Peter van der Vorst rightly chose to dismiss the quarreling duo of Frank & Rogier, but couldn’t he have kept the hysterics of the two better? “I just belong on TV!”
Rarely has a TV transfer been as unsuccessful as that of Frank Jansen and Rogier Smit. After the great success of Paleis voor een Prikkie on SBS 6, they switched to the larger RTL 4. And what a cat in a poke those two were for the channel. Soon after their transition, they started arguing in public, with a divorce as the icing on the cake.
‘I belong on TV!’
Peter van der Vorst, the television boss of RTL, immediately showed the two the door, but according to Rogier that is really a mistake. “I belong on TV. I think I can do it, that I’m funny, that I can entertain. I am a personality, you cannot ignore me. Looking back at Paleis Voor Een Prikkie, if I’m honest: I was the program.”
You don’t need Frank at all, he continues Party. “Frank was just my driver, haha. Look, I have no resentment towards Frank and I have zero regrets about anything with him. No regrets about the relationship, but no regrets that it’s over either. But I hear from everyone that people watched the program because of me.”
Peppi and Kokki
Hopefully TV bosses like Peter will see that he star quality has, says Rogier. “I understand that certain duos simply belong together. Peppi is also nothing without Kokki, and Bassie is nothing without Adriaan. But I don’t need Frank to make a program.”
Rogier invented the TV format ‘Rogier Timmert Aan De Weg’. “On the one hand, the title refers to me because I am working on my career, but it also refers to the people I want to help. Older or younger people with a problem that I would like to help solve.”
Spotlights
It is obvious: someone desperately needs attention. Or not? Rogier: “The fact that I would like to work in the television world again does not have so much to do with the fact that my face has to be on the air or something like that. It’s more about the fact that it is not that easy to find a ‘normal’ job if you are known from TV.”
He concludes: “People think it’s strange if you apply for a job somewhere in the catering industry and they know you from television. That is the main reason I would like to make a program again.”