“It’s a bit of stress,” admits Jessica Venancio as she prepares to meet Stéphane Plaza in the new episode of House for sale. The new interior designer of the show goes with the host of M6 to Daniel. Following the death of his wife, he decided to separate from his duplex, too full of memories, and far too big for him alone. But he hasn’t found a buyer for seven months… Jessica Venancio is going to rethink the decor of this apartment to make it easier to sell and help him turn the page. A mission that particularly moved the one we had already seen in Teva deco, Saturday at all costs on France 5, or Better at home with Stéphane Plaza on M6.
Did you have the pressure for that first House for sale ?
Yes a lot ! Already, it had been a while since I had worked with Stéphane Plaza. He’s a hard worker so we want to be up to it. Then I had the pressure in the sense that I wanted my work to be used for something. We are always faced with people who have real problems, these are projects that affect me and there is this stress of saying to oneself: will what I am going to do change Daniel’s life?
What was the difficulty with this apartment?
Daniel had bought it with his wife and since then he hadn’t touched the decor. It was very old-fashioned but, above all, it was a page of his life. His decor was his life with his wife, his children, it was super intimate and personal. The difficulty was this: getting through this ordeal with Daniel and making sure to support him, even psychologically, so that this new decor doesn’t upset him too much and that he agrees to move on. So there was this psychological dimension as well.
Did you anticipate it?
As an interior designer, I live it on a daily basis because we enter into people’s intimacy, into their way of life but into House for sale, there are cameras that add stress. Then fortunately, in my professional life, I often intervene following a purchase which is good news. There, I had not prepared myself, I am very empathetic and I knew that I was going to be moved by Daniel. But I did not expect to be so.
How would you define your style?
For me, there are two types of interior designer: there is the one who will impose his touch, and the one – of which I am a part – who will really try to respond to a problem, to a way of life, to needs, so I sometimes do projects that don’t match my style. Afterwards, indeed, I am addicted to vintage, second-hand. It’s a mix of vintage, a bit of bohemian, and contemporary because we live in our time too.
For your decor at Daniel, you favor recycled and recyclable flooring, bio-sourced paint, a sofa whose foam comes from recycled used mattresses… Is this your personal touch?
Yes quite. When I was recruited, M6 asked me what I wanted to add as an extra soul to my interventions, and it was really eco-responsibility in the case of House for sale.
Did you want to do TV or did TV come to you?
It was TV that came to me. A little over ten years ago, I made my professional retraining and I created a blog on decoration. I don’t have a problem with the camera at all and I felt like sharing, so I made a lot of videos. I got noticed by M6 and Téva is part of this group. I made DIYs in Teva Deco for five years. Then I created a webcast called We talk decoration where I went to meet craftsmen, places, designers… I was recontacted by M6 to make Better at home with Stéphane Plaza, it lasted two seasons. And from time to time, I was invited on the set of Thomas Isle in Saturday at all costs as a decoration columnist. Then Stéphane Plaza called me back to House for sale.
How did your love for decoration come about?
Already, after my baccalaureate, I did a prep at Penninghen (school of interior architecture, communication and artistic direction) so I had a taste for the arts, art, design. For family reasons, I chose another path. Then I worked in real estate. In fact, I think it’s always been something that appealed to me without me really identifying it. Like many, I watched decoration shows on M6. One day when I was fed up with my life, I said to myself: “I want to be happy, what do I do? I want to go back to my first love, art, drawing, but I also want to help people. How do I combine the two? The decoration came quite naturally because it’s getting into people’s intimacy and trying to do them good.