TV icon Sonja Barend died on Saturday at the age of 86. Her former colleague Hanneke Groenteman was friends with her and occasionally sat with Sonja at the talk show table. Jeroen Wollaars received the Sonja Barend Award from her in 2021.
Barend died in the presence of her family. “I was in total shock,” says Groenteman about the moment she heard that her friend and former colleague had died.
“Sonja was the most alive person in my experience. There was no better talk show host. She was intelligent and involved, she could tease and prod and you could laugh with her. There is no talk show host that comes close to what she brought.”
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“She is in all our heads. She was very knowledgeable,” says journalist Jeroen Wollaars about Sonja Barend. In 2021, he personally received the coveted Sonja Barend Award from her.
“It seemed like everything was just off the top of her head, but everything was perfectly prepared. I know this from an editor-in-chief of Nieuwsuur, who worked with her for a long time. And she also looked back at everything, because she wanted to know what went wrong and what could be improved.”
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It is annoying to talk about her in the past tense,” says Wollaars. “She was someone who could open and conquer hearts. She could still be on TV right now. She had the ability to be in the right groove at the right time.”
An extensive report will follow later this evening with reactions to the death of Sonja Barend.