Paul de Leeuw about VI: ‘I don’t want anything to do with it anymore’ | TV

entertainment">The short existence of Today Inside consists of two chapters: before and after the candle riot. And as it usually goes in the Netherlands, the storm has passed, everything seems forgiven and forgotten and no one is talking about the anecdote by Johan Derksen, in which he admitted – in an attempt to tackle the ‘hypocrisy’ in the #metoo debate – that he had penetrated an unconscious woman with a candle half a century ago. In the end he nuanced the story, but the damage was already done.

entertainment">After the riot had blown over, the men returned to the table, without sponsors. And not only the moneylenders had disappeared, also a number of table gentlemen and ladies – as they have since The world goes on – did not want to be associated with the Talpa program anymore. Including Paul de Leeuw and author Roos Schlikker. The two spoke to each other in the podcast This will never get better (what’s in a name?), in which they look back on their time before and after Today Inside.

Exciting

entertainment">„We have stopped together VI”, says De Leeuw. “I had already stopped a little earlier, because I thought: I believe I am entering a quagmire of opinions, into which I am being drawn. What I don’t want. In the end that happened with (Steven, ed.) Brunswijk. So I got out just in time. But it was still exciting to be there, to experience that. It was an enormously different area, because I found it very exciting to be there as a homosexual – well, I can also bite the bullet. But sometimes I thought: what are they saying? Then I wanted to contradict that, but that was not the intention. ‘Opinions are opinions.’”

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entertainment">When, after the broadcast in question, the Netherlands was turned upside down, everyone and everything called on to cancel the program, especially Johan Derksen. For example, Cornald Maas was there like the chickens to put Schlikker with her back against the wall and to ask her if she would continue to join the VI† “Hey Cornald. Canceled cooperation early this morning,” she said.

‘Black card’

entertainment">De Leeuw had already turned his back on the program shortly before, although he is still regularly in front of the tube to tune in to the opinion show of SBS6. “I still have fun with those guys. Only, I don’t want anything to do with it anymore. I don’t want to distance myself from it. I find it so hard because sometimes I don’t agree. But in the case of Steven Brunswijk (who during the candle broadcast sitting at the table, ed.) it was very clear: a story was being told – people in the audience thought: what is happening here now? – and only later did it turn into a huge riot. A justified riot, by the way. But then, that Brunswijk is sitting there and he actually gets the black pete – the ‘black card’, let’s put it this way, in his case. And then all of a sudden you have to defend yourself and apologize: what the fuck happened?”

entertainment">At the time, Schlikker also wondered what she would have said or done if she had been sitting at the table during that particular broadcast. “Had I gotten up? I do not think so. Maybe I would have said, “Well, what a crazy story this is?” Then you hope you would have called that. But jesus… So that’s why I thought: I feel very uncomfortable with this. I don’t have to. Point. (…) I was shocked by it. I really got a lot of sexism all over me. Vaginas with candles in them sent. And you’re being called a “whore” all the time. I have to say: it got under my skin more than I would have liked.”

entertainment">Incidentally, Derksen jumped in the breach for De Leeuw last week, after Angela de Jong had written in her column that ‘Paul’s TV career as we know him is now really finished’. “I think that man deserves some credit, because he has also made very nice TV in the past. Then you may also have a misstep. We’ve been doing the same thing all our lives, but that man does completely different things,” says Derksen.

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