“I’ve come a long way, everyone said I was stupid, that I was vulgar,” she says facing the camera. There are plenty of times I’ve thought of dying. Nabilla Vergara has agreed to be followed in her daily life, between Dubai, Geneva and Paris, for a documentary series which arrives on Amazon Prime Video this Friday. The title, Nabilla: Without filter, wants to play double meaning. He promises spontaneity, speech without tongue in cheek, but also claims to show the twenty-something like we had never seen her, far from Instagram filters, the social network where she has at the end of November nearly 7 million followers. “Today, I would like to take the risk of showing who I am, I assume everything,” says Nabilla Vergara from the pre-generic of the first of the seven episodes.
Let’s not be fooled, if she assured to 20 minutes to have “given carte blanche to Amazon Prime Video” and confided to have “a right of inspection” which she claims not to have made use of, the main concern was on familiar ground. The program is produced by ITV Studios France (and Banijay) who, in early 2020, had recruited her to host the French version of the reality show.
Love island intended for the same streaming platform. Nabilla Vergara was therefore assured of a bubble of benevolence. Nabilla: Without filter, is not for all that a hagiography passing the brush to shine to its protagonists or struggling to present them in their best light.
Marriage from A to Z
Of course, the light sequences, a bit superficial or of low informative value – each and every one will decide on the best term according to his mood – are at the rendezvous of these some three hours and thirty minutes of immersion in the life of his heroine. The common thread is based on the organization of the wedding: from the sanitary constraints to the ceremony at the Château de Chantilly (Oise) and the burglary of the bridal chamber, through the fittings of dress at Jean Paul Gaultier, we do not miss no step. Friends and celebrity friends – Iris Mittenaere, Bilal Hassani, Léna Situations – make quick appearances. From this point of view, the codes of docu-reality are respected. But, if Nabilla Vergara has often been presented as “the French Kim Kardashian”, her show stands out somewhat from the futility of her American counterpart.
By diving into the career of the one who made her first appearance in 2011, on TF1, in Love is blind, a concept based on speed dating in the dark, we retrace a decade of an unusual fate. Once upon a time there was the seminal “No, hello what!” “, The whirlwind of celebrity media coverage, the widely paid legal chronicle and the current respectability she has enjoyed since she moved to Dubai. And how she started a family and now manages her cosmetics brand Nabilla Beauty.
Once upon a time (also) that night of November 2014 which has nothing of the fairy tale and all of the report of the various facts. This pivotal moment in her biography when she stabbed her companion Thomas Vergara. “Not to talk about it would be not to assume it,” she explained to 20 minutes. It is part of our history. If people don’t know this side of us, they will never be able to understand us. The public will understand at least his version of the facts, and that of his partner and now husband who also intervenes in the documentary series.
His prison experience
For her act, Nabilla, who had not yet taken the name of Vergara, was sentenced to six months in prison and eighteen months suspended. She benefited from a modified sentence and therefore did not return to prison at the end of the trial. “In prison, you are not Nabilla, you are number 6480”, she said in Without filter. She looks back in detail on her prison experience, in particular during her meeting with Karim Mokhtari, the creator of the 100Murs association from whom she inquired about the procedure to follow in order to intervene with inmates. It is also for the benefit of this association that she participated in the last season of Fort Boyard. Nabilla, the hired one.
Nabilla Vergara is also unexpected when she talks about her upset relationship with her father. The latter had great difficulty in supporting the media coverage of his daughter, had the impression – let’s put it politely – that what she was doing did not correspond to his values. Time has partly done its work, but we can feel the fragile reworking. She dreads announcing her marriage to him, she worries about his reaction when she offers to accompany her to the altar of the (civil) celebration and she is afraid that he will simply decide at the last moment of do not make the trip. Atmosphere.
It is when we discover Nabilla Vergara evolving with her relatives, from her first family circle to her childhood friend with unwavering support, that one has the most the impression of touching the truth of this woman who has suffered for a long time. and suffered from its hypersexualization. It is in these moments that the filters really seem to disappear, that speech and appearances do not seem controlled. What does this documentary series tell us? That the Nabilla of ten years ago has matured in accelerated mode. And that the one that has long been surrounded by millions of looks now wants to be seen with a different eye.