Solène Delinger
Raphaël de Casabianca confided in a long message shared on Instagram the reasons for his surprise departure from “Rendez-vous en terre stranger”, the travel show that he has presented since 2018 on France 2. Hypersensitive, the host could not stand plus the farewells with the indigenous peoples met on the other side of the globe.
Raphaël de Casabianca would have liked to announce his surprise departure from Meeting in unknown land. Unfortunately for the host, the information leaked in the columns of Parisian last week. “The news came out a little earlier than expected. So it seemed important to me to explain to you the reasons for my choice,” declared the main party on Instagram this Sunday, June 23.
“It has become difficult for me to mourn these encounters”
Raphaël de Casabianca, who succeeded Frédéric Lopez in 2018, has absolutely no regrets about having embarked on this unique and atypical television adventure. “When Frédéric Lopez asked me six years ago to take up the torch of Rendez-vous en terre stranger, I did not hesitate for a second to say YES, without worrying about the pressure that this could cause, nor about the difficulty of succeeding him, I reacted with the heart, carried by the desire and the pride to transmit in my turn the messages of all these people who were going to agree to receive us”, he remembers with emotion, still on. Instagram. After six years of unforgettable encounters and exceptional trips to the other side of the world with celebrities like Slimane, Raphaël de Casabianca felt particularly intense emotional fatigue.
Saying goodbye to the indigenous people he met during the show was becoming more and more difficult for the forty-year-old. “I made a promise to myself to hug Humed and his family again in Ethiopia, to return to India with Franck Gastambide to find Roshan and Mustu, to laugh with Daria in the shade of a tree in Kenya, to return to the Vezo island or to the Mongolian steppes… But over time, I understood that this would simply be impossible”, he confides before adding: And it became difficult for me to mourn these encounters. Over the years, the returns also became more and more trying, I found it difficult to land again and resume a normal life. Which had consequences for me but also for those around me and whom I love.” At the end of his message, Raphaël de Casabianca thanks the 17 personalities who followed him to the other side of the world for Meeting in unknown land.
We will soon see the host at the helm of two numbers of the show recorded several weeks ago, one with Kendji Girac and the other with Tomer Sisley. France 2 is looking for a new host to relaunch the program, which is starting to run out of steam.