In 2008, Niko Saarinen was removed from Big Brother for violent behaviour. He says he has served more time as a prisoner of conscience than life prisoners.
– This is how it is now. A basic flat, he comments on his West Helsinki apartment and wobbles lazily in the direction of the living room.
There is a reason for the bluntness.
Secondly, Saarinen says he is prepared for journalists. That’s understandable – he’s faced us more than most celebrities his age.
Niko Saarinen has made his career in the public eye and above all in various reality shows. In such as the current season.
In this story, Saarinen talks about how a career spanning three decades in reality came about and what it required.
Producers drove to a nervous breakdown
The ninth of October 2008 was dusty in Espoo, but the sun didn’t really shine in the BB house. Niko Saarinen’s birthday was celebrated, and during the evening, the atmosphere got really dark.
One of the residents had commented on Saarinen’s clothing, and the 22-year-old overcooked it. The party hero shouted, cursed and threw a glass of red wine at the resident. In the diary room, she cried about how \”it’s my birthday and someone in fake dreadlocks comes here to explain how a pink shirt fits me\”.
Saarinen was removed from the house.
the format was simple at the time: a bunch of ventu guests are invited to the house, the stimulants are cut to a minimum and they are offered alcohol instead of Uno cards. For the evening’s broadcast, the juiciest fucking and fucking scenes were compiled.
In the first decade of the 2000s, reality TV was a celebration of the bad and the badly behaved.
There is a media blackout at BB-talo, but during the 47 days, Saarinen began to realize that something is happening around him.
– They could definitely see from my behavior in the diary room that I’m really sensitive. Still, I was constantly driven more in the direction of having a nervous breakdown. Discussions were sneakily taken to something that makes me nervous, Saarinen describes.
During the eviction vote, for example, you might be asked how it would feel to go to the outside world, where everyone hates you.
– When you’re really unsure of what people think, if it kills them, but when I leave the house because I’m gay, those kinds of comments really hit someone.
When Saarinen left the house the morning after his birthday party, his hunches were right. BB-Niko was born.
Next, we had to decide what to do with it.
Seven days made a celebrity
A friend had said that the \”mixed-head\” Saarinen would fit. Saarinen, who worked as a Lidl cashier, did not crave publicity, and during the interview the producers emphasized that BB does not make celebrities.
– It was said that when you go home at the end of August, in December the whole of Finland has forgotten you. I was like wow, I’m going to have a BB experience and in December it’s over.
Was not. Saarinen was subjected to an unprecedented spin by the standards of Finnish Reality. On Friday, he was removed from the house. On Monday, the media speculated whether Saarinen, who avoided the army, would go to prison. On Thursday, the Lööppikimara culminated in Seiska’s cover story about BB-Niko’s nightclub trip.
– I jokingly say that I became a celebrity the seven days after leaving BB.
Saarinen was the most talked about celebrity of the moment. The rotation was intoxicating and I was hooked.
– I was completely blown away by Kerava. I had never gotten past the line at the bar. Suddenly, I had all of Helsinki’s nightlife open to me.
At the same time, many reminded that in the celebrity hierarchy, reality stars are the bottom line.
– When you think about it in hindsight, for four years I was on TV every night reading messages where I was being barked at.
You don’t get rich on reality
At the beginning of the 2010s, Saarinen was running from one job to another with so many eyes closed that his friends couldn’t recognize him. He returned .
Saarinen’s character was a stereotypical gay man who lives with emotion, does not shy away from conflicts and uses the Finnish language either incorrectly or creatively, depending on the point of view.
In 2013 came the fire, which Saarinen considers the most important reality of his career.
– There I had some good verbal throws, such as \”I’m such a fucking asshole\”.
It was the first year that his first name didn’t have the BB stamp anymore.
As Niko Saarisen, he has gone through so much now.
Saarinen says that he has never thought of making a career as a reality star. For a long time, he went to programs thinking that they would lead to the presenter’s death.
