A dream villa on the heights of Roquebrune-Cap-Martin (Alpes-Maritimes), above Monaco, facing the Mediterranean and a soft pink sky.
This Wednesday at the end of the day, we wait and hear Loana, who laughs loudly.
She is completing a shoot on her life, on the occasion of the 20 years of Loft Story.
She confides in "The hidden face of ... Loana, 20 years after the Loft, from TV to reality", this Tuesday evening March 9 on RMC Story.
It's her moment, again (we will also see her Thursday night on C8).
It's cold, we're almost in the mountains.
Loana shivers, the photo takes place on a terrace.
We are surprised: she laughs, almost beams.
However, for two weeks, we have only heard about his psychiatric internment after an overdose of drugs, and the insults exchanged about him by those around him on Instagram and at Hanouna's.
In the unfurnished room - just two stools to sit on - a new friend does not take his eyes off her: Nicolas, who, since the beginning of the afternoon, keeps his little Chinese crested dog in his jacket, all both unperturbed.
Loana is already looking forward to their evening: they are going to watch "Blue Fear", a shark horror film.
It almost sounds like quiet happiness, finally.
Confidences of the pioneer of French reality TV, dented but fighter.
How are you ?
LOANA PETRUCCIANI.
Very well.
Very good.
The twenty years of the Loft, how do you feel?
The effect it has on me is weird.
It's a deadline.
I have myself as a retrospective of my life.
It has been twenty years since my life began, since Loana began, since everything began.
Did your life start with the Loft?
There is the Loana before and the one after.
We were in the fourth dimension.
It is as if I had set foot in another world.
We weren't prepared for it at all.
Neither me nor the production.
No one could tell us about something that everyone didn't know.
They were overwhelmed by events.
Eleven of us were stuck with Ikea furniture, really basic decor, tiny rooms, no washing machine, nothing.
When you compare to the reality TV lofts of now, our house was tiny.
They must have said to themselves that they were launching this game on a trial basis ... It was another time: we didn't have the Internet, I had done the test video on video.
I had won in francs.
Everyone said it was your quarter of an hour of fame.
And twenty years later, we are still talking about it ...
It could have been my celebrity quarter of an hour.
Me, that would have been enough.
When I went out I didn't expect it to last any longer.
I had just lived my life.
I had no pretensions.
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Would that have been enough for you, really?
Of course.
I didn't come home to be famous.
I went back there to fall in love.
And I fell in love.
It was not the same thing on the other side
(Editor's note: Jean-Edouard, with the famous scene in the swimming pool).
That was the slogan for recruiting candidates: "You are between 18 and 45 years old, you are looking for great love ... Call such number".
I didn't want to be famous.
I would have preferred to be Christophe who met his Julie.
Him, he won with me but he found the great love of his life.
They are still together and they have two boys.
A quiet life, would you like it?
I would have liked to be apart like them and have babies.
It would have been the most beautiful of lives.
It sounds like a fairy tale ...
Yes, and my life has not been a fairy tale.
She was what she was.
She was not tender, but she has already given me so much.
When I have dark thoughts, I tell myself that I have done something.
You look in good shape.
However, you come out of the psychiatric hospital ...
What happened to me recently taught me that life is even better.
It's just a mistake.
I took too much medicine.
It was intoxication.
There was no drug like that was said.
Just someone I thought was a friend gave me too much medicine.
I had a coma for several hours, I could have stayed there.
My life almost changed.
This week in a psychiatric clinic, how did it go?
I relaxed, actually.
I can even tell you that inside a psychiatric clinic, people are less crazy than those outside.
They are more sincere.
They don't need to play.
It was a lesson in life.
Did they recognize you?
One or two, others not at all.
One told me, we're not going to call you Loana, because everyone will know you're here.
We'll call you Louna, like a wolf, the one who protects others.
It did me good.
I didn't have the Internet, there was no network.
No one could come to see me.
I come out better.
You talk about it like you're just coming out of a flu ...
