Giving up control is not easy for Arnout Hauben, but it is The house the TV maker must undergo. Not he, but Eric Goens asks the questions. First theme: his turbulent school years. Hauben turned out to be far from the top of the class. At the age of 12 he was sent to boarding school. “It was a way to build discipline,” he says. “My parents won’t put it this way, but boarding school was the emergency brake.”
An anecdote about how his mother hurriedly gave him a lesson in sex education makes Goens wonder about the behavior of the priests. After all, Hauben attended the school of Father B., a father who was later accused of inappropriate behavior. An investigation into the now deceased man was underway by the former Adriaenssens committee. Through the conversation about the fathers, Hauben voluntarily creates a bridge to the case surrounding fallen TV maker Bart De Pauw. “I was one of the four directors of The De Pauw family” said Hauben. “Afterwards I see documentaries of what went wrong there, of what I didn’t see at the time.”
READ ALSO. Arnout Hauben visits Einstein and Napoleon in the second season of ‘Interview with History’: “I like that we spark so many debates”
“Weird page”
For two years, Hauben was involved in the comedy series in which Bart De Pauw himself played the leading role. “That was an intense period. A very free period too. A young Maaike Cafmeyer, a young Tom Waes, a young Bart De Pauw. It was such a great success. I was indeed amazed, but I didn’t know there was a backstage where things happened that were not allowed.” Goens wants to know whether he blames himself for that. “It’s a strange page in the things I’ve done in my career. It was a very intensive period.”
Hauben says that at one point his work on the series also irritated his wife, who called it a cult. Partly because he had to spend the night on the set. It was part of the making process The De Pauw familywas De Pauw’s own explanation. “Out of sorts bounding. Everything blended together a bit. The program was a hybrid formula between fiction and reality. But the fact that he made that stretch so wide is crazy. Then you doubt yourself: how come I didn’t see that? I think I have good antennas, that I have good people skills, but apparently I was blind to things that were going wrong in front of me.”
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Shared passion
Also the fifth guest of The house gets a surprise visit. It is Hauben’s parents who are allowed to visit. What is special is the shared passion with his father, who is himself extremely interested in history, taught it, and today still finds it difficult to stop once he starts telling stories. Or Hauben, best known for the award-winning Straight through Flanders in Interview with historysometimes makes mistakes during his own stories on TV? “Sometimes, but that doesn’t matter,” says Hauben senior. “It’s about him passing on the passion of history. Makes people eager to learn. I’m proud of that. The moment when you as parents can learn something from your children is very beautiful.” After a Greek-themed dinner and a short night, the professional adventurer and folk storyteller takes control into his own hands.
READ ALSO. Arnout Hauben in ‘Het huis’ about dismissal from Woestijnvis: “Very stormy period in my life”
INFO The house on Tuesday at 8.40 pm on VRT 1 and VRT MAX.
