Almost a year after the controversy surrounding her performance at Eurovision 2023,
La Zarra
speaks her truth.
The Moroccan-Canadian singer spoke in a long interview with the YouTube channel Siham TV.
To discover
TV tonight: our selection of the day
Last May, the singer of the song
Obviously
had many feats of arms during the international singing competition.
Ranked in 16th place, she made an inappropriate gesture when this result was announced and then left the stage before the end of the evening.
A behavior which had aroused the annoyance and disappointment of Stéphane Sitbon-Gomez, the director of antennas and programs of France Télévisions:
“We are obviously disappointed by the result this year and by the attitude that La Zarra had. after having spent several months supporting and promoting it
,” he confided to Télé-Loisirs last June.
“
It’s going to be your staging”
If, after the controversy, the singer had expressed regrets, this time she did not mince her words in the interview she delivered on the YouTube channel Siham TV this Sunday March 10 concerning her experience at the Eurovision.
She first returned to the beginnings of her participation in the competition when she was about to release her second album.
“I was made to believe that you are the artist, it’s your title, it’s going to be your staging
,” she explains.
I told myself that it’s a great platform to explore the artistic continuation of La Zarra and to propose something interesting, that’s why I agreed to do it.”
She then returned to the way in which she prepared her performance:
“I was asked (
to participate
) in September and from September to May, what I did not understand was that I was going to be there. slave of France Télévisions, that I was not going to be able to offer what I wanted artistically on stage, that the costs were going to be deducted from my marketing budget for my second album... It was extremely hard.
»
The head of the delegation
She continues her story by explaining that France Télévisions and in particular Alexandra Redde-Amiel, the head of the delegation, demanded that she change her hair color.
“I was brunette when they came for me and I absolutely had to be La Zarra, blonde hair Marilyn Monroe
,” she confides.
One day, I received a phone call in the night from the head of the delegation who was totally annoyed and said to me: “Listen Fatima, you don’t understand, if it ever “likes”, we have to have photos with your blonde hair.
So you have to bleach your hair this week because you're Arab and with brown hair you look too Arab and when you're blonde you look less Arab.
And the French don't like the Arabs”.
For me, it was racism and they tell you it’s not…”
Also read: “Nothing surprises me anymore, nothing hurts me anymore”: La Zarra responds to “insults in the press”
She then expresses her feelings about this adventure:
“For me, it was hell from start to finish, it was the most traumatic experience and not because of the media.
Before I even got to Liverpool, it was hell.
(...) In music, in the industry, on television, there are people who are not artists, who do not know artists, who have never written a song or who have tried to. do and were not talented, and who want to direct the artist.
We are a little puppet, (...) you no longer have any artistic choice, you just become a doll, the word is that you are a prostitute, that's how I felt and lived.”