“They are greens.” In Sicily the presence of Maaike Cafmeyer, leading lady of Flemish fiction, does not go unnoticed. Even the seaweed that Sergio Herman finds at the fish market sounds funny in its West Flemish accent. The chef takes Cafmeyer to the south of Italy, according to him the mecca of fresh fish. “I’m actually allergic to fish,” says Cafmeyer. “But when I was pregnant, I ate at least fifty kilos of mussels.”
Driving anxiety
Faith is important in Sicily. Herman wants to know whether Cafmeyer is religious. To his surprise, she tells him that she even taught religion. “I was raised Catholic. My parents were reasonable hippies and at some point my father became a believer,” she says. “Then everything changed, everything was suddenly strict. A kind of experience of truth, that is what many people find in faith. I don’t really like that, I don’t believe there is one truth or one thing you should do. What I like about faith is that it offers comfort.”
From Catania it goes towards Siracusa. A road trip. Cafmeyer is not a fan of Italian driving behavior. The actress has only had a driver’s license for five years. “I developed a fear of driving because my parents had a serious accident. My father was blinded by backlight, he ran a red light and ended up under a concrete mixer.” Cafmeyer was then working on getting her driver’s license, but abruptly stopped. “My father was in intensive care for a long time. My mother recovered fairly quickly, which is actually miraculous.” Ultimately, she overcame her fears. “Trucks were the worst. I often had to drive next to that. But It worked.”
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Stone moved
The inevitable is also discussed: the De Pauw case. Cafmeyer, who worked with Bart De Pauw for years, was a key figure in the lawsuit surrounding inappropriate behavior. “The last few years have been pretty shitty. It was not my dream to make the newspapers like that. It would have been just as good for me if it could have happened in silence, but we had no choice in that.”
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The smear that arose has affected her deeply. “Let’s just say that we have benefited from each other a lot and that it was necessary, otherwise it wouldn’t have happened. I’ve heard a lot of negative things, people can’t imagine what the impact could be.” The hate on social media in particular came in. “You get scared when you get a lot of hate, you no longer feel safe.”
“The only consolation I can take from it is that we have moved a stone.” There has been support from women and men. “I’ve had a lot of letters from fathers,” she says. Her own family also played an important role. “My daughters were pivotal in this, I thought: ‘The world can no longer exist like this in the future, they must be able to name this’. It is not about sex, but about power and the impossibility to say something because, for example, you would lose your job.” She also feared for her own career. “I thought: ‘It’s over for me now, no one is going to ask me again’.” The opposite turned out to be true. “I can’t do something I don’t support, I can’t deny who I am. But I’m glad it’s over.”
‘Sergio over the border’, VTM and VTM Go, Tuesday 8.40 pm
