Bridget Maasland thinks that RTL goes too far with the raunchy insult program Paradise Hotel, even though she and her colleagues at RTL Boulevard enjoy it. “I think it goes a long way.”
Valerio Zeno creates the Paradise Hotel program for RTL’s Videoland, in which participants indicate when checking in whether they have come for money or love. What Peter van der Vorst’s media company is after is for candidates to fall in love with someone who comes for the money. “Blooming loves and broken hearts,” it sounds delicious.
Binge Bridget
What now turns out? Paradise Hotel is all the rage among the stars of RTL Boulevard. Bridget Maasland: “It looks nice and I am also inspired by Luuk’s enthusiasm. He said, ‘Just try it once.’ You can binge it. He said: ‘I have already persuaded Daphne’, so Daphne Bunskoek was also watching and they had contact about it together.”
She continues The BLVD Podcast: “They are having such a nice chat about Paradise Hotel. I thought: then Eric and I will go too and then we can have our own chat and then we will discuss this program with that other happy dog, namely Rob.”
Cunning and mean
At some point it started to gnaw at Bridget. “Of course it looks nice, but it is actually a very cunning, dirty game, where you have to get others out and also meet the love of your life or pretend to do so. As a couple you can win 50,000 euros in the final because it is all about money.”
“They say: ‘I come here for love’, especially the women, but the men don’t actually say it. These men are actually very honest during their quotes, like: ‘I just come here for the money, I pretend and play a game.’”
Screwed hard
Paradise Hotel is ultimately about hurting people. “Sometimes you see them really like someone else or they get attention from those men and then they really go for it, while they are being screwed really hard, in some cases actually on television.”
Rob Goossens actually loves it. “It’s the kind of person I don’t meet at the supermarket and don’t have in my circle of friends, so indeed: they have somewhat different views on how to interact with each other than what I know from my environment,” he says. Ehh, curious what his girlfriend thinks about that…
Pain point
Anyway: that’s exactly what Bridget thinks is wrong with it. “Maybe that’s the problem. The pain point. It also has to do with playing on people’s feelings. That is really being stepped on. I think I have a problem with that.”
These candidates are also terribly put through the wringer on social media. “Does everyone really notice that in advance? Do they all really understand what the impact will ultimately be if you treat other people like this on television? Then you get a lot of abuse online.”
Extreme reactions
According to Rob, these extreme reactions are not the responsibility of RTL, but of the viewer. Bridget: “Are you now going to place the responsibility on the viewer? There are also makers and it is also broadcast somewhere. It’s not just up to the viewer. They are provoked, aren’t they? By making people (…) smell money.”
Eric de Munck: “The key question is: should we still use these types of programs or concepts as entertainment in 2025?”
Bridget: “The seed is planted somewhere, right? And that is the moment you realize: we are going to make and broadcast these kinds of programs.”