Monaco: The future matters for Séverine Ferrer

by Alex Noone 721 views

The eight years since she competed in the Eurovision Song Contest 2006 have been busy for French singer and TV personality, Séverine Ferrer. She’s appeared on the stage, she’s appeared on the screen. She’s had a second child. And most recently. she’s entered the world of politics.

This week, in a regular section examining the careers of stars no longer in the spotlight, the popular weekly French magazine Télé-Loisirs looks at Séverine Ferrer’s achievements both in and away from the public eye.

Back in 2004, Monaco returned to the Eurovision Song Contest after an absence of 23 years. That year, they failed to qualify from the semi-final. They failed again the next. And so, in 2006, when Séverine Ferrer was chosen internally to represent the tiny city-state, the pressure was on.

Séverine seemed a wise choice. Originally from Réunion, the French island in the Indian Ocean, but part Italian and part Vietnamese, Séverine was already famous for her beauty by the time she represented Monaco at Eurovision. She’d even won a Miss Mini- Réunion title as a youngster during the 1980s. And she was well-known. In her early 20s, she’d presented celebrity magazine and pop-culture shows on French television channel M6 and released an album.

Sadly, Séverine’s tropically-themed song, La Coco-dance, failed to capture the public’s imagination at Eurovision. And for the third year in a row, Monaco didn’t progress from the semi-finals. The country hasn’t appeared on the Eurovision stage since.

It was at that time Séverine decided to get back to the thing she loved the most: the theatre. First came several appearances in ensemble piece, The Vagina Monologues. Following this success, in 2013 Séverine appeared in Ma première fois at the Palais des glaces in Paris. The play, which opened first in Broadway in 2007, was written by theatrical produce Ken Davenport, and is based on true-life accounts of people’s first sexual experiences. Most recently, Séverine had a starring role in Ma mère me rend dingue, a comedy of manners by actor and writer Jeremy Lorca that had enormous success in Paris and on tour across France.

I’ve done theatre since I was 8 years old, and it has always been very important to me, Séverine told journalists. I feel fulfilled on stage.

But in 2013, Séverine Ferrer’s career took a new and unexpected path. She entered the world of politics. On Sunday, 23 March she was elected as a councillor in the French town of Châtou, were she lives. Here she is with the town’s mayor, and her colleagues on the Municipal Council (on the front row, in the bright blue trousers)–

For me, being a municipal councillor is part of my duty as a citizen, she explained upon her election. I always felt I needed to be involved. Our mayor is very interested in young people and as a mum of two the future of our children is something that matters very much to me. Beyond that, I don’t have any political ambition. But because people know me through the television, I hope they’ll find me approachable and easy to talk to.

Despite her hard work and commitment to the council, however, Séverine has not ruled out a return to music and showbiz. On her own terms. It would have to be a project very close to my heart, she says.

Séverine Ferrer certainly knows her own mind.

Séverine Ferrer performs La Coco-dance at the Eurovision Song Contest 2006 in Athens –

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