B&B Vol Liefde fame Denise van der Laan is completely done with it. She does not want to participate in a dirty attempt to help her ex-lover Mike Hansler get high ratings. “It’s bullying.”
After the weekend, the new real-life soap about the dominant B&B Vol Liefde mother Monique Hansler and her docile son Mike Hansler starts at the usual time of Chateau Meiland. SBS 6 promotes the whole thing with cheerful photos in which Mike’s lover Denise van der Laan also poses. Well, that turns out to be the case ex-to be loved…
Heartbreak
Denise has had to keep the fact that she has broken up with Mike a secret for months. She no longer wants to keep it to herself and even had a camera crew there yesterday RTL Boulevard to speak. “At a certain point you just can’t hide heartbreak anymore. It just hurts so much,” she says.
She was really looking forward to filming the new SBS 6 soap. “I was really looking forward to it. I really thought: yes, we are all going for it. Especially to Spain with the family, opening a bar. I could shout it from the rooftops. And especially with Mike. I thought: oh, now I can finally see him 24/7.”
Outsider
Denise soon felt like an outsider. “It was of course also a bit of a rollercoaster, because I was already moving from the Netherlands to Austria and from there back to Spain.”
A preview is currently going viral in which Monique very meanly imitates the voice of her then daughter-in-law Denise. “Yes, to be honest, I found that fragment in the kitchen painful. It was difficult to watch again, because you see yourself again and I was really thinking: help, what should I do, how should I react?”
Finger on sore spot
Monique’s bullying was terrible, Denise thinks. “I remained calm, but at that moment it felt like someone was poking a sore spot with a finger. I don’t like it when you bash each other a bit. That’s not normal in life.”
Denise is done with her TV secret. “I can’t put on a mask. I’m just a sensitive person and I’m just heartbroken. That’s okay.”
Bullying mother-in-law
Show expert Aran Bade thinks it is a disgusting situation. “She got a bullying mother-in-law. That’s actually what it is. I find it painful to see that she ended up in this situation from day one. She also said: ‘I really cried after that recording in the kitchen. I cried out of sadness.’”
Colleague Luuk Ikink points to the TV makers: “They simply went looking for conflict and that was only possible between her and his mother.”
Aran concludes: “I really think she was used for that.”