In 2010, Erika Van Tielen sat in the iconic orange chairs, but the experience with ‘The smartest person in the world’ still affects the actress today. “Every year it takes a few weeks and then I think: I also took part in that, but that has made my position within the media landscape even more difficult. I was suddenly everywhere,” she now says in ‘De Morgen’. “As a result, I had to fight for years against an image that did not correspond with who I was. I couldn’t cross the Werchter meadow without being accosted 635 times. As if I was no longer a real person, but some kind of icon. Everyone only saw the beautiful girl, no one wondered what I could do.”
“At one point I even heard a commercial in my own program on Studio Brussels, in which a man approached me: ‘Hey Erika Van Tielen, would you like to go on a date with me?’ That was a campaign I knew nothing about. There was even a Facebook group: ‘On a date with Erika Van Tielen’. I was just reduced to dating material,” she reflects. “And that has affected me incredibly much. Even people who should have known better went along with that vibe. ‘We can’t cast you, because to the audience you are just that beautiful girl.’ Could I never break free from that image? That haunted me for years. As if I had to defend myself every time before I could get to the point,” she concludes.
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2023-12-19 12:31:20
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