Angela de Jong has arranged an extra role for her AD colleague Marcus den Blanken in Good Times Bad Times. “I just called someone from Endemol.”
AD media journalist Marcus den Blanken is a huge fan of Good Times Bad Times. To please him, Angela de Jong has arranged a nice extra role for him in the soap series through her contacts in the television world. Once arrived at the studio, Marcus was completely pampered.
Extra in GTST
It was great, Marcus tells in the AD Media podcast† “It was really fun. So Angela had arranged it. I had to be there at 7 am, I walked in and I was really welcomed like I was a real actor. First I got a tour of what it all looked like.”
Marcus even got his own dressing room. “I had my own nameplate with ‘Mark’ on it. It was a sofa and a mirror, but good: I had my own dressing room at GTST. Then I was allowed to go into make-up next to the actors. Caroline de Bruijn was there, who told me that she had been to the ballet. You really experience the dressing room industry.”
Gift from Angela
Why did Angela give this gift? “There are two people who read my column every day. Alex does that for the typos and whether the argument is correct and Mark always comes up with a roaring head above it. Even on the days when he is free and not on the racing bike, he still wants to take a look at it.”
“So I am very grateful to them for that, because yes: for me that is indispensable, especially because there is always a certain time pressure if I want to have it online before twelve o’clock. So yes, it was very easy for Alex: I sent a box of wine there. But for Mark it was a little more difficult.”
‘Just called Endemol’
Angela decided to contact GTST producer EndemolShine. “So I called Eva Peters from Endemol, from: ‘John, do you have some nice goodies or something from Good Times, because he loves them so much’, and then Eva said: ‘What do you think of an extra role?’ That’s totally fun.”
“I think it’s cute to see you enjoyed it so much. I really loved this when I was 15.”