Halina Reijn exploded incredibly during an interview with a respected newspaper. The journalist on duty went way too far, she says. “I thought that was such an impertinent shitty question.”
It’s a bit of a difficult person to interview: Halina Reijn. Before you know it, as an interviewer you say something wrong again and you have to go to the highest tree, according to her conversations with the AD and the Volkskrant. In one newspaper she says that she exploded during an interview with another side, and in the other newspaper she gets into trouble with the interviewer on duty.
Impertinent fucking question
Halina often has to deal with prejudices, she says in it A.D. “I don’t think I belong. Because I have no husband, no children, no dog. I still deviate. It will be a feeling that more people are familiar with: the need to conform, while you could also celebrate your uniqueness.”
“A journalist from a respected newspaper recently asked me: how come you can’t commit to a man? I can handle a lot and I also like to be as honest as possible, but I thought that was such an impertinent shitty question. Making me feel like a failure because I have no husband, no children. Had I always been so honest before that?”
Hassle with Volkskrant
Halina also appears to have had trouble with Nathalie Huigsloot, the interviewer of de Volkskrant. Nathalie questions the feminist content of Halina’s new film Babygirl. That title has several references, says Halina: “To the child within yourself, to someone with perhaps a bit of a father complex.”
Then Nathalie adds: “For whom it is the greatest compliment of all time when a man says: ‘You’re my baby girl’, which also makes her a bit of a child woman. That’s part of it, right?”
Antifeminist
Well, Halina doesn’t like that. “Yes, but I think you look at it a bit through a lens that is not really liberated, but with a judgment. I really feel that about your question. It’s a bit of a nineties idea: if a woman likes one babygirl wants to be with a man, that is actually not allowed, because that is anti-feminist.”
“But you can be who you want to be. That women measure each other up is victim blaming. That’s not freedom either. It is a prison of the Dutch woman, who stands on a mound and says (Groningen accent): how dare you be a baby girl, you have to be strong, just like me.”
All apps
What turns out? Halina is all over the piss. “That same night, all kinds of texts come in from Halina, with an audio message,” Nathalie writes.
In it, the actress says, among other things: “Giving someone the feeling of tut-tut, that is not feminism, that touches me very deeply, that really stings me. Because that’s exactly why I made that film. So saying that in a conversation is quite intense, I think. Anyway, I just wanted to clarify that very strongly, because that really stung me, okidoki, bye!”
Nathalie eventually apologized: “I’m sorry I said something that affected you so deeply.”