There are several up there to save me
(she laughs)
.
There is not just one star, but a constellation.
I believe that I have a good nature.
I wonder how I do to heal so quickly.
The doctors tell me: “It's not possible.
Are you sure you don't want to kill yourself?
"
In the RMC documentary, you talk almost with a smile about your two cardiac arrests and three comas.
Think you have unlimited credit?
I played with death a few years ago when I made several suicide attempts.
I was playing, I didn't care.
Now I am very careful.
And I'm more nervous.
I don't drive too fast for fear of accidents.
I am now afraid of death because I know that life is precious.
“I'm taking my life back in hand.
Since I got there once, I'm going to get there a second time, ”says Loana./LP/Olivier Lejeune
However, we believed that you had fallen to the lowest ...
Not at all.
Everything is going very, very well for me at the moment.
I have plans to open a cabaret in Cannes this summer with my best friend, Nicolas, who is there.
I will also settle in Cannes, where I was born.
I find the sun again, a job that I love.
It was the loneliness that made me feel so dull.
Having a shoulder to lean on makes you feel better.
Are you still a great lover?
Yes.
When I am all alone, I am a danger to myself, I am harmful.
I need someone to be proud of me.
Are you going to live together with Nicolas?
I'm going to live in an apartment next to his, but we'll be together a lot ...
Did you recently say that you are running out of money?
I have lots of money problems.
Like when I arrived in the Loft at 20 with my suitcase and my dog, I still have my suitcase and my dog.
And some friends.
I take my life back in hand.
Since I got there once, I'll get there a second time.
On social networks, it seems like it's a war between you and your old friend, Sylvie Ortega?
I haven't looked on social media since I was released from the hospital.
There is something else in life.
Same for me.
In this cabaret, are you going to dance?
I will be artistic director.
I will choose the shows, the themes of the evenings, I will host.
We do the repairs, the decoration, we broke everything in this room in the city.
We hope to open this summer at the time of the Cannes Film Festival.
A little happiness, finally?
I think I'm not far from it.
I feel more serene.
I will have come a long way in life and a hell of a career as a good woman.
It's time to savor a little.
Is it your sincerity that makes people still love to hear from you?
I never hid anything.
Whether I'm fat, whether I'm on drugs, whether I'm an alcoholic, I've always shown myself as I was.
Sometimes it's easy, sometimes it's not.
Falling into alcohol, having heartaches, gaining weight, it has happened to others who can recognize themselves in me.
Losing weight, losing your femininity, rediscovering it.
I got it all.
You appear in good physical shape ...
69 kg!
I remember the number because it made me laugh when I was weighed in the psychiatric clinic.
I come back from 140 kg anyway.
When I was 56 at the time of the Loft, if I took 500g, it made me sick.
Now take 2-3 kg, I don't care anymore.
What saved you in the worst times?
When you are at the bottom of the hole, you no longer have love for yourself.
It is a loved one who can save you.
Me, these are my friends, Nicolas, Eryl ... It can be the love of your children, your spouse.
Or even a dog?
I admit, my dog Titi, I didn't want to leave him.
I did less stupid things because I had my dog.
When he looked at me with sad eyes, I would tell him, "Okay, I'm not going to do anything stupid, I'm going to stay with you."
He's really kept my head above water for four years.
It is often said that the Loft smashed you.
What do you think ?
I have been shattered at different times in my life by people around me.
But it wasn't reality TV that broke me.
She changed my life, embellished it, allowed me to travel, made me who I am, to meet extraordinary people, opened doors for me.
I made an album, designed clothes.
Without reality TV, I would never have been able to do all of this.
I was a dancer in a nightclub.
I wouldn't have had a bright future.
PODCAST. From TV to reality: Loana's battered life
What would you do?
I don't know, but I wouldn't have been very happy.
I left school in second, I worked at the age of 17.
I would have worked in a nightclub and then I would have found what next, a job as a waitress.
I would have finished like this.
No, it was a magic wand.