During his time at De Wereld Draait Door, Frank Evenblij regularly stood ‘screaming’ in front of Matthijs van Nieuwkerk’s horror assistant. “I so disagreed.”
Matthijs van Nieuwkerk has been exposed as a television executioner. Together with his horror assistant Dieuwke Wynia, who was his editor-in-chief for years, he literally made countless former employees of De Wereld Draait Door sick, according to research by de Volkskrant. The former reporters of the talk show, De Jakhalzen, also confirm the story.
Screaming Frank
There was indeed a culture of fear at DWDD, said former Jackal Frank Evenblij in yesterday evening’s Beau. “Yes, I often yelled at the editors because I didn’t agree with working that way,” he says.
Frank worked at DWDD under two editors: Ewart van der Horst (the current producer of Beau) and Dieuwke Wynia. She also misbehaved badly. “I just didn’t believe that was the way to motivate people, but I was still young and vulnerable at the time – I was 26 when I came in. I couldn’t change that either.”
Eyes opened
Former Jackal Erik Dijkstra, sitting opposite Frank at the table: “But Frank, you also have to remember: we were in the picture. First at De Jakhalzen and then at the table. There are a few different rules for that, right? It has also opened my eyes that some former colleagues are now saying to me: ‘Yes, you weren’t yelled at, were you? To me, yes.’”
Frank: “It also made it easier for me to say something about it, because then editors would come up to me and say: ‘It’s really great of you to say this.’ I said, “Then say something about it.” But they were much more afraid of losing their job and that didn’t happen to me.”
Atrocious
The article hit like a bomb, says Erik. He admitted earlier this week that he actually thrived under the DWDD culture. But, as he says with Beau: “It’s not about five, but about fifty people who say: ‘I crossed my boundaries in those years.’ Then I think to myself: that is not what I paid attention to at the time.”
Frank: “I’ve always been there and where Erik thrived a bit better in that culture… I’ve always had a hard time with it, because I always noticed a lot of that.”
Lots of contact
There is currently a lot of contact between former DWDD employees. Frank: “Yes, I do have a lot of contact with former editors and so on at the moment. I just thought it was horrible too. It was really a blow. A lot came up. I personally have not had much to do with it in the sense that Matthijs has lashed out at me.”
Frank does indicate that he has learned ‘an awful lot’ from Matthijs. That makes it double, he says. “I don’t think I would have been here otherwise.”
