From basketball court floors to the Miss France 2000 podium. In An unexpected destiny, her first TV film for France 2 as a director, Sonia Rolland draws inspiration from her personal story to tell that of Nadia (Esther Rollande), 18 years old, of Rwandan origin and destined for a career as a basketball player. Failed because of her bad temper, the young girl educated in a small working-class town will finally present herself at the Miss Poitou-Charentes course, pushed by her relatives… A very personal story for the 42-year-old actress, born in Kigali, Rwanda, who escaped the Tutsi genocide at the age of 13 to settle in Saône-et-Loire. The opportunity for the former Miss France 2000 to grant an interview to Galapublished Thursday, December 28, 2023 on newsstands, in which there was talk of her two daughters, born in more affluent conditions than she herself experienced as a teenager. “They are lower-middle-class women, who live in a privileged environment. But they keep one foot in reality”, she explained to our colleagues.
Sonia Rolland talks about her ties to Burgundy
In 2007, Sonia Rolland gave birth to her first daughter, Tess, born from her past union with Christophe Rocancourt. From her now ended relationship with Jalil Lespert, Kahina was born in 2010. The one who grew up in modest circumstances wants to give her children a sense of reality and respect for one’s own origins. “We spent the summer with my mother in Burgundy, it’s important that they have contact with real life, that they see what I experienced. It allows you to have empathy. I especially don’t want them to be snobbish, contemptuous.” she said to Gala. His father Jacques, of French origin and former printing house manager, died at the age of 71 in 2014 and his mother Landrada, of Rwandan origin and host of a literary café, now lives in a wheelchair since a stroke.
If the former beauty queen became famous as Miss France 2000 then actress-director, she refuses to let her children get big heads. “They see this around them in the nice neighborhoods, the illusion of a perfect life. But often, the parents are not there and the kids are unhappy. A semblance of freedom but not freedom. If the girlfriends all come to the house, it’s not for nothing. Here I am, throwing pancakes in the air. They ask: ‘Is your mother famous and she makes pancakes?’ Well yeah !”, she told again Galashe who devoted her life after her year of reign to her profession as an actress but also to her commitment to orphaned children in Rwanda.