It happened the other way around. One producer said that such a risky celebrity could never be hired to host anything \”official\”.
– I don’t consider reality as my career. I think that’s what led me to this. But it has taken away more opportunities than given them.
Building a career as a reality star is difficult for two reasons. First of all, Tiena doesn’t earn very well from the programs, so you have to do something else on the side, such as commercial social media collaborations. Saarinen has a total of more than 300,000 followers on Instagram and Tiktok.
Second, the reality star is always at the mercy of the production. Although Saarinen is asked to be a certain kind of character, in the end the image of him takes shape on the operating table.
That’s why we had to take the reins into our own hands. In March 2019, a podcast was born, in which Saarinen talks to himself and the host couple about drinking, dating and – above all – sex.
Last year Spotify was the fourth most listened to podcast in Finland. Saarinen sold the rights for two years to the Podme service and Tienaa with a weekly podcast \”better than anything before\”.
That is, better than NRJ’s morning show, which he hosts 20 hours a week.
A victim of the entertainment world
Saarinen’s way of talking about the beginning of his reality career is contradictory. On the other hand, he is aware of the ways in which he was manipulated.
– Everyone wanted to see when I would cry next in the diary room, and of course the production milked every drop. And after it went a little too far, we’re just like, oops, that’s what happened.
On the other hand, he is grateful for the opportunities offered.
– They were made by a black celebrity, and today I am the person who makes money with it. Win-win.
Saarinen doesn’t want to be bitter. He reminds that he went to play himself. He admits that BB-Niko was not particularly well taken care of. He estimates that care has not really increased in reality, even though the creators claim otherwise.
In 2008, the production advised Saaris, who was removed from the BB house, to tell the media that he has problems with alcohol and that he would leave it for a while.
Bad advice backfired. On Saturday, Saarinen went on a trip, and Seiska’s cover story was ready.
In the backlash, the production’s words resonated: no one is interested anymore in December.
– I thought that everything that happens will happen for a couple of months now. After that, I can move on with my life.
Saarinen later realized how important he was and to MTV3, which showed it. He says he heard that the creators were looking for a way to keep their milk cows on the show the whole night after the birthday.
– At the same time that my glass-throwing was being updated and horrified in the media, that clip was playing during every commercial break that \”tonight…\”
New Niko Saarinen
A few years ago, a colleague told Saarinen that he had two options. Either he would be ashamed of BB videos for the rest of his life, or he would rise above them and make a career out of them.
– I started joking about it. Now that’s something people would still like to see on TV. We see a very different reality. We live in an era where you can’t really say anything, you can’t hurt people’s feelings.
During Saarinen’s season, arguments were sold, while now they may not even end up on the TV summary. The viewer could buy access to the shower cameras now that the showers have doors. And sex isn’t exactly shown anymore.
Reality has become kinder. And Niko Saarinen at the same time.
At the height of 2016, production companies began to hope for a new side of Niko Saarinen. He agreed. In recent years, Saarinen has been a little less smarmy, sweet and stupid.
– program, he talks to the camera about how overwhelming it is to be a 35-year-old single man dreaming of fatherhood.
Finland’s longest birthday party
Now Saarinen is enjoying himself on the sofa at home. This is where the interview will be done.
He is happy that the reality participants are no longer subjected to the same kind of spin as they were a good decade ago. At the same time, there is longing in the voice for the years when you dared to shrug. He often did it on purpose, and the productions threw water into the mill. When Saarinen stated during the filming of Viidako that he does not value veterans, the topic was discussed with him until the perfect roaring phrase was definitely in the can.
– Today, 80 percent of the programs are reality. Few of them can make such an indelible impression as I did. That I should be proud of my birthdays, which are the longest in Finland.
Saarinen says he has been a prisoner of his reputation more than a lifer. He hopes that people will learn to see, instead of mobile trips, how much he has done to provide entertainment for Finns.
– I want the black to remember the fact that I’ve made a hell of a dune. Worked hard from the basics to this point.