Masala mix: Akki makes women swoon

No, they don’t have a crush on him, but say the Bollywood star was a “motivating and inspiring” host for the second edition of adventure reality show Khatron Ke Khiladi - Level 2.

All of them are participants on the show and feel Akshay motivated them to push their limits to accomplish tasks and often eased a tough situation by cracking jokes.

“Akshay was the best host possible for this show. If I wasn’t able to do a task easily, he used to motivate me. Even if any of us backed out of a task, he would give us plenty of pep talks and used to ask us to push our limits. He was a super teacher,” Rupali Ganguly, who was earlier seen on reality show Big Boss, said.

Khatron Ke Khiladi - Level 2 has 13 celebrity women, including Mandira Bedi, Shweta Salve, Rosa Catalano, Sushma Reddy, Carol Gracias and Shonali Nagrani each paired with a male partner, competing to win Rs.5 million as prize money.

The show was shot in Cape Town and will air on Colors in September.

Nauheed Cyrusi, best remembered as the Piya basanti re girl, says Akshay was a constant support for her.

“I knew that Akshay Kumar, the big star, was going to host the show. I didn’t know what to expect from him because I’d never met him before. He helped me a great deal and was super approachable,” said Nauheed.

“He was a complete support system for all of us there. In a task, the last few seconds are very crucial and it was then that he really encouraged each of us,” she added.

For Brazilian beauty Bruna Abdullah, who was seen in an item number in Anubhav Sinha’s Cash, Akshay was an inspiration.

“He (Akshay) was wonderful. He would do the stunts himself first and show us the safest way to perform them. He didn’t let us give up on tasks easily at all and used to say that we won’t ever get a chance to put ourselves through those stunts again,” said Bruna, who Akshay teasingly referred to as ‘Bru’.

“He was also extra sensitive to Rosa and me as we didn’t understand much Hindi. So he would go out of his way to clear our doubts,” she added.

VJ and singer Anushka was also all praise for the 41-year-old actor.

“Akshay was really funny. He used to talk at random and eased out the most difficult tasks for us. He would tell us this is the best chance to do crazy things. At times, he would be serious and warn us if a certain task was tough. He would say ‘This is not a laughing matter’ to caution us,” she said.

Said Shonali, a former supermodel: “Initially Akshay was very strict but gradually he became extremely supportive. He not only encouraged us but also helped us with strategies to strengthen our confidence levels. He always stood by us and gave us a pep talk whenever we were down. There’s nobody better than Akshay Kumar as a host for the show.”

Actress Nethra Raghuraman won the first season of the show, which was aired last year.