Stella Bergsma really wants to be friends with the men of Today Inside, but she doesn’t feel comfortable in the Wilfred Genee show at all. “I thought it was an unsafe place, yes.”
Not a week goes by without Stella Bergsma shouting again somewhere in an interview that she would love to be a guest in Today Inside again. It seems to be a form of overestimation, because there are of course enough well-known Dutch people who are a lot more interesting than this writer and opinion maker.
Unkind Wilfred
Stella talks in the podcast Mischa! that she felt very bad during her performance at VI. “I had completely resolved not to talk about VI, because every time I say something about it, it comes in the media, because those people are much more popular and well-known than me. But then I felt weak.”
Why? “Because at one point I felt intimidated. And they all said to me: ‘Yes, Stella, what do you think?’ They weren’t very friendly, especially Wilfred Genee. And then it was about Putin and that gas pipeline that was sabotaged. And then they all said: ‘Yes, what do you think of it as a woman?’, or something.”
Intimidated
It was very bad, says Stella. “Then they all looked at me and then they had already said: ‘as a woman’, which I thought was strange. I thought: why as a woman? You just have an opinion on that don’t you? I wanted to say something to that. And then I thought: what do I actually want to say about that Putin? And then I was like… Then they all looked at me.”
And then? “I thought: this is the moment that I can be very intelligent. And then I wasn’t smart. Then I didn’t know. Then I was just intimidated. Then I felt weak. I still think about that. I’m like, damn it, if only I had said something really good then, you know. I didn’t.”
Everything or nothing
Stella felt terribly put on the spot. “It wasn’t like we’re having a conversation now and you’re just talking and saying your opinion. And also the way they talk to each other, that they just sort of speak their mind. But this was an all or nothing moment. And because that was that, I got performance anxiety.”
She continues: “I didn’t like the moment it happened, although they were all talking about it and saying, ‘Well, you must have had too much to drink and stuff.’ To which I thought again: Jesus, Johan Derksen must say that, he only talks very strange things about Baudet and stuff. But I didn’t say that either. So I was disappointed with myself at the time.”
Unsafe place
Presenter Mischa Blok: “So it sounds like some kind of unsafe place, that VI?”
Stella: “I thought it was an unsafe place, yes, but then I’m kind of naive. I therefore think: yes, but we can all talk together, right? And I’m going to make it a safe place! From: I’m not such an angry feminist at all, I’m really cozy, so that will be fine. But I just felt there was no opening, that I wasn’t allowed to be there.”
Mischa: “And do you still want to be there?”
Stella: “Yeah, stupid huh? (…) I just want it out of a kind of idealism, because then I think: we should be able to talk to each other, even if we have different opinions.”
Friends
Stella also wants to be friends with the VI trio. “I want to have more women there with a strong personality and a little bit of opinion. And I really just want to be friends with them. It is also a kind of childish, a childish feeling of: why can’t I join? I even wrote a poem about this.”
She continues: “Which I also find sad, because now I am talking about it again. And if someone hears that again, Angela de Jong will write another column about it and then people in a show news program will say: ‘She wants to be there so badly, she wants to be there so badly. She needs to stop doing that.’”
Fragment
You can hear Stella’s poem about VI from minute 07:20: