Riccardo Simonetti believes that a good television presenter must be articulate. Many would forget that. It is not surprising that he starts with the basics. He started doing that when he was a kid on the sitcom Friends looked to mimic Jennifer Aniston’s acting. The 28-year-old has always seen entertainment as something that can be learned. Because pure talent, he was sure, would not be enough for a gay man. At least not for someone who didn’t want to hide his long brown hair and the make-up on his face.
Simonetti wears a self-designed, sleeveless shirt, a rainbow flag hangs in the background. These days you can only reach him digitally in his Berlin apartment, where he is rarely staying at the moment. Most of the time he is on the road, moderating the ZDF television garden at the side of Andrea Kiewel – the Mainz institution that has put ZDF’s regular audience in a good mood since 1986. He and Jan Böhmermann prepare lasagna in his new cooking show, and the next day his Saturday evening broadcast on WDR starts. An environment in which one hardly suspects a dazzling figure like him, but where he definitely belongs.
Lamenting doesn’t help, says Simonetti
Simonetti was drawn to the stage at an early age: at the age of four he began taking acting lessons, when he was at school he played theater, and at the age of 14 he also joined television and radio. But he became really well known through his internet blog The Fabulous Life of Ricci, in which he wrote about his life and his idols, pop stars like Britney Spears and Paris Hilton. About them, he explains, the gossip press told as much nonsense as his classmates, who did not accept Simonetti’s style in his Bavarian homeland Bad Reichenhall. Instead of hiding, Simonetti fled to the front: “If Lady Gaga can be at the airport with two clams and a thong bikini,” he said to himself, “then I can wear a headband and a sequin blazer to school too. “
If you look at him, you would not believe that Simonetti is mutating into the all-purpose weapon of public television. Not because you don’t trust him, but because people like him were never visible there. The former ARD program director Volker Herres could not name a woman in an interview from last year who could moderate shows on Saturday evening. He was not even asked about gay men who optically do not match the image of the gray-mottled short-haired man. But complaining doesn’t help, says Simonetti: “If you want things to get better in the future, you have to be ready to turn things around and show: I’m doing my part now.”
He’s also in sequin shorts in the TV garden and receives applause. The average age on ZDF and WDR is over 60. It would be wrong to interpret the 28-year-old’s appearance as a provocation by a hip, queer Berliner by choice. Simonetti has always wanted to do shows for the whole family – just like Thomas Gottschalk, once the first interview guest on a radio show he hosted as a teenager. An 89-year-old once wrote to him that his performance had opened her eyes to her own sexuality late. “That motivated me to keep speaking to an audience that isn’t exactly my fanbase.”
When you hear Simonetti talk like that, it often sounds more like activism than entertainment. He is aware of this: “I hope that at some point I no longer have to be an activist and can just be an entertainer.” In February, the European Parliament appointed him its LGBTQI * special ambassador. As such, it does not lead through the ZDF television garden, nevertheless, many interpret his appearances as political statements. In the days after a broadcast, for example, you cannot read about his moderation, but about the death threats that land in his mailbox. For the “few black sheep”, as Simonetti calls the gay haters, it seems inconceivable that he does not want to convert them with his extravagant clothes and make-up. “All I ask is a seat at the table,” he says. “I think it is high time for that.”
He makes no secret of his self-love, says Bettina Böttinger about him
When Simonetti presented himself with the dream of a cross-generational show, inspired by the success of his blog, to some broadcasting bosses in his early 20s, they laughed at him, he says. According to their market research, gay moderators would not be well received. “For me, that was a moment when my dream broke because I realized: I’ve been without so many things all my life, that’s how I prepared myself for this job.” And yet he remained true to himself and carried on, albeit in a niche at first.
The fact that Simonetti has now arrived on television is of course partly due to him. His first own show was for the special interest channel E! Entertainment to success, in panel discussions like that Cologne meeting he always got a stage. Bettina Böttinger, the presenter of the show, remembers his appearances in the Cologne meeting. What she admires most about Simonetti is that he “makes no secret of his self-love,” she says of the SZ. At that time he told Böttinger that he wrote himself love letters. To take advantage of this self-confidence to stand up courageously for the queer community, that’s what defines him. “He does it in a way,” she says, “that literally has something very magical about it.”
On the other hand, Simonetti knows very well what the TV stations have in him. After all, hardly anyone fits the zeitgeist of the rainbow-colored station logos and diversity campaigns as well as he does. Simonetti is aware of the danger of being able to adorn oneself with one’s face while everything remains the same behind the scenes. at Legendary, his new WDR show, in which he travels back to past decades with celebrities, he had a good feeling from the start. “You are betting on me in a format that is not primarily about queerness,” he says. “That’s the difference.” However, that does not mean that Simonetti does not give the show its own queer note: While other time travel programs often glorify the past nostalgically, Simonetti talks to presenter Ingolf Lück about the AIDS crisis and reflects on his early days as a musician with Thomas Anders supposedly feminine appearance. Simonetti, who went to school with a headband and sequin blazer, can of course have a say.