Claudia de Breij is very pissed off at Evert Santegoeds. The comedian does not like that he suggests that she knew about the inappropriate behavior at DWDD. “Yes, I laughed, yes!”
It bothers Evert Santegoeds that Claudia de Breij threatened last week to make her own experiences with inappropriate behavior public, but did not follow up. Threatening to do so, but then doing nothing really doesn’t help anyone at all, according to the Private Boss. “This does not make any sense at all.”
Cheering Claudia
Evert also finds Claudia quite hypocritical, pointing to her major role in the then DWDD. “Claudia de Breij’s contribution has been minimal so far and she also sat there laughing at that De Wereld Draait Door table when it suited her. Then say what you know or shut up.”
What does she think of this sneer? Not fun. “She would have been laughing at that table,” someone said about me last week. And I thought: that’s true. Because it was often a good program for me, that DWDD. Because I had a good editorial team, with incredibly smart, fun and creative people,” she writes in the VARA guide.
‘Matthijs is good!’
It was also a source of laughter, according to Claudia. “And Matthijs van Nieuwkerk is a good program maker. Now all that’s left seems to be a perpetrator and victims. But it was more, and it is more. Nowhere has music, literature, sports, film and Dutch cultural heritage been so beautifully cherished and celebrated as in that program.”
She continues: “That has nothing to do with the misery that must have gone on behind the scenes. Apparently, at the same time, the worst that people have inside them can also bring out the best. The idea that one thing is a prerequisite for making the other possible is a total misconception.”
Total jerk
Claudia was wrong about Matthijs. “So people are not just what they seem. Someone can be an excellent professional in his sports reporting, and at the same time behave towards women not courteously, but like a total jerk with inappropriate, nasty comments.”
Did she really know nothing? “I presented DWDD for some time (at the beginning of this century), on Mondays. Only now when I look back do I realize that I sometimes found that editorial rather uptight. The atmosphere was often a bit tense, for no visible reason.”
Intimidated
Claudia herself sees herself more as a victim of that atmosphere. “I was a bit intimidated by it myself, including the editor-in-chief at the time. I blamed myself for that, not him. I thought it was just me. Maybe those editors didn’t like me that much and were looking forward to the rest of the week, I thought.”
She concludes: “Only now do I really realize that those editors were in that atmosphere day in and day out, and how tough that must have been.”