“People look and then they judge and analyze. There is always a risk in showing who you are, ”says Nabilla Vergara. At 29, the ex-star of Angels has, however, agreed to be followed by the cameras for a documentary series. Nabilla: Without filter will be available on Amazon Prime Video on Friday. “I haven’t seen anything yet, I didn’t want to,” she says. She also claims to have given the platform carte blanche: “I had the right to review, but no final decision. I wanted to do it, so I did it thoroughly. “During seven episodes, we discover her with family, friends and girlfriends, at work or in the process of preparing for her“ princess ”wedding, according to her terms. She also talks about the people whirlwind, her time in prison, her thwarted ties with her dad.
20 minutes met him this Monday at the Royal Monceau in Paris.
Looking back, your famous “No, hello, what!” Was a curse or a blessing?
(Laughs) It was a double-edged sword. It sure changed my life, so if I had to do it again, I would do it again a thousand times. It gave me the chance to be able to do what I love. It brought me a lot of happiness, but a lot of unhappiness too …
You say that you suffered from hypersexualization, being made fun of by people who thought you were stupid… When did you first realize that?
When Release title “The empire of the void”, that says it all. I was called to offer me the portrait on the back cover, which is very prestigious. We did the interview and then, when it was released, I discovered this title. There, I said to myself that there were people who wanted to have me, but more to demean me than anything else. I was also laughing because this character, I had shaped him to be funny – not silly, eh, funny, that does not necessarily mean silly. There are people who didn’t understand it, who thought that I was really like that when I knew very well what I was doing and where I was going.
Today, with the widest echo given to feminist voices, some of the comments made about you would no longer pass so easily …
It would suit me well because, when today I see Emily Ratajkowski or other women posing nude on Instagram, it is very beautiful. I don’t find that vulgar, I’m sorry. Then there are ways to do it. But when you put on a cleavage and you do reality TV, you are called a bimbo. In the end, what does this word mean? I don’t even know. A girl who wears heels? Who has big breasts? You cannot be condescending to the point of reducing a person to a physical. At the time, it was a permanent hypersexualization, people spoke to me more about my physique than about who I really was.
How do you relate to feminism?
I don’t like extremes, I like it when it’s soft enough. When I see Femen demonstrating in the street with their breasts open, I tell myself that they are defending their cause, but I think that women simply need to be respected and appreciated for who they are. I think men and women should be 50/50 and that’s how it works.
The plight of women prisoners is a cause close to your heart. In the documentary, we see you obtaining information from the 100Murs association to carry out interventions in prison. Were you able to make this project a reality?
The director of the detention center is in favor, but we are waiting to be able to go. With sanitary measures, it’s complicated. I am quite impatient. I know a little about this environment and I know that there are things that are missing and others that need to be improved. I wish I could help and cheer up these women. Yes, they did stupid things, but who never did? There are degrees of gravity. You don’t end up in jail just after you’ve killed someone. It is not necessarily criminals who are in prison, there are also some who have had a wrong course at one point.
You approach head-on that night in November 2014 when you stabbed your companion Thomas Vergara. Did you hesitate to mention it?
Everyone around us was asking us, “Are you going to talk about this again?” Are you sure? We said to ourselves that if we didn’t talk about it, we were big mythos. Because it’s something that happened. Not to talk about it would be not to assume it when we are fully assuming it. It is part of our history. If people don’t know this side of us, they will never be able to understand us.
Thomas Vergara (present at his side during the interview): It is a passage in our life that was a big turning point.
Nabilla Vergara: It all started from there for us. We have to talk about it, otherwise it would be a shame.
It all started from there ? That is, how your relationship has evolved?
Yes. It’s like when I’m asked if being married has made a difference. Marriage itself, no. It’s just the culmination of something. But overcoming an ordeal like that, worthy of a film, it sure made us stronger.
You also say that everything changed for you during your incarceration. In what way?
It freed me from the character I had created and which took up a lot of space. I didn’t know how to get out of it, I was caught in a spiral. When I was doing TV I was expected to play it and if I didn’t people were disappointed. In the end, I was fed up, I wanted to be myself.
You got your college certificate in prison. Did you focus on it overcoming this ordeal?
Of course, if you stay in a three-square-meter cell, after a while, you go crazy. You might as well go to the activities offered by the detention center. I was told that I could take the patent, it is not the diploma of the year, but it is one that I had not had and that I wanted to have.
The common thread of “Nabila: without filter” is your father. There’s a suspense built around her eventual absence from your wedding. Did things work out with him?
Yes, I’m fine. But we will always be completely different people. It’s like two worlds that intersect. We love each other, we try to understand each other, but I have trouble understanding it and vice versa. He is a person who does not want light, who is very discreet, even in his work where he is appreciated precisely for that … With me, who am in the spotlight from morning to night, overexposed, it is not easy to communicate.
You are now at the head of your cosmetics brand. Is it a form of validation?
Obviously, when you’re a business leader and you have to lead people who are double our age, there is something very rewarding. We have responsibilities, we learn things. We are starting to develop. It is respectable. People don’t see us the same way.
You live in Dubai. Is that a way to protect yourself?
I love France and the French. For me, it will always be the most beautiful country in the world. It’s very different from Dubai, but it’s true that when you’re with your family, you like being normal people, going shopping, walking in flip-flops… We don’t want to be filmed all the time. by people. We also have to protect our son [Milann, 2 ans]. He didn’t ask to be in there. It’s paradoxical, we expose it, but at the same time, it is protected because we are in a country where no one is going to photograph it or annoy it. There is this security… We were robbed during our marriage. We don’t want this to happen every day.
This burglary took place in July, in your bridal chamber, while you were in the middle of a wedding party at the Château de Chantilly. Has it tarnished your memory of that important day?
I’m not saying that to screw it up, but the material, I don’t care. They’re just objects, after all. Rather, it is the fact of saying that we have entered my privacy, that my boy was sleeping in the room next door and that, since they were adjoining suites, they could have gone to his room. We were a bit shocked. We go home and we no longer have the gifts from the guests, nothing. More clothes. Thomas didn’t even have underpants anymore.
Thomas: They took everything from me, even the shoes.
Is that what dissuades you from coming back to settle in France?
Thomas: Yes it’s playing, it’s scary, we tell ourselves that anything and everything can happen at any time. If we were just the two of us at a pinch, but we’re a family. It’s scary for the little one.
Nabilla: We mustn’t steal it from us, eh! (laughs)
Nabilla, what would you like people to say or think about you after watching this documentary series?
Frankly, nothing. In fact, I don’t even want them to understand me or anything. I just want to answer their questions, show them that I am not perfect and that no one is perfect. Sometimes people, young people in particular, who follow us, can have self-esteem problems, they can say to themselves “Me, I’m not good while she is good”. I just want to show them that they are great too, that we all have problems and that we are just normal people.