Özcan Akyol drops a huge bomb in the media world: he corners his – for the time being – best friend Matthijs van Nieuwkerk by revealing that there is footage of his misconduct.
It is inevitable that Matthijs van Nieuwkerk feels deeply betrayed by Özcan Akyol. Until now, the presenter of Stars on the Canvas always stood up for his (ex) best friend, but that is now over for good. He already made a suggestion on Today Inside, but in the talk show Humberto he now finishes: “There is footage.”
‘Something happened’
Humberto Tan asks Özcan whether he had any doubts about his devastating statements in Today Inside, where he publicly turned his back on Matthijs. “Were you hesitant to express yourself like that because it’s your friend, right?”
Özcan answers: “Yes, and because then you know that there will be another aftermath. You don’t want to give the impression that you are abandoning him completely, in the sense of: just figure it out now. Even if a friend does bad things, you should continue to support him and you should be able to talk, but you cannot maintain that nothing at all happened there.”
‘There is footage’
For a long time, Özcan thought that Matthijs had only shouted a little every now and then. “It went a bit in that direction before the report, from only raising voices, but yes, I have spoken to some former editors in recent weeks with their personal stories and have also been able to see something, which means…”
Humberto: “What do you mean: ‘being able to see something’?”
Özcan: “Well, there is also material. There is also footage of…”
Fiery rehearsals
Humberto is shocked. “What kind of footage?”
Özcan: “Well, I guess you rehearse here too? Those rehearsals are also recorded. I don’t know if you know that? So behave yourself during rehearsal.”
Humberto: “You can request all my rehearsals from the past twenty years and you won’t find anything, hahaha.”
Özcan: “There is an image that you can indeed see that things are not so pleasant.”
‘Who am I defending?’
Humberto: “You saw it?”
Özcan agrees that he saw how disgusting Matthijs behaved on the studio floor. “Yes. Not physical violence, but the words used and how they treat each other. Yes, then I thought: I don’t know this side of you very well, so I don’t know exactly who I am defending. That’s what it’s about.”
Matthijs in Paris
This side of Matthijs was not known to Özcan. “You have a friendly relationship and you are always nice to each other. He is professional in his own environment, so am I, but I don’t know what that looks like for him. That’s why I said: I can’t blindly support him now.”
Have the two already spoken about this friendly betrayal? “Not after this statement, because he went to Paris to stay away from these kinds of stimuli. I’ll call him next week, yes, to ask how he’s doing. I can’t do anything substantive anymore. You have all seen how strongly this is happening in the media world.”