Thijs Römer’s career seems to be over. Well, if Jan Slagter doesn’t want him then. He is seen as the man who stands up for all misbehaving celebrities. “No, I’m really tough.”
The constant tendency to stand up for celebrities with misconduct is starting to work against Jan Slagter. Yesterday a very harsh joke was made about it in Paul de Leeuw’s TV show. There, an imitation Jan said about misconduct by a minor: “I always say: at Omroep MAX, 50 is the new 30. Well, then 15 can also easily be the new 21.”
‘I reject it’
Is there any truth in this joke? Is Thijs Römer, convicted of sexual offenses against underage girls, still welcome at Omroep MAX? The Weekend asks the broadcaster point blank. But: “What happened to Thijs Römer is very bad. I strongly reject that, I think it’s very bad what he did.”
So he has no compassion for Thijs: “I understand why people say: ‘We want to remove those fragments with him.’ I don’t think we have any fragments with Thijs, so I don’t know what I would do. I think it’s quite a dilemma. Suppose you have a very good film with him in it, should you cut it out?”
Rock hard Jan
Jan does know that Thijs is not welcome at MAX. “I think what he has done is reprehensible and disgraceful. I’m very much in favor of people deserving a second chance, but when it comes to things like this, I’m tough. He would not get a second chance with me.”
Yet Jan does not know whether he would remove Thijs from a MAX production. “I don’t know, that’s a dilemma. And it doesn’t play. But I can imagine: if we had had a dominant series with him in the leading role, I would have taken him out.”