Linde de Jong, de creative director John de Mol, who was portrayed as a ‘Talpa bitch’ after the second BOOS documentary, has still been fired, according to sources in TV land. This is reported by Sébas Diekstra.
Tim Hofman came up with one last summer follow up about his Voice revelations. In this he said he had strong signals that in 2019 John de Mol knew not of one, as he himself claims, but of four (!) cases of misconduct by Jeroen Rietbergen. If that is true, it is of course bizarre that he gave Jeroen a second chance at The Voice.
Under the cap?
An anonymous employee of The Voice stated in that documentary that the then executives Linde de Jong and Rick Brink approached John with these four reports. According to Tim, there are two possibilities: either John is lying about what he knew about the misconduct at The Voice, or Linde and Rick have kept the misconduct under wraps.
If John really thinks he didn’t know about more cases of transgressive behavior, then he must be creative director Linde de Jong would of course be fired, said lawyer Sébas Diekstra (who assists six Voice victims, ed.) at the time. “But if she did inform him, it will be difficult to show her the door ‘just like that’ (without a bag of money).
And then her staying on would be a disguised admission of guilt from John, according to Sebas.
‘Still fired’
Now, seven months later, according to Sébas, it is rumored that Linde still fired: “There is a persistent rumor in the media that she was fired from Talpa. The reason would be that she did not inform John de Mol about the previous reports she received of sexual misconduct within the production of The Voice of Holland.”
Juice queen Yvonne Coldeweijer has also understood this, she says on her juice channel. “SCOOOOP. Do we remember this girl from the BOOS documentary on The Voice? Linde Young. Linde was FIRED by Uncle John last week, according to an inside spy. OMG.”
Hands in the fire
The Voice report was published last week. No names are mentioned in the public version, but apparently they are in the confidential version. “John is furious that it now appears from the report (apparently the extended version) that she knew everything and deliberately did not inform her. Bye bye Linde”, says Yvonne.
John said in the first BOOS documentary that he was convinced that if misconduct had been reported at one of his counters, immediate action would have been taken. He dared to put both hands in the fire for that. Sébas: “Let’s assume that John de Mol meant this proverbial. Otherwise it will be a very painful exercise.”
John and his counters
Sébas summarizes: “Before a candidate reported sexually transgressive behavior by the band leader in 2019, there were at least three female employees who had already reported such behavior. The women reported to the counters that De Mol is talking about, but nothing happened.”
So no action was taken, says Sébas. “Fortunately, this is confirmed by the disappointing report of the manufacturer’s investigation. In a first response to the investigation by producer ITV, Talpa said: ‘Before we decide to respond substantively, we will first carefully study this report.’”
Hope for response
Sébas hopes that Talpa will then come up with a satisfactory response. “It would be good if Talpa also discussed the role of the creative director and the business director in the more extensive response. In any case, they were aware of the previous reports, but left the reporters out in the cold. That is their fault.”
Incidentally, Rick Brug is not currently working for Talpa, but for the current Voice producer ITV.
‘Talpa bitch’
If Linde has actually been fired, she can count on little sympathy. She was slaughtered by friend and foe because of her haughty reaction in the second BOOS documentary. “That woman is portrayed as a bitch. I see that on Twitter,” commented Heleen van Royen at the time. But the news media also went wild on her.
Angela de Jong called Linde ‘shockingly arrogant’, Jan Dijkgraaf spoke of ‘an arrogant piece of shit‘ and Jordi Versteegden indicated that he would never feel safe with her as a victim. Who was the only one who stood up for her? No surprise: Johan Derksen. “This lady did a very neat and tidy job.”
Fragment
You can see the fragment of the ‘bitchy’ Linde below from minute 20:10: