Olcay Gulsen’s TV career has collapsed like a plum pudding after her Boulevard exit. Now that her soap also turns out to be a flop, it’s time to take stock. “She’s a C star!”
Olcay Gulsen did quite well at the desk of RTL Boulevard for five years, but she got a bloody mess in 2019 when her bankruptcy was discussed in a rather critical way in the show section. She was particularly angry with Mark Koster, Ruben Nicolai, Luuk Ikink and Aran Bade. “It was low to the ground and pathetic.”
Ego document
After her departure, Olcay regularly bashed the show section, to the chagrin of RTL’s TV boss Peter van der Vorst. She switched to Talpa, but she didn’t make anything there that sticks. And she can currently be seen with a real life soap on the country’s most watched TV channel NPO 1. The result? A mega flop.
Razor-sharp media expert Victor Vlam thinks it’s time to take stock. That soap is the last straw for him. “I must honestly say that I really had to plow through it. I quickly thought: oh, this is going to be such a terrible ego document, is this really necessary? Well, I struggled through it.”
“She’s a C star!”
The content is very bad, says Victor in his podcast The Communicados. “It’s a flop because it’s just become abundantly clear that we’re looking at the end of Olcay Gulsen’s TV career. And it’s a bit painful to watch, but it’s become abundantly clear: Olcay Gulsen is just an absolute C-star.”
He continues: “Not an A star, a C star. And the reason I say that is because she does one thing very well, namely: she used to be an expert at RTL Boulevard and she did it really well. And there’s always this tendency, if someone is good at one thing, they’ll use them for a thousand other things.”
Total flop
According to him, Olcay is a typical example of twelve crafts, thirteen accidents. “Everything Olcay has tried since then has just been a total flop. Really, everything has been a total flop.”
He continues: “Olcay was good at RTL Boulevard. She was very open, sincere, spontaneous, sometimes funny, sometimes spicy. (…) But what is the difference between an A star, such as Chantal Janzen or Ruben Nicolai, and someone like Olcay? An A star can do many different types of programs. He cannot do one trick, he can do several things.”
Good presenter?
And Olcay can only play a nice expert or sidekick, says Victor. He points to all her attempts at SBS. “From the first moment it was clear that she is a good expert, but not a good presenter.
He continues: “She has tried many different genres on all the different channels. At RTL, at Talpa and now at the NPO. And everything flops. At a certain point it is just clear: this is someone who does not attract the ratings.”
Relativity
That soap? According to Victor, they better stop doing that. “I think the problem with this real-life soap is that these people take themselves so extremely seriously. There is no relativity whatsoever.”
They should continue to do what they are good at, he concludes. “I think Ruud is a very talented DJ on the radio. I like listening to him.”