Beau van Erven Dorens and Humberto Tan, who both present a talk show on RTL 4, condemn the monstrous behavior of Matthijs van Nieuwkerk. “This is very, very painful.”
It is striking how few friends Matthijs van Nieuwkerk has left now that his years of misconduct at De Wereld Draait Door has become public. Beau van Erven Dorens and Humberto Tan, who have long seen him as an example, are now also distancing themselves from the fallen television star.
Pillory
Beau can’t quite grasp it all yet, he says in his broadcast last night. “I am also still processing that one of my greatest heroes has now been pilloried. Rightly so, very rightly so, but it is just terribly painful.”
Eva Jinek, Renze Klamer and Humberto Tan all left unnamed during their TV appearances last week that their own producer, Ewart van der Horst, also appears in the Volkskrant article about Matthijs. He only came up yesterday when a guest from Beau brought it up.
Ewart
Janke Dekker, chairman of the MORES hotline: “One of your editors-in-chief has also been editor-in-chief at De Wereld Draait Door.”
Beau: “That is our editor-in-chief and the editor-in-chief was editor-in-chief in the early years of DWDD. It’s good that you mention it, because that is actually forgotten all the time. Ewart van der Horst. He also walks around somewhere in the building.”
He does not elaborate on the content of the passage about Ewart. He continues: “Many of my editors have also worked at DWDD. In fact, some are quite upset about it. Like an open wound.”
Unavoidable
Humberto Tan tells in the last WNL on Sunday that Matthijs’ behavior was not inevitable. “No definitely not. Then you can immediately say: ‘Yes, but you were not as successful as Matthijs’, but even in those four years that it was very successful, it never escalated in that way.”
He continues: “Yesterday I happened to be in contact with the editor-in-chief of that time, Carlo. I say: ‘Carlo, we really did it differently’, because I just don’t believe in that. You have TV, but life is always more important than TV. If you treat people that way, why would you?
Reunion
What should be done now? “I was reading that and then I thought: they are all people now with traumas. Whether you have PTSD, burnout… I wondered what I would do if that happened to me in that situation. I would organize a reunion with Matthijs and those old editors, all of them. Let them express their grievances to him. “
He concludes, “You know, Rick. It’s part of a culture that we have in the television world. It is not necessarily just Matthijs. There are quite a few more people who worked that way. For years, executives have found it just fine. But human values are always more important.”
