Nance Coolen is very disappointed with her TV failure in Eva Jinek’s talk show. The presenter started singing there, but that didn’t go very well. “I’m just really bad at talk shows.”
Most people know Nance Coolen mainly as a presenter who has fallen out of favor, but she also used to have a serious career as a singer. She was allowed to sing a song on Eva Jinek’s talk show on Thursday evening, but according to viewers she sang quite out of tune. “Sing no more!” René van der Gijp shouted a day later.
Balding Nance
What happened now? Nance explains it on Radio 538. “I’m suddenly in the news. I’m a hot topic, unintentionally and unsolicited. I was allowed to sing with Jinek and according to a number of people – at least, quite a few people – that singing was not quite neat, so there are comments on that and you have to deal with that as a singer.”
She is very disappointed about that, she admits honestly. “It’s quite difficult when you say you can sing and things go wrong there. You can’t defend yourself either. I know I felt really bad. I had a flight this weekend and I remember when I landed I really thought: shit, my ear is hurting.”
Minor earache
Nance therefore suffered from ear pain during her performance. A bit like what Jinek’s viewers also had during that same performance, so to speak. “I had a very nasty pain in my ear and I just noticed that my hearing was kind of not quite right anymore. That is quite important if you have to sing.”
She continues: “So I didn’t hear what I wanted to hear optimally on my earpiece. Then you just sit under it or whatever. You know, one thought it was very fake and the other said: ‘Well, it wasn’t really too bad, was it?’ I’ve also had a lot of nice messages from people who say: ‘I can’t hear it.’”
Blood nervous
It’s also just the nerves, says Nance. “I was talking to Eva about that yesterday. I’m sitting there at the table looking so bloody nervous. Just because I was sitting there at the table. We had some very serious topics and then you think: please, don’t ask me a question now, because I was very busy with those nineties in my head.”
“Plus, you don’t present it. I said to Eva, ‘What is that? That when I sit here that I’m so nervous. Like a little kid with shaky knees. And if I am allowed to present something, it will not bother me at all.”
Talk show table
Nance isn’t crazy about talk shows. “It’s not so much singing that makes me nervous, but just the whole setting at a talk show table. I’m just not good at that. I’m not made to sit there, but you do, because you’re invited because you get to talk about something where your heart is.”
Television makes people uncomfortable, says Nance. “You kind of notice: you want to sit neatly, you want to sit upright, you don’t want to look grumpy.”
She thinks we shouldn’t make it bigger than it is. “Could happen anyway.”
