In the latest issue ofA Sunday in the countryside, broadcast this Sunday June 23, 2024 on France 2, Adriana Karembeu was one of Frédéric Lopez’s three guests. The opportunity for the 52-year-old model and presenter to confide in her difficult beginnings in Paris.
A success story. This Sunday, June 23, Adriana Karembeu was the guest of Frédéric Lopez, in the show Un Dimanche à la Campagne, broadcast on France 2. At her side, the singer Ycare, revealed by the program New star in 2008, as well as former Olympic Games glory Marie-José Pérec. The opportunity for the model to expose the painful memories of her childhood in Czechoslovakia, but also to recount her thorny beginnings in the world of modeling, when she had no income.
“It cannot be refused” : Adriana Karembeu tells how she became a model
While she is in her third year of medicine in Prague, Adriana Karembeu tells Frédéric Lopez about having to pass a first aid and rescue certificate. For the occasion, she goes to a store to buy a swimsuit. This is where his destiny changes. “There’s a guy who comes to talk to me and he explains to me that there is a casting for models, but I don’t understand anything“, she says in the program broadcast on France 2. The young Czechoslovakian passes the test and is invited to Paris to pursue a career. But she refuses. “They came back two or three months later. That’s when my father had a conscience and he said to me: ‘Go ahead. Paris cannot be refused. Especially in my country where you can’t travel, the borders were closed.”she remembers.
“I have not eaten” : Adriana Karembeu recounts her arrival in Paris in A Sunday in the countryside
Faced with the tempting prospect of a career in modeling, things accelerate. It was in great haste that Adriana Karembeu left Czechoslovakia for France. “My mother quickly put things in my suitcase, I didn’t even have a bra, I didn’t even have a hairbrush“she tells Frédéric Lopez in A Sunday in the countryside. But she will have to wait a certain time for the big creators to rush to show her off. In the meantime, Adriana Karembeu is living her Parisian dream in extreme precariousness. “I arrive at Paris, I really don’t have a penny. The first week I didn’t eat because I couldn’t afford food. (…) I had nothing, I was dressed like a tramp, I wasn’t in the mix at all, but everything was magnificent and above all, I was in Paris”underlines the model who has now become a presenter.
