Maya Dagan is used to creating media buzz, but it is doubtful whether she thought that the public criticism she would attract would come from the kitchen. The 47-year-old actress, who describes herself as "a person who always speaks his mind," made headlines this week after appearing on the reality show "Come Eat With Me." Not everyone liked her loud behavior, and some even accused her of "stealing attention" from the other participants.
Maya Dagan without filters // Correspondent: Neta Pluderman, Photo: Paz Bar
"All my life there are people who love me and some who don't, and I have no problem with that," Dagan said in an interview with the Shabbat supplement, which will be published on Friday. "I haven't read the reviews in question, and talkbacks about myself I don't read. I only concentrated on the good experience on filming. I have received amazing responses from my family and people on the street, who really flood me with a lot of love.
"I cook well, and this show, which has crazy characters, you can't get in if you don't have self-deprecating humor. There's awareness and lack of awareness there, a format that's bullish for me, with my nonsense. I wanted to be seen without masks. I came to the program knowing that I was in my Safezone, in my authenticity, paperless."
In the interview, Dagan speaks candidly about her recovery from a variety of personal crises she has undergone in recent years, since the coronavirus - including a traumatic scorpion bite ("I felt like an electric saw penetrating my body, like open heart surgery without anesthesia, excruciating pain"), alcohol withdrawal, a subject she now sees as her public mission, and more.
"To me, the criticisms of me are marginal compared to my ability to make someone understand that if I get out of drinking, so can they, that there is a way out. I get messages from people who need support, who want to share, who ask for help, and I'm there to help them."
Dagan, who returned to her home theater, Beit Lisin, after leaving for the Cameri, is currently starring in the plays "Middle" and "Renovations." In the interview, she talks about the points of contact she finds between the plot on stage and her private life - especially in the play "Middle," which deals with a severe marital crisis between husband and wife.
"I'll be 48 in October, and I'm constantly asking myself questions. I try not to get into the cliché of a midlife crisis, but I've reached the middle. At home, I found myself telling Eran (Pepper, a high-tech man and her partner of the past 13 years, M.K.) sentences taken from the play. Suddenly I stopped and said: Wait, wait, something's mixing up here..."
Dagan, who is known for not being afraid to demonstrate and express herself on controversial issues, also relates to the social situation in the country: "I am an optimist in essence, and I want to believe that in the end it will be good here, but at the moment it doesn't look like that. It scares me this abnormal place, when you turn on the TV and see an elderly woman sitting on a fence and a policeman pushing her. This is something that cannot be justified. Women's rights are suddenly taken away. How? And more in the hands of women sitting there! LGBT people are hurt, what's going on here?"
The full interview - in the "Shabbat" supplement
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