Hélène Hendriks has no desire at all to watch how Marc Klein Essink, Carlo Boszhard and Chantal Janzen used to present the Staatsloterij show. “I won’t.”
The TV world is hard: Wendy van Dijk has been dumped hard by SBS 6 to make way for Hélène Hendriks. She is allowed to present one show after another, while Wendy is wasting away on the couch in Nigtevecht. This weekend the Oranjezondag star will appear again as presenter of the legendary Staatsloterij show. How is she going to do that?
Own thing
Did Hélène watch the previous editions with Marc Klein Essink, Carlo Boszhard and Chantal Janzen in preparation? No, I didn’t necessarily look at how they did it,” she says A.D. “You always have to just be yourself. I prepared myself for how the show is put together, but other than that I went into it very openly and freely.”
She continues: “I still had a memory of it, but things have of course changed now. And I’m not going to sit and watch Jeroen Pauw if I have to do a talk show. With good preparation – because almost everything depends on that – you just have to make it your own thing.”
New Linda
Does Hélène see herself as the new Linda de Mol? “Other people make more of that than I do myself, actually. For me, presenting is just presenting. I just really enjoy doing it, and that also applies to the De Staatsloterij Show.”
She continues: “On television, things have to be talked about and sometimes a big deal is made of it, but that’s not too bad. With The Staatsloterij Show, just like with The winner takes it all, it is ultimately the candidates who make the show. Not me.”
Bodyguard
It’s a bit of Hélène’s trademark: being overly normal. “I think something like that is just the nature of the beast. It’s not like the photographers are lying in the bushes here, you know. I can just walk through Schiphol or stand in a line without bodyguards, that doesn’t mean anything.”
She concludes: “I also work with a lot of completely normal people, such as at Today Inside, so that also helps. I am just who I am, there is actually no bigger secret behind it.”