Priyanka Chopra’s upcoming reality TV show receives global backlash for glamourising activism

While a little healthy competition is a great way to get the creative juices flowing and breed a fruitful outcome, it appears that the creators of the upcoming Global Citizen reality TV show The Activist may have taken this advice to the extreme.

The five-week CBS series will see ‘activists’ facing challenges to bring attention to their causes on screen. With Priyanka Chopra, Usher and Julianne Hough acting as judges, six international activists will be pitted against each other to determine which activist and their related cause are worthy of a prize. The activists’ success will be measured via their level of engagement on social media. The winning activist will get the opportunity to travel to Rome for the G20 summit, where they will have a chance to meet with world leaders and secure funding for their causes. In an effort to marry entertainment with activism, the finale of the show will be a compendium of song and dance featuring prominent celebrities.

The announcement of the show was met with instant backlash by netizens, celebrities and other activists. Criticising the show for its exploitation of struggles for social justice, actor and activist Jameela Jamil retweeted a news article on the show, commenting on how the celebrity judges would have been paid an exorbitant amount of money to be a part of the show. She wrote, “Couldn’t they just give the money it’s going to take to pay this unbelievably expensive talent and make this show directly to activist causes? Rather than turning activism into a game and then giving a fraction of the much-needed money away in a ‘prize’? People are dying.”

— Jameela Jamil 🌈 (@jameelajamil) September 10, 2021