“There I am in the middle of it with the choices of album cover… I am not too apprehensive of my last 12.45 of this Friday because I do not throw myself completely into the void. After having publicly announced his withdrawal from the M6 midday information meeting, it is an overexcited Kareen Guiock Thuram who addresses 20 minutes.
A few hours before her last at the helm of this TV news that she has been running for almost ten years, she is sure to have made the right decision by retiring to devote herself to music.
“These are two activities that cannot be carried out at the same time. On the one hand there is the journalism in front of television viewers who rely on the information you transmit to them to, sometimes, make life choices, and then the scene where you have to be 100% there for the public. , she assures.
The examples of stars of the small screen deciding not to repress their cravings for music have multiplied in recent years. Most are women. They leave permanently coveted places to devote themselves to their passion. 20 minutes wondered what motivated them and why they prefer not to pursue two careers in parallel.
Bring a dream out of the closet
“When I was little, I had two dreams, to be a journalist and a singer”, begins Bintily Diallo. The 33-year-old journalist, host on Mouv’ and cultural columnist in Telematin, passed by BFMTV was a recurring face of the morning of LCI where she held a musical chronicle. This daily meeting allowed him to combine his two dreams. She even had the opportunity to sing with Justin Timberlake, Birdy, Texas or Seal.
After three years of squatting on the small screen and the yellow vests halving her number of weekly chronicles, she decides to slam the door of the news channel of the TF1 group. His position did not leave him enough time to accomplish his second ambition. A few months later comes out Exposure, his first EP. “As a child, I promised myself to release a first album at 30,” she slips.
So host of Dance with the stars and 50′ inside on TF1, the announcement of the separation between Sandrine Quétier and the front page had the effect of a bomb at the end of 2017. “I had the chance to work a lot and I’m not going to complain about it. And then after a while I turned around and said to myself: “But what did you do with your passions, what did you do with your music?” I had been in a rock band for ten years but it wasn’t enough. I could not devote myself to it as I wanted, ”recalls the former figure of the first channel.
After two years of reflection, she decided to take a professional “leap into the void”. “I needed to create a break in my life to force myself to rebuild myself in something else. “She is now an actress and a member of Molly Pepper, a rock group whose first album will be released in 2023.
For Kareen Guiock Thuram, it was the Covid-19 crisis and its numerous confinements that motivated her step aside. “Like the majority of humanity, I asked myself existential questions about what I would regret if tomorrow I was swept away by a terrible virus that we didn’t know much about at the time…” If the music was up to here a refuge, she regrets never having devoted herself entirely to it. A sabbatical year will allow her to accomplish this ambition: she has already announced that an album of Nina Simone covers will be released in the spring of 2023.
“I was asked if something had happened to me”
If each of these journalists has managed to pass the course, they all testify to having felt brakes before fully embarking on their desire for music. “I wasn’t at all scared but when I talked about it around me, everyone told me that I wouldn’t find a job,” recalls Bintily Diallo.
When Sandrine Quétier announces her choice for the direction of TF1, we wonder about her mental health. “I was asked if something had happened to me, if everything was going well in my life,” she says, amused, five years later. Even today, some people salute his courage. “For me it was not brave, it was in the order of things. »
Kareen Guiock Thuram will be replaced by Nathalie Renoux, the current face of the M6 newscast on weekends. This choice suits the singer journalist who assures that she will be back from September 2023. “I cannot let my life be guided by the fear that I will be replaced. They could very well replace me without me taking a sabbatical to go and do what I love,” she insists.
“No longer being on the air freed me”
For Sandrine Quétier, the impression of having reached the top of a “very time-consuming” profession accelerated the decision to drop everything. On the side of Kareen Guiock Thuram, it is the requirement of the profession that motivates her choice. “For viewers, there is nothing more natural than going home, taking your remote control and finding the person you left the day before in the same place, without asking questions about everything it engages. But these are demanding schedules with very short nights. »
The 45-year-old journalist also says she is very inspired by her young colleagues who “do not feel obliged to submit to a model or to requirements that are foreign to them. “We hear them say that they don’t want to comply with certain things. I find it super courageous because a priori they don’t arrive at a time when they have the freedom to have the choice but they create a space for themselves to have the choice. »
Bintily Diallo says that, galvanized by the challenge and the opportunity she felt in the morning of LCI, she had “no mental or physical space” to think about music. She shot and wrote all of her subjects solo. Withdrawing completely allowed him to get rid of this mental load. “I also censored myself a bit to write my lyrics as a journalist. Not being on the air at all freed me up. “If the 30-year-old is back on the screen, she now claims to have known how to preserve this freedom even if she did not manage to “become the new Angèle in two years”.
The “distorting mirror of TV”
The three singers agree on a difficulty: to acquire the label of singer when, in the eyes of the public, you are glued to that of TV journalist. “There is a kind of distorting mirror of the small screen which makes people think that we cannot do anything else”, deplores Bintily Diallo, specifying that like anyone, she does her shopping and has passions. She believes that in the United States, the “bridges” between different sectors are easier to cross.
“In France we are not very versatile”, observes Kareen Guiock Thuram for her part. “People absolutely want to be able to situate themselves and say to themselves: she is a journalist or she is a singer. But in fact, we can very well do both. She believes that people are complex and that’s what makes them rich. “Now it would be time to accept it, but I think it will be less difficult for the next generations. »
Observation shared by Sandrine Quétier. “You feel like you’re starting from scratch, having to prove yourself in everything. With a very exciting side and then another where people are waiting for you around the corner because they know you. Suffice to say that when you haven’t followed the musical career of the ex-host closely in her last few months, discovering her blending into Molly Pepper’s rock and rebellious style can be disconcerting.
One choice for multiple trajectories
If Bintily Diallo returned to journalism at the end of 2021, she does not rule out stopping again “if she receives a proposal in music” and is delighted to be able to combine the two. His fourth EP, Musewas released on February 11, 2022.
“Long live freedom”, launches Sandrine Quétier. She is delighted to see more and more men and women daring to embark on their passion despite the obstacles. “It’s not necessarily the easiest path, but in any case, personally I think it’s the most fulfilling path,” she says. In addition to her group Molly Pepper, she is currently in rehearsal for the play Two days to break up, and will perform in Lyon in January. “I don’t pretend to be the best actress or the best singer in the world, but I do what I want to do and if it meets an audience and people are happy; well it’s won! »
Kareen Guiock Thuram will therefore make the antenna of the 12.45 for the last time for several months. She is delighted that her professional entourage supports her in this decision. “It’s because I shouldn’t be such a bad colleague,” she laughs.