The legacy of Harivanshrai Bachchan was questioned by a few overenthusiastic scholars and expressed in a publication. Bachchan wrote eight letters, each one addressed to an individual who expressed their thoughts in the article, and made it known that he was thoroughly unimpressed by them for having an intellectual opinion on the matters related to his family. One year later, when he started his blog, he shared these letters publicly and it was evident that the harsh words of a few hurt the actor quite deeply.

In the years since, Amitabh Bachchan has continued to stay one of the busiest actors in the country. A 4-year-old knows him because of his regular appearance on Kaun Banega Crorepati, and an 80-year-old, who once loved him for being the angry young man, still lines up at the theatre when he appears in a new movie. While he still appears in 2-3 films every year, and sometimes more, he still doesn’t give many interviews. Instead, he checks in on his blog page every single day and without missing a day, he always starts it with wishing his EF.

Bachchan, like most celebrities, has always credited his fans for his existence. And his blog is his way of sticking to his commitment to them every single day.