Camiel Kesbeke doubts whether he wants to continue with the RTL soap De Augurkenkoning, because he does not want to milk things to the limit like Peter Gillis has done. “That really put me off.”
The real-life soap about the pickle family Kesbeke, De Pickle King, is a hit on RTL 4, but one of the protagonists doubts whether he wants to continue with it. Camiel Kesbeke says that his family is still negotiating with RTL, but that no green light has been given yet. There are doubts, he tells the Weekend.
Don’t milk it
When asked whether he will continue with the soap, Camiel says: “We are still very busy in discussions with RTL and they really want it. Haha! I can’t say too much about it. The most important thing is that it does not become a kind of repetition, that people think: well, there they are again.”
“That’s what people sometimes said about other reality families, that they were only busy milking it. We want to avoid that. So if it doesn’t become a repeat story, we don’t make it too private, it remains focused on the case, but with some fun excursions left and right, then I would believe in it.”
‘Not like Gillis’
Which soaps does Camiel watch? “It may sound very strange because we have a soap ourselves, but I have never actually watched it. I have never seen the Meilandjes, that’s bad, isn’t it? The Bauertjes and De Roelvinkjes neither. I have seen a few episodes of Gillis. I watched it together with the students I lived with.”
Did he like that? “It’s controversial, isn’t it? That’s it, it keeps you glued to the TV. It’s all the crazy antics he does. Especially in the beginning, when he strolled through those parks. At a certain point it was less controversial and I wandered off.”
And that is exactly what he wants for his with The Gherkin King…