Pinoy Big Brother is in the final stages of selecting housemates for the upcoming Double Up season set to begin this October 4. Aside from Business Unit Heads Laurenti Dyogi and Cathy Perez, Anushka Ban, creative consultant from Endemol (the company that owns the Big Brother franchise), arrived in the Philippines to take part in the final interview of the housemates-to-be. Ban exclusively spoke to ABS-CBN.com to give viewers a hint about PBB Double Up. “You have to watch from the kickoff until the end. Every night, every week will be very interesting. Everything will be doubled. There will be very interesting housemates.”

Together with Dyogi and Perez, Ban met up with the 40 aspiring housemates for a closed-door final interview. She told ABS-CBN.com how tedious it was to select who among these aspirants deserve the chance to become housemates. “I got to see 40 housemates, and they are 40 good housemates. So this time it was very hard for us to make the final casting. Every season we always make sure that the official housemates will be a good mixture. Every person should have what it takes to be a worthy housemate. But that doesn’t mean we need everyone to be a leader inside the house, we don’t need 12 or 15 pretty ladies in the house, although that would be nice for the men, hahaha! But the point is to make sure the final casting will be a good mix of housemates.”

Ban has also been involved in the screening process of other Big Brother franchises worldwide. She noted how unique Filipinos are compared to other cultures thus making PBB very interesting to watch. “Filipinos are much more sensitive, I mean they cry when they’re really sad or they laugh when they’re really happy. People have much richer and diverse backgrounds, particularly there are a lot of sad stories that are worth telling.”

Over the past four years that Ban has been involved in the PBB and Pinoy Dream Academy screening process, she has seen how Direk Lauren and the whole production team dedicate themselves to bringing the audience the best show possible. “They are always prepared whenever changes would happen every minute,” she noted. Ban said she is also impressed with the high ratings that PBB has enjoyed in all its seasons and editions. “The ratings here in the Philippines are always very high and that’s because ABS-CBN is the biggest network in the country. In other countries, there are many networks and sometimes Big Brother is aired on the minor network so you can’t expect super high ratings. In Brazil, Big Brother is shown via their biggest network so the ratings would often reach 60%.”

Ban arrived in the Philippines just before most of Luzon was devastated by the flood caused by Typhoon Ondoy over the weekend. The Dutch creative consultant was so moved by news footages of Filipinos stranded on the roofs of their houses and of some braving the flood that she took part in the ABS-CBN telethon to help the victims of the tragedy. “I am amazed that everyone is extending help to one another. Even among the PBB employees there were those who became victims of this calamity. Those who are pretty much doing well would give clothes, food, and money to those who are in need. It was very touching.”